My Relationship with Race

I was looking forward to writing this post every Sunday, I saw it as a way not only of providing catharsis for myself, but hopefully opening up debate and acceptance of some of the hardest topics I've had to deal with in business and in life.

Since the murder of George Floyd by law enforcement officers in the USA, we have seen the culmination of centuries of oppression and angst manifested in #BLM protests across the US and other western nations including the UK.

And as I observe what is happening elsewhere, I have been forced to examine my own relationship with race.

It's more complicated than you might think.

I used to come across my fair share of bigots out in Papua New Guinea, and I used to 'joke' that I was whiter than any of them. Sometimes that was enough to diffuse tension, more often than not it wasn't. In truth most didn't even get that joke.

You see I am the product of empire. My grandfather left India in the early 1900s to seek a new life in Kenya. Both countries jewels in the Raj's crown. My family (writ large) has lived and prospered in the region ever since, I myself was born in Mombasa in the late 70s, well past the country's own independence over a decade earlier.

But I grew up in the UK, an alumnus of the public school system, a graduate of Bristol University - a city with its own dark history as a principal slaving port in the 1700s. I've been afforded every privilege that my peers of a European heritage have been afforded.

In my mid 20s I moved to Papua New Guinea and spent a decade between it and Australia, both again former colonies of the British Empires.

So you see why I might have joked that I was whiter than the bigots.

But that's just the overview, it doesn't go to the depth of my relationship with race.

You see, I've been spat upon by skinheads on the bus when I was a teenager, I've had white people cross the street from me after the 9/11 bombings, I've been unncessarily singled out by airport security staff, questioned by immigration staff in the US based on nothing other than the colour of my skin and my name.

I understand what it is to be discriminated upon.

But whilst those are explicit examples of racism perpetrated on me, I must confess to the fact that I have been complicit in a more subtle form of discrimination, that others too are complicit in and that I don't have an answer for.

And that's why it's complicated.

Growing up, we would go to Kenya almost every year, spend our summers on the beach, in beautiful homes or hotels, living in a form of luxury that was, and still is, impossible to meetattain for all those that made that luxury possible. The maids, drivers, gardeners, nannies, and others, many I would form bonds with over the years completely ignorant of that stark difference in social status until much later in my life when those trips were less frequent and my own life more mature.

But those differences didn't stop in the home; it is impossible to run manufacturing businesses in developing countries without running up against the reality that many of your staff may be sitting at the poverty line, that your income is dependent on people who have far less than you, have far less of a voice than you do and far less ability to change their own circumstances than you do.

I became more and more uncomfortable with this disparity when I was working in Papua New Guinea, and though we attempted to improve the lot of as many of our staff as we could, through provision of accomodation, of better wages, meals every day, it would be naive of me to say that we solved the problem.

So much of the discource around race boils down to economics, it's why slavery happened, it's why Empire existed and it's why companies seek out 'low cost' production bases - often, though certainly not always, exploiting workforces.

And so much of the discourse around economic inequality is rooted in fractured education systems. But that's a whole different story.

My wife and I have raised our (mixed race) children to have strong principles and ideals. They care strongly about what matters and I think as they grow, they are the generation that will pull us all together, they don't see colour, they don't see the 'other', they just are.

But for that to happen, we need to fight against the rising tide of inwards looking nationalism in so many places in the west today, to fight against the anti immigrant rhetoric we hear more of day by day, to fight against discrimination in the work force however subtle, to be purposeful in our actions to bridge educational and employment gaps.

My relationship with race has been complicated.

Fortunately, it's within my power to make it simpler.