Zero Discrimination Day

Nobody puts sustainability in the corner – Zero Discrimination Day

“On Zero Discrimination Day, 1 March, we celebrate the right of everyone to live a full and productive life – and live it with dignity. Zero Discrimination Day highlights how people can become informed about and promote inclusion, compassion, peace and, above all, a movement for change. Zero Discrimination Day is helping to create a global movement of solidarity to end all forms of discrimination”. United Nations.

The dictionary definition of discrimination is clear, but the explanation of discrimination is much more complex. According to the definition, discrimination is the unfair or prejudicial treatment of people and groups based on characteristics such as race, gender, age, or sexual orientation. Our brain operates to be as effective as possible, to do this it groups things together into categories to allow us to make sense of the world around us and to allow comparison between similar elements and recognise outliers.

Once we progress beyond the categorisation of ‘things’ the values we place on them are created by externalities. We are guided by our associations with others, our parents or guardians, our friends, our peers, our educators, the media we consume, our geographical location and access to information and insight from others.

There is discrimination even in the access to the information we need, to counter and overcome some of the biases we may have encountered in others. When access to education is restricted when our living circumstances create difficulties in going to school, and when we live in an environment where everyone we engage with thinks and behaves in the same way. This is discrimination. Limiting the chance to increase knowledge based on age, gender, race etc. needs to be addressed as a matter of absolute urgency.

The first time we celebrated Zero Discrimination Day was in 2014. Has very much changed in the past decade or so? Whilst we do well to look for the positive, every week we hear of new examples of discrimination or othering.

This past weekend, reports of the cartoonist Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) either citing, ranting, commenting, or offering a racist tirade during a YouTube live stream. Adams stated that while he didn’t support active discrimination (he may likely follow this up with the ‘I have a black friend, so I can’t be racist’ card), he was tired of helping black people and urged white listeners to “get the hell away” from them. “There is no fixing this…you just have to escape”, he said. As a result, he has indeed escaped from the need to put ink to paper any longer, having been dropped by most media outlets that still ran his cartoon (syndication estimates of the previous reach of the cartoon strip indicate 2,000 newspapers in 65 countries and 25 languages).

Some people will sadly use the comments from Adams to further their own cause and discriminatory rhetoric. Disappointingly the words from Adams were amplified by Elon Musk. Writing to his 130 million Twitter followers in response to the Dilbert Strip being dropped by many outlets, Musk wrote “The media is racist”. He then added, “For a *very* long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they’re racist against whites & Asians. The same thing happened with elite colleges & high schools in America. Maybe they can try not being racist”.

Ignoring comments attributed to Adams and Musk and allowing them to fester in the echo chamber that forms their audience just exacerbates the problem. It’s important that the comments made by those in the public eye are called out just as much as those we hear on occasion from our peers.

In our society, we surely recognise the benefit, both to the individual and the group, of getting along with our neighbour. The fact some still have hatred and mistrust in their minds means we have a long way to go before we can celebrate a Zero Discrimination Day. Celebrate progress made, celebrate the fact it’s a conversation, and celebrate the recognition we have a long way to go.

We are in an environment where there is a need to learn more about discrimination and what it means. It is not the responsibility of others to teach us, no one will learn unless they want to. It is part of the implied terms and conditions we have as human beings to educate ourselves as to how to behave to and with others. We can only achieve a sustainable society if everyone plays their part.

?1.????As individuals and as businesses we must spot and stop discrimination. It’s wholly inappropriate to be aware of discrimination and not to take action to call it out and stop it from happening.

2.????It is critical to not only set targets but to take action to achieve them, to make a fundamental difference. We must look to expand our knowledge and the knowledge of those we work with, meet daily and have any level of interaction with. The influence we all have on the people around us is far greater than we realise, and modelled behaviour is something that drives our society.

3.????We must all act. I sometimes feel conflicted talking about discrimination as a white, middle-aged, male living in London. What do I know of how it feels to be a black woman living in Detroit or to be a transgender individual living in Milan or to be anyone other than I am? I truly believe that is why this is so important, that we all play a role in removing discrimination, by making it something we will look back on as historical events we vow never to allow again.

We don’t want to see discriminatory language, we don’t want to see others diminished for being the person they are, and we don’t want to experience discrimination either at first hand or at arm’s length.

If those of us that are not typically discriminated against do not stand alongside those that do experience discrimination, how can we say we care about others or want a more equal society? We all have a duty to make a difference, we can make the difference we need to see but only by recognising the language and behaviour that must change.

Sustainability: Do we care? Yes, I care. Yes, you care. Yes, we care