BLACK LIVES STILL MATTER
One of the significant outcomes after the death of George Floyd was the broader community dialogue on dealing with race in the workplace and beyond and the subsequent impacts of that on Black people.
In the UK, the US and many other countries, individual grievances about experiences at work gathered a collective momentum.
Companies and organisations endured a plethora of diversity consultants and anti-racist activists confronting leaders with the realities of how many Black people have to navigate the workplace. Leaders reeled as they were thrust into the spotlight. There were challenges to how they recruited; many Black professionals Anglicise or change their names entirely on applications to even be considered for a role. Leaders were confronted with the realities of code-switching - people having to change their appearance, tonality and posture to survive in their jobs. Questions were raised about ethnicity pay gaps and a host of other discrepancies. Many Black professionals demanded that enough was enough and held their companies to account.
We were all working from home because of the pandemic, so there was no escaping the social media onslaught.
Companies hastily issued promises of doing better, pledges to increase Black leadership, broader consideration of Black companies in the supply chain, and spent time apologising for not recognising this before. Race action plans were hastily put together. Things were going to get better.
But by the end of October 2020, the messaging started to cool down. After Black History Month (in the UK), many noticed that things were returning to normal. So much of what was promised in the heat of emotional turmoil was unceremoniously stripped away.
Many of us who had been engaged at the peak of the awakening for discovery calls and presentations quickly noticed that prospective and existing clients started not to return calls - deciding to focus on working in-house on wider BAME or BIPOC issues. And then some other noteworthy things began to happen.
Companies started to restructure. Big brands that were at the forefront of this awakening began preparing for hard times due to the financial impact of the pandemic. Fair enough. However, what stood out for me was that a lot of Black senior managers and leaders found themselves without a job. Funds that were ringfenced to address some of the discrepancies specific to Black people were reduced or had their narrative changed. Companies slapped themselves on the back for having high profile Black people on their campaigns. All the while, across various industries, Black professionals were being made redundant, managed out - fired.
The second thing we noticed was a push back against the narrative of the mattering of Black voices. In the US and the UK, the chant ‘all lives matter’ was slowly being replaced by Black voices on the political right. It was a second awakening, but this time people were being platformed because they didn’t see racism as big an issue as the rest of us. The anti-woke were being spotlighted because they didn’t see themselves as “victims” and “not all Blacks” had grievances.
We witnessed non-White politicians openly conflating the Black Lives Matter movement with the very reasonable sentiment of Black lives mattering just as much as anyone else’s. We also saw huge moves to support the hastily put together Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities and its subsequent report. Organisations can now easily say racism is not a thing because one report can be wielded, a report that conveniently ignores all that came before it; the Timpson Review, the McGregor-Smith Review, the Parker Review, the Lammy Review, the Angiolini Review, the Marmot Review and the Wessley Review (just so we’re all up to speed).
And so here we are in 2022, where little to no progress has been made. What was meant to be an awakening, an opportunity, to explore difficult conversations and solutions that impact Black professionals at work and in the wider community has gone back to sleep.
In the US, the backlash has resulted in real pushbacks on studies which explore racial inequity. The heavy-handed dismissal and misunderstanding of critical race theory have also ushered in commentators who support a ‘great replacement theory’, a theory that suggests Whiteness is under threat. Only recently has a law been passed to prevent Black people from being discriminated against because of their hair.
My work still sees many Black professionals wondering what happened to those who said they wanted to do better by them.
In the UK, we continue to see the political misunderstanding of anti-racist works as some tool to make white people feel guilty. The National Borders Act and increased police powers, which disproportionately affect Black people, were ushered in at a terrifying pace. Injustices still reign over outcomes for the Windrush Generation. Black maternal deaths are still 4-5 times higher than white women. Black professionals are still changing their names or ethnicity in job applications to get through to the next phase. Black professionals remain too scared to engage with my LinkedIn posts for fear of reprisal.
There is still a sense for many Black people in the UK of not belonging, at work or elsewhere. A sense of being othered. The broken promises and pledges of better working and community outcomes have not and will not be forgotten. It cuts too deep.
Black Lives Still Matter. Not more than anyone else’s, but they matter nonetheless.
