Black Lives Matter - Pt. 2
I strongly believe that communities such as Ashtead can make a significant contribution in the fight against racial inequality.
We know that unconscious biases exist, especially pertaining to matters of race. What is the impact of these biases when coupled with positions of power & influence? The impacts in law enforcement have been extensively documented. But what about hiring managers across public and private organisations? The outcomes are pretty stark if you fall into a BAME group.
Conventional wisdom emphasises education as being the key through which people of colour are able to transform their life chances and get ahead. However I believe that argument is partially flawed. Education is a critical factor but only to a point. It’s only in tandem with employment that meaningful change will likely occur. Unfortunately BAME groups face endemic barriers in employment. These disadvantages can have a lasting effect not only on the individual but on communities over generations.
In a landmark field experiment completed by US researchers in the early 2000s it was found that candidates with a perceived white sounding name were 50% more likely to get a positive response to their job application than those with black sounding names, despite the fake applicant CVs being identical in everything but name. The researchers equated the positive response rate of the ‘white applicants’ to that of an additional 8 years worth of job experience.
https://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html
Similar biases in CV screening processes were found when this study was replicated in the UK, Canada and France.
In his observations of the contrasting fortunes affecting white and black candidates in employment, the chief financial officer at WarnerMedia remarked that white Americans are hired on potential while black Americans are hired on demonstrated accomplishment. Despite this dynamic, demonstrated accomplishment is still often deemed not enough for a lot of black candidates. Put simply organisations recruit in their own image. There’s an unacknowledged invisible hand of bias often at work which is then presented as a meritocracy.
So what can we do? A first practical step is trying to get as well informed as we can in this area. The horrors & legacy of slavery, the realities of colonialism, economic exploitation and racial inequalities are unlikely to be meaningfully covered in any school curriculum but continue to directly impact, in tangible ways, multicultural societies in the West today who profiteered most from them. I’ve included some useful links below on issues of race/BLM movement/slavery/ unconscious bias. Please do check them out, discover new sources of information for yourself and share that learning with family, friends & networks.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/06/01/police-killings-black-lives-matter-timeline-ryan-young-pkg.cnn (BLM movement roots)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/06/charles-cq-brown-black-air-force-general?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other (US Air Force General on racism)
https://youtu.be/3NXC4Q_4JVg (The Atlantic Slave Trade)
https://youtu.be/opUDFaqNgXc (Why Did Europeans Enslave Africans?)
https://youtu.be/dnV_MTFEGIY (The Atlantic Slave Trade Crash Course)
https://youtu.be/NW5s_-Nl3JE (Google’s Unconscious Bias initiatives)
Author Dr. Robin DiAngelo writes about what she termed ‘white fragility’, the tendency for white people to become defensive when confronted with their potential racial advantage which effectively functioned to protect and maintain that advantage. In the first link below Dr. DiAngelo elaborates on ‘white fragility’ and also offers some practical guidance on what you can do. In a nutshell: be willing to have uncomfortable conversations; work to resist the typical instinctive reflex to deny the existence of racism/privilege; you can use your privilege to create opportunities for others; you can use your resources to create a space for others; and you can use your platform to amplify issues on behalf of others in ways they may not be able to themselves.
https://youtu.be/Qx-gUfQx4-Q (Interview with author Robin DiAngelo on white fragility)
https://youtu.be/dteOQPzc_so (Interview with authors Robin DiAngelo & Ibram X. Kendi on privilege)
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2020/us/racism-questions-answers/. (BLM Q&A)
Another practical exercise we can do is an assessment based one. Harvard University developed pioneering Implicit Association Tests (IATs) which measure unconscious biases covering attributes such as race; gender; age; sexual orientation and religious bias: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/aboutus.html
They have been taken in excess of 10 million times by people globally and provide a useful way to start our own reflections on the type of biases we all may hold.
By most metrics Ashtead is a fairly well to-do community. There are residents in this community who hold influential roles in various organisations in & around London and beyond. It’s what they do with that power & influence, in the knowledge of the inherent biases that exist within our systems, that can make a difference. If within their gift, I’d encourage them to have a really close look at HR practices and accountability structures, if any exist; for diversity & inclusion policies within their organisations. Extensive research tells us that organisations who enthusiastically champion diversity systematically avoid those type of self audits because they prefer not to face up to the realities of the outcomes.
However we don’t have to be captains of industry. We can use our own platforms. I’d prayerfully challenge us all as to reflect on the type of social/government policies we support in areas such as education, healthcare, welfare and taxation (optionality of it). These have a real macro-level effect on society as a whole, often disproportionately on the most disadvantaged who lack a voice. What do some of those reveal about us and our values? Do they expose our tacit support for systemic practices that maintain the status quo with their built-in privileges? As Tim Long said previously, “we can either pretend for an hour every Sunday or we can try to make a tangible difference”.
This is unlikely to be a struggle settled in our lifetimes or those of our immediate descendants. The history of race tells us that. However I often draw encouragement from a quote cited by Martin Luther King Jr. which traces back to Theodore Parker, a minister & slavery abolitionist. In ‘Ten Sermons of Religion’ (1853) he proclaimed: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”. I believe this statement encapsulates the moment and times we’re in, how far we’ve come along and how far there’s still to go.