A Manifesto for Meaningful Action without a Hint of Tokenism

Respect the Seriousness of the Issue

We live in a racialised society. The fabric of our social structures: our legal system, educational policies, healthcare, political and economic structures, and employment procedures are all geared towards producing favourable outcomes for white people. This is not about you as an individual.  It is not a personal attack. Instead, think of whiteness as a concept. An idea. The image of normal. That the further your skin colour moves away from white, the further away you are from feeling safe, being heard or even just being right, until you become labeled as ‘diverse’.

Our combination of systems, policies, procedures, behaviours and beliefs are based on whiteness as normal. The historical reasons for this have evolved into the current social context where Black people are required to put so much energy surviving, which often means assimilating, to always be on the alert and stay two steps ahead, working twice or five times as hard to be accepted into a society that is fundamentally set up for them to always be doing so. This is the gravity of racial inequity.

Pay attention to normal. Notice the artificial selection of people. Get comfortable with your Discomfort.

Get Comfortable with your Discomfort

Society is built on foundations you never questioned. You never questioned them because they operate for you. I never questioned them because I thought it always had to be so.  That it was through bad luck that I was born into a world that devalues who I am because of my skin colour.

Imagine going to work, every day, as the only white person in your organisation, or in an organisation where out of 850 employees, 841 of them are Black. From where you sit as CEO, your senior leadership team, their direct reports and team members, through to human resources and IT support, no one looks like you*.

This is a Black colleague’s reality. They need to accept and understand it’s part and parcel of having a job. The onus is on them to adapt. And there is no impetus for you to adjust your culture for racial equity because systemic racism works for people who look like you. For years companies have attempted to ‘fix’ employees, or use ‘cultural fit’ as an unwitting tool of exclusion. Instead you should have fixed internal cultures, behaviours, and the organisation’s ways of being and doing. This is conscious inclusion. 

You did not create the system. You are implicit in perpetuating its existence. Shift your way of being.

• The other eight white employees are night-shift cleaners.

Shift Your Way of Being

Across the last year we were repeatedly shown the world isn’t what we thought. We can no longer pretend what happens in other nations has nothing to do with us. In the same way we cannot pretend what happens within our communities, postcodes, workplaces and country has nothing to do with us.

I liken it to all of us sitting in our conservatories. Our havens away from work, looking through the glass at our gardens beyond. Over the years, we never noticed the accumulation of dirt on the windows, we became so used to seeing the same view day in and day out. Then someone came along and cleaned the windows, and you realised your garden isn’t in the shape you thought it was. Ignoring it and carrying on regardless is an option (otherwise known as feigning ignorance). Or you can put on your gardening gloves and get to work. The weeds cannot uproot by themselves.  

Recognise normal is changing. Embrace introspective work. Address your relationship with racism.

Address your Relationship with Racism

With your introspection and un/learning, do you maintain you treat everyone exactly the same or consider yourself colourblind? Is your road to anti-racism paved with ease? Challenge yourself harder. See Blackness. See where it is, and where it isn’t. Ask yourself. Why does your executive board look like you? Your senior leadership team? Your department heads? The majority of your workforce? Who is given the benefit of the doubt? A head start? Why? If you don’t see colour, are you saying your people are just better?

Recognise the myth of ‘best person for the job’. That there is only a ‘best person’ within the parameters of the timeframe you’ve given your network, tools and methodology to find. Your ‘best person’ is your most convenient person. And as your network looks like you, and the tools and methodology you use were created for people who look like you, on criteria suited to people who look like you, by people who look like you, the ‘best person for the job’ will look like you. Meritocratic racial colour blindness is whitewashing.

Commit to the hard work. Recognise your bias. Disrupt Channels of Power.

Disrupt Channels of Power

Externally validated power through a socially constructed system of racial privilege gives strength and confidence to those at the upper end of the spectrum. Those closest to Whiteness. If you do not understand racism, this power denies and invalidates the experiences of Black colleagues. Consider whose voices do you prioritise when colleagues call out potential issues of racism or racial discrimination? How do you treat and support them? Or do you spend more time trying to excuse the behaviour?

Is it easier to pick apart or find fault with the experiences of people who do not look like you?  These are the actions of conserving power. Is there a preference to take a slow and steady approach to change, to mitigate the risk of being seen as ‘taking things too far’?  These too are the actions of conserving power. 

Understand the consequences of your racially based power and privilege, yet recognise what it would mean to lose it, to different degrees, within a rebalance of racial equity. Your reaction will impact how authentically and intentionally you address anti-racism. Redressing the balance so there is equity for people who don’t look like you may feel threatening. Yet change without adjustment for racial equity is merely transactional. Tokenistic.

It isn’t really change at all.

Understand racism. Examine the privilege within your thoughts, actions and inactions. What are your uncomfortable truths.