The Black Statistic

Europeans love statistics, there are whole job sectors dedicated to data driven analysis which covers all aspects of our lives from the way we eat to our shopping habits and how often we shit, if you look down a hole far enough it would be pretty scary as to how much personal data is known about us. I watched a recent documentary about undocumented people in China, and it is sad how there are people in the world today who are simply fighting to prove they actually exist as a result of this.

Large and small organisations often adopt EDI strategies as part of business culture, EDI stands for Equality, Diversity, and Inclusivity, however what is clear is these ethical standards are not a reflection of what really happens in daily work culture and hiring practices, the reality which many can relate is one where if your face fits the world opens new doors.

I travelled to Cambodia almost 17 years ago on a solo backpacking trip, during my travels I met a mixed ethnicity group of young french women of similar age, which inside of France would be common sight in the metropolis. We first met as hostel roomies in the dorm I was staying in, a budget £3 a night hostel located just off the main river in the centre of the capital city of Phnom Penh. The hostel itself was nice enough and what you would expect at this price, security did not exist, the cleanliness was questionable, our mosquito nets had holes which an eagle could easily fly into and I was glad our lightbulb in the room was not working so I didn't have to see clearly what I was sleeping on, but it served the purpose of an affordable room for meeting others and a base for exploring the city. I even spent my 22nd birthday with the girls celebrating eating Cambodian street food roadside in a street shack on the river strip. We traveled to many of the cities main sites together such as the temples and markets.

What was clear after learning more about the girls was that despite our place of encounter, we were clearly financially in very different positions in life, the girls were from a place called Varsailles which is known as a very affluent town on the outskirts Paris, a big contrast compared to how many ethnic minorities are living in the suburbs of the city, but well we were both in Cambodia, so we were fortunate on both sides to be the small percentage of ethnic minorities in a position to travel and experience the world.

We built a closer friendship but there was a question I had been wanting to ask since we first met because it is very rare to get the opportunity to do so with people from a different country at the same stage of life, also I figured given our sense of cultural adventure they would be open minded enough to speak freely about their own personal experiences. I wanted to ask the girls what life was like for black people in France, and what struck me was that despite their relatively strong financial positions, the challenges of being Black in a European country still remained the same.

One point which I remember and is still sadly relevant to this day is how the girls explained that to be black and successful in France you need to be so skilled and strong in your field that people would have to be either making a conserted effort to ignore you or it would be actually damaging to an organisation not to consider your talent over white counterparts. This disapora is equal to what I've seen and experienced here in the UK and heard all across the European continent from ethnic minority communities.

Even more ironic was the environment in which this conversation started. We encountered a lot of curiosity from the Cambodan locals due to our skin colour despite being only a few shades darker than some of the locals we met in more rural settings. The darker skinned black people within the group received the most attention and stares, none of which were hostile but more so out of cultural exposure to seeing and interacting with a black person possibly for the very first time. I always remembered this group of Cambodian girls approaching me in the street who were gesturing for me to clean my skin as if it was dirty and were surprised to find that it was in fact my natural colour, I am mixed but in the sun I am golden dark brown colour, so I guess it would be a surprise to anyone who has never seen a person this dark before in person, I became an attraction myself for the locals. Asia as a whole still follows a caste system which dictates your social and economic background status based on the shade of your skin colour, and to some, seeing a dark skinned person in an affluent environment let alone from a different country breaks the foundations of everything they know.

This is personal opinion, but I believe the difficulties are debatedly greater for Black Men from less affluent backgrounds because we have adopted such historical stereotypes of hostility and aggression due to our physical appearance and our apparent unruliness to stand up for ourselves and challenge, this goes all the way back to the days of slavery, basically the ability to hold our own and fight for our rights in society is the very thing which excludes us, but yet we have had to do so out of survival due to the systemic instutionalised abuse and oppression inflicted on us just for existing let alone succeeding, but apparently we are the savage ones.

Business organisations have a known reputation for the lack of BAME people in leadership and senior roles, let alone providing opportunities for people from disadvantaged backgrounds who are different from a lifestyle and cultural perspective to even take a step into the corporate world. Whenever a person from the BAME community challenges institutional and cultural norms this inevitably results in their views and thoughts being either dismissed, seen as threatening or intimidating or pressured into silence to meet the workplace culture. The outcome is a repeated pattern where people leave their roles out of frustration of being unheard, misunderstood or feeling completely irrelevant, yet where is the data statistic for lack of workplace responsibility for the disproportionate numbers of people affected by this?

BAME individuals across Europe will tell you the feeling of working 3 times harder than their counterparts just to be noticed and respected in the roles, and if people do not feel respected it is very rare they will seek to advance their careers within the same workplace hence the lack of leadership representation. The truth is that many organisations simply do not know how to or want to adapt to cultural diversity and are less so prepared to see a shift of power which leaves the traditionally advantaged in a less desirable position, which would mean the need to highlight and evidence their own weaknesses and cultural bias, basically taking accountability for systemic failure, which very little are prepared to do.

Which leads me back to the face who fits model, because those who are similar are less likely to evoke and trigger actions which require self reflection and change and are comfortable with a culture of silence, falling back in line with cultural norms, this is also obvious in hire practices, which is why it is easier to hire those with more traditional cultural similarities who can be understood and are less ambiguous in their desires to make a real changes.

I have worked in the charity sector for many years and whilst many organisations in theory follow EDI they are less so prepared to accept internal challenges which questions their ethical practice models even from the same beneficiaries they are supposed to be helping, and I've seen this everywhere from NGOs to the United Nations, more often the reality is the business strategy comes first and the power dynamic of who stands to gain the most from a reputational standpoint prevails over the overall impact towards the beneficaries.

Recognition of the issue is a start, but organisations need to accept it as a standard within the workplace and not just a trend fulfilled to meet basic expectations for reputation value. A lot of the gatekeeping is happening internally within the workplace, it's the hidden discrimination which is not being accounted for in stats, EDI is supposed to be a platform to allow everyone to achieve at equal scale but not enough is being done in society by leaders to provide an open platform for BAME individuals to highlight and speak freely about their experiences without the fear of repercussions. The stats and data are trying to prove otherwise, but the very same data is fragmented because it is not reaching far enough to those who are excluded the most whose voice is very rarely heard, mainly the people who have already given up trying to conform to something they can never be which is somebody they are not.

Data is Irrelevent without listening to the people that matter.