Imagine you’re at a board meeting. There are three classes of people in the room. Most senior and powerful are the board members. All white. Middle- or upper-class. Professionally successful. Doing well-paid jobs while volunteering on the board. Well-networked. Confident. There to make decisions which will affect the jobs and livelihoods of the organisation’s staff. The second group are the organisation’s directors. All except one are white. All middle class. All went to university. Employed in senior, responsible jobs. They are there to answer the board’s questions, present their plans for consideration and hope the board agrees them. The final class only has one member—the young woman there to take minutes. Young, black and working class. There to be silent and record the board’s decisions.
One of the board members makes a racist remark. Who should challenge them? The answer seems obvious—the chair of trustees or another board member should, because it’s the right thing to do and because they take the least risk in doing so. But too often in these situations, the most powerful people in the room stay silent, leaving any challenge up to those with far more to lose from taking a stand.
The question of who challenges damaging or excluding behaviour came up repeatedly when I chaired a conference about social mobility in the workplace last week. We discussed the myriad ways that people from ethnic minority, low income and working-class backgrounds are shut out of well-paid jobs and careers that feel like natural destinations for those who come from better-off families. A constant theme was the need to change the culture of these workplaces, not just how they recruit staff. Being a black, working class or northern incomer to a community of middle class, white Oxbridge graduates is lonely and exhausting. You feel a constant need to prove you belong, to learn unspoken codes, to soften your accent, learn to read the right newspapers, watch the right television and never, ever, appear aggressive or argumentative.
A very welcome movement to diversify these workplaces has begun. It’s driven not only by the moral imperative but also the mounting evidence that more diverse organisations make better decisions and are more productive and innovative. And yet, again and again we see the burden of changing the culture placed on the shoulders of those who are disadvantaged by it. Overwhelmingly, it is black, Asian and ethnic minority people who are left to challenge racism, working-class people who have to point out behaviour which disparages or excludes them and women who must highlight gender stereotypes. Too often, the person who takes the risk of challenging injustice is the one in the least secure position with the most to lose. The room is filled with comfortable and accepted insiders, who risk very little by challenging their peers, and yet stay silent.
We see this dynamic playing out everywhere: from high street businesses to the most high-profile workplaces. When Piers Morgan dismissed Megan Markle’s confession of having had suicidal thoughts mental health on GMB, the person who called it out was Alex Beresford, the black weatherman. Beresford would have known that, at the very least, he would face a barrage of racist abuse online for calling out Morgan. Happily, he does not, so far, seem to have suffered career damage, but the consequences could have been catastrophic.
One of the most disturbing things about the stories that arose from the #MeToo movement was the absolute (and well-founded) belief of victims that challenging the abuse of powerful men would be career suicide. Yet it was only when women took that risk that anything changed. Every one of predatory men unmasked by the #MeToo movement was surrounded by other powerful men who had at least some knowledge of their behaviour but chose to ignore it.
In the Euros so far, thankfully, we have not yet seen the racist abuse that has marred so many tournaments. But it has baffled me for years that the supposed solution to fans chanting racist abuse is for the players to decide to walk off the pitch. They may be multi-millionaires, but they’re also young men, often from working-class backgrounds, doing the job of their dreams and desperate to prove themselves, knowing they only have a few short years to make their mark and they have to justify their selection every time they play. Why on earth are we leaving it to them to decide that the abuse has become too bad to continue? Why isn’t it the responsibility of the referee and the two coaches to walk onto the pitch, call a halt and order the players off?
So, the next time you’re in a workplace where most people look and sound like you, put yourself in the place of someone who isn’t an insider, who comes from a different background and is breaking into this community for the first time. Your organisation needs those people. You need people who will bring a different perspective and come up with ideas that aren’t informed by the same upbringing and experiences as yours. But they won’t come, they won’t stay and they won’t thrive unless you change the culture they’re stepping into. And it’s your job to change it, not theirs.
