Monday 11 December 2017

Of Glass Cliffs and women


This story has made look around and have a good think about life. A friend of mine from when I was at University visited me this weekend. I have not been well and she is relocating to Ghana, so we had a lot of catching up to do. It was lovely to see her, as it had been a while. It was not what she said that shocked me but what she experienced.  What started as girl talk ended up giving me the chance to look at her experiences from my perspective support by research done by others and wonders what goes on in organisations. My friend who will be unnamed, like me did her Masters at Oxford Brookes University. I finished in 2007 and my friend in 2008. However her story is one faced by many BME women in the workplace. The unfortunate thing is, sometimes it’s difficult to prove and anywhere further other than leave the organisation. Most forms of discrimination now are so subtle that recipients don’t always know what to do and some people do take advantage of that.

It was 1984 when the ‘glass ceiling’ was first coined as a metaphor to describe gender inequality in upper management (Ryan, 2009). The phrase captures a phenomenon whereby women aspiring a top management position find themselves blocked from these positions by seemingly invisible(hence the glass), yet very real barriers(hence the ceiling) that serve to keep the upper echelons of leadership a predominantly white male domain.   One thing that people might forget is the role of race in all this. Let’s face it, BME and white women will never have the same privilege in the workplace, yes you heard me- no good pretending we all start at the same point. Some definitely start far ahead because of their ethnicity, class and even where they studied.  So on finishing our Master’s degree my friend and I were not only facing a glass ceiling but a concrete ceiling instead. You might be wondering where I am going with this but just wait.

"Concrete ceiling" not only restricts access to top-level positions but middle management positions. It is denser and not as easily shattered and research shows that while glass ceiling is about women in general, concrete ceilings seem to affect women of colour more as they have to deal with race discrimination on top of gender.

This story is about glass cliffs and BME women. My friend’s story got even more shocking because of her experience.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that individuals who are seen as atypical in a given context attract more attention and are more easily singled out for criticism. My friend definitely faced a higher scrutiny and criticism in her organisation than her white colleagues.

On finishing her degree my friend found a job with an accounting firm.  She was ecstatic. While some of us were still looking for work in our areas of expertise, she was done and we were all happy for her.  However, she happened to be the only black woman there and all seemed OK to start with until a pattern developed.  With the laws and everything, there didn’t seem to be a problem and why would she even think about that except people kept on saying,’ we never had a black person before’’.   Things got worse. Whenever there were any complicated projects or tough tasks/clients, they were given to her. To make it worse some of the stuff was not of a junior member like her but for a more experienced person. She would struggle with the projects on her own without support and many times with mixed results. New people joined the organisation and would be given what seemed to her the type of work in line with her qualifications, knowledge and skills. These people would go on to do well and move on to more senior positions.  Let’s face it, seniority means more money and power, we all can do with a bit of that from time to time. And who wouldn’t be troubled to see others being promoted while they are stuck. Like many BME women who may have experienced the 'glass cliff' and didn’t think anything of it, she didn’t realise that she was being set up for failure by management.  Yes, being given precarious projects and often found herself being called in for a chat on her performance by the very top members of the organisation. Whenever anything less challenging came about, it went on to other members of the team who then went on to being promoted.
So all they were doing was making my friend feel like a failure and also finding an excuse for not promoting her. This went on for the eight years she was with this organisation.

When my friend finally decided to ask her manager why she was always given tough projects and not getting help and support, she was told she needed to work harder and produce results.

One senior member of the management said to her, ‘for a black woman you are doing well. Some people like you are still out there looking for work and here you are complaining.’
That was it for my dear friend.  She resigned and is now going back to Ghana.
I was so angry I needed to write this short story but this happens to many people and to me as well before I knew that research has been done on ‘glass cliffs’.  Remember ‘glass cliffs’ also happens with women in general who can be put in a similar situation in a male dominated environment.


Thursday 7 December 2017

Get Over it , that's life!


Imagine being on the ground, surrounded by people who are constantly kicking you. Every time you try to stand, POW! Another kick sends you back to the ground. Now, after constantly being kicked for a good while, imagine that a whole new group surrounds you, and starts slapping you. You see some people who look like you, but they are slapping you too, because they don’t want to be on the ground with you, so they join in hurting you as well.

You haven’t fully recovered from being kicked, so you moan in pain, and try to tell them to “Stop!” One “Slapper” says to you, “Oh my goodness, I barely touched you. I’m not kicking you like those before me. Stop complaining and being a victim”, then continues slapping you. This, ladies and gentlemen, is how I would describe the way black people, specifically black, are treated.

“Black people need to get over it, other races were slaves too you know!”….this sentence, along with “I am not my ancestors, don’t blame me!” reminds me that society dismisses anything black people say, or do, as either: 1) complaining, and/or 2) somehow offensive to them. This in turn allows them to downplay the importance of what’s being said or ignore it entirely. As if we are crying out for nothing. When it comes to “black issues”, it seems society confuses being a “victim” with speaking/standing up for yourself, culture, workplace people, etc.

The “victim” concept makes me shudder with disgust; it’s just another way to discourage anyone from saying anything because they don’t want to be considered a “victim” of anything. Not once have I ever used my ancestors past as a reason for how I couldn’t do anything in the present, however that doesn’t mean I “forgot” and decided not to educate myself on what they, my grandparents, my parents, and black people in my generation, faced/facing now.

I find it especially disheartening when I hear black people, and other minority groups use the “victim” concept. If it weren’t for black people throughout history, in your words, “complaining” and “being a victim”, you wouldn’t have the rights you have now as a minority, or it would’ve taken you longer to obtain those rights.

No one ever said that black people are the only group that were slaves and oppressed. What IS being said is that black people are still struggling not only physically, but mentally as well. The negative ways we were made to view ourselves during slave trade, colonialism and imperialism is still strongly present in our communities, and society. Black people were enslaved, oppressed, and treated unequally longer than we have been “free. Slavery may have been 150+ years ago but colonialism and imperialism is not that far off.

Instead of learning why these things are offensive to our culture, some of you remain unempathetic, not willing to understand, and/or act as if black people are somehow at fault, the problems we speak of don’t exist, and that you and this current generation plays no part in trying to solve the problems created in the past.

In the end, it’s as if society is saying, “Let us discriminate against you in peace! And if you speak up, you (black people) are keeping racism alive, not us!” To all the black people who aren’t afraid to let their voice be heard, don’t let anyone try to shut you up, and call you a “victim”, because when you don’t educate yourself on the past and how it affects the present, and you don’t educate those who speak negatively of black people (even if they are black themselves), that’s when you are a true “victim.
You don’t fight fire with fire (racism with racism, discrimination with discrimination, prejudice with prejudice, etc.) because the fire will only burn hotter, and you also don’t cover it with a blanket “of ignorance” (not talk about it, act like everything is settled, etc) because it will only catch fire as well. The only way to extinguish a fire is with water (education, empathy, and respect).

Monday 4 December 2017

Racism is for real


“You’ve become darker”

‘’Don’t stay too long in the sun otherwise you will get darker’’

‘’Dingy lips’’

Those are some statements I have heard so many times. Apart from these undertones, I, and every other black child had been conditioned from birth to feel inferior about our features.
Every supermarket carried bleaching brands: from covert ‘toning’ creams to straight up ‘get rid of your blackness because it’s ugly’ creams. Every black celebrity was unbelievably light skinned, with slim noses and small lips.
The most painful memory I have of the effects of colourism I remember was when my nephew asked me, ‘’ what is actually wrong with this black skin?” This is a question that I suspect majority of black kids have asked. It is a testament of the destructiveness of the colourism that takes place in the society, so much so that the word ‘light skinned’ is synonymous to attractive.
Blackness is regarded as an affliction that should be corrected if possible. And corrected it is from the thousands of women who apply bleaching creams (although they are aware that it may potentially destroy their skin. To them there is nothing worse than being black), to the thousands who relax their hair (I’m guilty of this as I used to do this but I understand some do it for easy maintenance, but….), from the makeup tutorials that show blacks how to slim their noses, to the filters that lighten pictures
ON THE BRIGHTSIDE, this is not the time to dwell on negativity. Instead I wrote it to exalt at the new found love and acceptance that I and many other black women have discovered. The eschewal of self-hate and skin negativity is the direct result of knowledge and awareness: The knowledge of why colourism, which is concomitant to racism, exists. It has been a journey for me, especially coming from Africa where I didn’t need to think about my skin colour in the same way I am doing in Europe.

No skin colour is better than the other. No physical feature of one race is more attractive than those of another, there are only standards, put in place by the white man. But why were they created, why was so much effort put in depressing all coloured races. To stroke their egos perhaps, or just because of their spiteful nature, but it is neither. Money and power are the strongest incentives for the most of the despicable acts committed by humans. The case is the same for racism.
Through the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries blacks were taken to America to work without pay, with little food and water. They worked for ungodly hours and were whipped at any sign of fatigue. Back in Africa the whites stole our resources and exploited our labour. The perpetrators of slavery and colonialism knew that blacks were equal to them in every way; they were logical, intelligent beings and would eventually revolt against their oppressors.
Any human put in such intolerable conditions would before long seek freedom. In order to prevent this for as long as possible, these individuals inducted racism. Make the black man feel like an animal, make him hate himself, hate his colour, and detest his heritage, and he will become submissive like a dog to his master. Make the average white man feel superior to blacks, give him the mentality that blacks are merely monkeys, and he will whip and oppress them with no mercy or compunction. After all they whip their horses.
So it is: centuries of oppression, vituperation, and self-hate all for fiscal gain. Discovering this truth, realizing that there is truly nothing wrong or unsavoury about you, that all your insecurities were just a result of human greed and callousness , is just…… Well everyone deserves to feel it. It is the first and most important step in dismantling racism. Of course there are other challenges: Wage gaps, exclusion of BME men and women in taking positions of power, racist police officer who do stop search on young BME men and neo-colonialism to the killing of black youth through police brutality- the list is endless, but the first step to being equal is feeling equal.

The second step for me after accepting myself was the normalization of black features, and other features considered as exotic. Another strategy adopted by the whites to further disenchant us with our features was the normalization of Eurocentric ones. Apart from emphasizing the beauty of white men and women and their lookalikes by featuring them on TV, they also sought to standardize these features, putting them on screen so often that anything contrary seemed unnatural. And we all know that unnatural or odd to humans means bad or in this case ugly. Thus, the blue black skin, the wide nose the full lips, the voluptuous body became anathemas.

The process of demolishing this particular vein of racism is pretty straightforward. Appreciate blackness! Normalize extra dark skin, 4-c hair, wide noses, full lips and they will lose their anchor weights of racism.

 It is ironic how resilient, yet fragile racism is. It has thrived for so long enduring, and permeating every aspect of life around the globe, yet with the slightest consciousness of it and its workings, it falls disintegrated and wingless to the earth. It simply takes a few twitter/Instagram pictures and some reflection on history to its annihilation.

Food for thought