Beyond the black square: Our anti-racist commitments
It’s been five turbulent months since people around the world flooded Instagram with a sea of black squares.
In that time, we’ve watched the effigy of a slave trader plunge into Bristol harbour; we’ve seen offensive tv episodes pulled offline and scrolled through a swell of hasty public apologies. We’ve heard the chants of those who took to the streets in protest and have seen heart-wrenching grief from the families of Belly Mujinga, Shukri Abdi and many more victims of a justice system that has too often delivered injustice for Black people.
Black Britons have urged the country to confront shameful chapters of our history and finally acknowledge their vast ongoing impacts. But among the tragedy and tumult, we’re left wondering: what’s actually changed?
We at Year Here know that turning to the system and waiting for action isn’t working. The way forward is to start by looking at ourselves — at our organisation and at social entrepreneurship as a whole. When the Black Lives Matter movement started commanding even more global attention this year, like many institutions and companies, we were prompted to honestly interrogate Year Here’s place in upholding the status quo. We knew there was work to be done, but were hesitant to release a reactive plan without enough self-education and guidance.
By co-creating a strategy with Black and People of Colour (PoC) alum, we’ve developed a plan informed by research and lived experience that sets out tangible steps towards change. It’s important that these commitments are entrenched in all aspects of our organisation, from our goals and recruitment to our structure — and that accountability is key.
Oppressions are entwined
A huge part of tackling white supremacy as an organisation is acknowledging all forms of privilege: for men, straight people, middle and upper-class people, non-disabled people, cisgender people, and more, and their impact on anti-Black racism.
The Year Here programme is approached through the lens of several social strands. Educational inequality, health, community resilience, the housing crisis and vulnerable youth are all permeated by white supremacy in the UK; it’s more evident than ever is that these are innately linked and can’t be viewed as isolated issues. They’re driven by underpinning forces, intersecting and often mutually-reinforcing, with systemic racism stark within in every single facet.
The state of the sector
In an interview with The Financial Times, Monder Ram of the Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship at Aston Business School said ethnic minorities owned around 250,000 of the UK’s 5.9 million businesses. Of this, about 40,000 are Black-owned — 0.67% — despite Black people comprising 3.3% of the population.
Unsurprisingly, social businesses echo these trends with white, male, non-disabled and middle-class voices dominating the industry. Year Here hopes to contribute to dismantling white supremacy in many different facets of what we do. It’s not enough to demand this change within the sector; we have to be part of it.
Diversity is just the beginning
Given the overwhelming lack of diversity in social entrepreneurship, it’s our responsibility to find and support talented Black and PoC professionals to become Year Here Fellows, and to create an environment in which these Fellows can flourish.
We’re reviewing the language used in our job descriptions and website to ensure it affirms our commitment to anti-racism and are using recruitment networks where diverse candidates are likely to be found. For four years, Year Here has used contextual recruitment and the Rooney Rule, but moving forward, we’ll provide more details of our selection criteria and pro-diversity recruitment initiatives.
Right now, we acknowledge there’s an over-representation of white social sector leaders in our faculty and mentor pool. Black and PoC Fellows ought to able to see themselves represented in senior positions of leadership and greater diversity will yield richer insights into the complex nature of social problems in London.
That’s why we’ve set a target of 30% PoC and 40% female within our faculty. Beyond 2020, we’ll seek to increase our ethnicity and gender diversity targets within our faculty to match the London population.
Though small, our team will be committed to anti-racism and dismantling systemic oppression by ensuring our team and board are representative of the national population. Our long-term targets are the same as the London population — 40.2% PoC and 50% Female.
Our new Foundation offers an opportunity for us to further support candidates from low-income backgrounds.
Building anti-racism into our programme
By incorporating anti-racist literature into reading lists for the programme, we’ll aim to empower Fellows with tools for self-education. We’ll design sessions that explore the ways in which structural racism is reproduced across society and, in particular, in the social innovation sector.
It’s our responsibility to encourage Fellows to understand the context of their placement in relation to systems of oppression and share this with each other. Likewise, we must enable them to explore the responsibility that leaders have to meaningfully progress anti-racism within their placement organisations and their wider sectors.
Across the Fellowship and the Foundation, we’ll aim to purchase products and services like catering, event spaces and entertainment from Black-owned and ethical suppliers. We’ll also prioritise Black, and PoC Alumni for ad-hoc paid Year Here work and opportunities, panel events and paid speaking opportunities.
A safe space to thrive
We need to respond to deep-seated inequalities with concrete action. Some of these actions include improving mechanisms for reporting and investigating racist incidents. We have a zero-tolerance policy on racial harassment and bullying, with clear repercussions and accountability measures.
On top of this, engaging external trainers and consultants on an annual basis for staff training on systemic oppression will encourage staff to continuously learn and confront our own biases.
We’ll also allocate budget to pastoral care and offer two days’ additional leave for colleagues who are members of oppressed groups and will provide a thorough resource list of Queer and PoC-friendly therapists.
Using our voice
It’s been made abundantly clear that that the world needs action, not optics. That’s why we’ll commit to meaningfully and accurately representing Black people and other PoC in our marketing. This extends to our language; never assuming we’re speaking to an audience with no lived experience of the social issues we focus on, and as such will use an inclusive, non-othering voice.
It’s wrong to wait until tragedy hits the news stands before speaking out. Being vocal about racial injustice as well as celebrating Black culture and history should be a year-round commitment. Year Here will be more specific and braver in talking about social change.
Moving forward
There’s never been an excuse for complacency, but because of the work of the Black Lives Matter movement and the Black community as a whole, any lingering justification is void. Our principles for engaging with anti-racism are:
- Do something. It may not be perfect but, with good intent and a listening ear, we will act;
- Be clear. We will strive to convey our purpose, goals and expectations in relation to this topic clearly;
- Never stop striving. We will treat this as an ongoing endeavour not a set of one-off exercises;
- Share responsibility. This work will be all of our responsibilities to drive forward;
- Recognise intersectionality. Acknowledge all oppressions — patriarchy, heteronormativity, class oppression, ableism, transphobia and more — and their intersectional impact on anti- Black racism;
- Continuously learning. Through data collection and systematic consultation of team and Fellows, we will continue to gauge our progress towards anti-racist goals and seek understanding as to how we can do better;
- Be realistic. We are a small team with small budgets. While we want to be ambitious, generating reams of actions and excessive targets creates the risk that we don’t meet them — thereby eroding faith among our team, Fellows and alumni.
A system built on white supremacy can’t be changed without first confronting the ways in which we contribute to and benefit from it. We have the privilege and ability to make significant changes across many sectors, as an organisation and as individuals. Moving forward, Year Here will continue learning, evolving and most importantly — doing the work.
The goal is to continue this conversation, keep educating ourselves and putting our learnings into practice. We welcome anyone to reach out with ideas or to share experiences of personal and professional anti-racist work.
