Three culture-shifters
From input via BAME project participants and our review of literature on DEI in the sector we can see three critical areas for development if DEI culture is to take hold in the charity sector: first, engaging with racism; second, changing the benefactor–’beneficiary’ relationship; and third, building mechanisms for accountability on DEI.
Engaging on racism
If we are to take meaningful action on DEI, the charity sector, like our BAME project participants, needs to talk about racism.
Defining racism
A ‘common sense’ view is that racism is carried out by individuals deliberately seeking to harm BAME people (Lentin, 2015). The archetypal racist is the shaven-headed white thug on the football terrace making monkey chants at a black player.
However, this is only one manifestation of racism. It says nothing about where the impulse to act comes from or about how it affects BAME people.
A fuller definition of racism can be made up of three parts: beliefs, actions and impacts. In other words, racism has a logic arm, a delivery arm and a results arm. Therefore, we can say that:
Racism is a belief system based on racial difference and hierarchy that informs actions of organisations, legislators, decision-makers and individuals in ways that harm BAME people.
In our definition, racism is ordinary and pervasive, stitched into the fabric of society and profoundly harmful. It is the stuff of everyday life. It does manifest in antagonistic acts from one person to another, e.g. in street racism. But also it is embedded in institutional practice, such as in the police force that disproportionately stops and searches black men (Dodd, 2019); and in sentencing practices that see BAME people given harsher sentences than their white peers (Lammy, 2017); and in the tendency of employers to favour white British job applicants over BAME candidates with identical CVs (CSI, 2019).
Racism becomes normalised. This means that BAME people can be subject to greater scrutiny and less often given the benefit of the doubt about their behaviour – as seen, for example, in the ways that Meghan Markle is portrayed in the media compared with Kate Middleton (Hall, 2020).
As a result, BAME people may ‘do less well’ and appear ‘less ‘desirable’ on paper or in person in recruitment and promotion processes compared with white counterparts. In these circumstances, even in a non-racist charity, BAME people may seem to be the ‘wrong fit’; and so BAME people can easily be penalised and denied, as roles and rewards end up elsewhere. Furthermore, this cycle reinforces the idea that it is whiteness that is the key marker of excellence.
The other side of racism: white privilege and discomfort
While it seems (from our BAME survey and interview work) that BAME people cannot avoid dealing with racism, it may be that some white people can and want to avoid doing so. This may manifest in white people disassociating themselves from racism and perhaps even denouncing it.
Yet defeating racism requires concerted effort – including from white people – to fully engage and to play an active part in working against it. And therefore, we need to understand why white people may withdraw in the face of racism.
Author Robin DiAngelo helpfully explains how the very idea of racism can cause discomfort and anxiety among white audiences. She labels this phenomenon ‘white fragility’ and argues that it shows up in white people in discussions about race as ‘emotions such as anger, fear and guilt and behaviours such as argumentation, silence, and withdrawal’ (DiAngelo, 2018, p.2). The result is that advantages of being white are maintained because meaningful conversation on the alternatives are shut down (Eddo-Lodge, 2017).
The existence – even prevalence – of racism in a space can be a profound disruption to the positive self-image of an individual, organisation or sector. This leads to rejection of the idea – ‘We don’t have a racism problem’ – and/or relocating racism elsewhere – ‘Other people/organisations/sectors have a racism problem’. This defensive strategy also makes BAME people who raise the issue of racism, rather than racism itself, into the problem (feministkilljoys, 2016).
This fragility and the associated negative emotions and behaviours may be more present in a supposedly ‘woke’ space such as the charity sector, i.e. one supposedly alert to racial and social injustice (see Butterworth, 2020, for definition). As surfaced a number of times in BAME interviews and in our racial justice roundtable, the charity sector is led by those who consider themselves ‘good’ people. To hear otherwise is jarring.
Engagement with racism requires people to confront the possibility that if society is ‘rigged’ against BAME people then it is, by definition, set up in favour of (some) white people. It implies that some white people are undeserving of their (relatively) lofty position. This is a blow to self-image, given that we are taught that individual merit is what matters in life.1 It can also lead to concerns among well-placed white people about ‘zero sum’ results. For instance, correcting the problem of racism probably means more BAME successes and by implication fewer white successes. Aside from the factors above, it can be the case that for some white people the thought that they are (even relatively) privileged seems at odds with how life feels. Such people in the charity sector may have faced, and may continue to face, real difficulties getting into and getting on in the sector and may also, with reason, feel overworked and underpaid. People in this situation will feel that whiteness does not guarantee advantage and may not empathise with or may be sceptical of BAME people experiencing racism.
We should accept these lived realities and a sense that for some white people life is hard. For many (BAME and white people), life in the labour market is precarious, and it needs to be more stable, rewarding and secure for all. But we mustn’t let this squeeze talk of racism out of the conversation. To do so is to the detriment of efforts to open up the charity sector to BAME people.
- For example, Priti Patel argues that people want to be recognised for their individual merits (Sandhu, 2018).
