“Where are you really from…”
- An anonymous essay from a Specialist Paediatric SLT wokring in the NHS
How often has it happened to you? The classic “where are you from?”
Then when you don’t give the expected answer, the relentless slew of follow up questions: “but where are you really from?” and then if you’ve still not identified the “otherness” of yourself, the final nail of “so then where are your parents from…?”
I’ve spent my whole life trying so hard to fit in and not be “other” and only recently realised how much time and energy I’ve spent in censoring myself. Ultimately this censorship has implications in terms of self-worth, identity and energy.
“BAME employees are significantly more likely than their white British counterparts to say they need to change aspects of their behaviour to fit in”. “Nearly half of ethnic minority staff in the UK feel they need to hide their true personalities at work” according to a survey by Utopia. That disparity is even bigger when you bring in gender, with 59% of BAME women saying they felt they had to hide their true personalities at work. So it seems I’m not in the minority (ha!) — what a revelation that has been too!
This needing to fit in manifests as changing your name, accepting variations to what you are called, choosing to dress / not dress a certain way, what make up you apply and how, how you do your hair, what jewellery you wear, how you speak… I remember friends once laughing at me saying “close the light” and “I’ll keep you home”, and my Mum saying “wehicle”; this was a literal translation from my other language and a difference in my Mum’s speech. A small thing you might think, but one that needed to be pointed out to me, nevertheless.
Over the years a need to not feel like an outsider or a person that may be judged has resulted in me turning away from the beliefs of my parents and not even wanting to talk about what their beliefs are, and mine once were. The lens of society made me ashamed to acknowledge that I could be part of something that had widely come to be vilified. People were ashamed of me and what my culture represented, and as a young adult I internalised that.
“Be curious, creating clarity amid chaos and receptivity to new ways of doing things”…
Sandra Kerr, race equality director at Business in the Community, discussed the need to be curious about people’s lived experiences. “People from BAME communities mask when they feel unsafe to bring their full selves to work or [when] they are shown that they will be punished if they are their authentic selves,” she said. She talked about how minorities often feel a sense of being hyper visible and subject to scrutiny, particularly if they are the only person with a particular background in the room.
When examining how people’s experiences at work differ, we need to be cautious about making generalisations. In fact data and research suggest that we should be actively encouraging employee voices to inform change, and it is essential that disadvantaged and disconnected groups have access to mechanisms through which they can express their voice.
“Look specifically at the experiences of BAME people. You cannot begin to understand unless you know”…
Working on your own acceptance of the issues, particularly those issues faced by people who have spent a lifetime facing prejudice where others may not have — will not come unless you seek out and look to understand those experiences. Discuss what you have read already and seek to learn about different experiences. Not everyone’s experiences and perspectives will be the same but there might be reoccurring threads.
So put simply, the way to understand and gain knowledge is to ask, albeit in a controlled and sensitive manner. Be prepared for these conversations to be quite disparate to your own experiences, or what you might have read or think you know. And it can be hard to not feel personally attacked or defensive but once you begin to understand the struggles faced you might be better able to understand. It might also become clearer why raising our voice and asking for help isn’t so easy. I for one am tired of constantly having to prove my worth in a system where I still feel I need to fight for a voice and the right to express it at every step, or feel marginalised, minimalised or judged when I do.
“The not so ugly face of the truth”…
There is a lot of unconscious bias even today. The overt, in your face discrimination is so much easier to recognise and deal with. And of course this needs to be tackled head on but at least it is easily identified and easier to make a stand against. But it is with the more covert, subtle discrimination that we struggle with and that can hurt so much more. It’s not immediately visible, it doesn’t have an ugly twisted face the way it once had, but is just lurking there beneath the surface equally menacing.
I’ve worked for quite some time now, in and out of the NHS and I would love to say that attitudes have changed over that time but I would be inaccurate to do so. Maybe since my dad first joined the NHS as a consultant and was asked if he was a porter, but only just. What once was overt is now more subtle. But only 10 years ago, when applying for a job down in Hove my feedback was that I “didn’t fit the demographic of the area”. When discussing careers as a student, I was warned about the “culture” I would be entering and whether it would “fit” by which I understood I would fit.
This low-level discrimination, or microaggression, is still exactly that: small pockets of misunderstanding and discrimination. Not all discrimination is overt or malicious and a lot comes about through a lack of personal awareness or experience, but it can still have the same impact over time on a person’s self worth and sense of identity.
There are many types of microaggression and if you are from a BAME background then unfortunately you are likely to have experienced at least one but more likely several of the below. It almost always boils down to someone reminding you that you are different, do not belong and are “other”.
Such microaggressions include, but are not limited to:
• Statements that start with “I’m not a racist, but”…which normally have a racist statement attached. I don’t even classify these are microaggressions, they have happened to me so many times and each time I can say I have felt this line to be an opening to a very overt statement of discrimination and/or hate.
• Expectations that you can speak on behalf of ethnic people, when the truth is you can only speak about your own lived experience and your own particular community.
• Being told you speak English “really well” or “how long have you been speaking English”? To which I always want to quip “as do you” or “since I was born”.
• Being told you do not “act like the others” as though that is a compliment and a feat worthy of recognition, that I “overcame” this infliction. “You’re not like other …. girls” or my favourite “you’re a coconut, brown on the outside and white on the inside”.
• Being told your name is “hard to pronounce” and asked if it is okay to call you something else or making no attempt to even try to pronounce it accurately.
• Being called someone else’s name by mistake, usually because you are the same, ethnically.
“If you don’t share and enable people to surface their own points of view, you can’t challenge them and push for a better way forward”….
As hard as it is on all sides, it is important to create the space for voices to be found and shared, to put yourself in a vulnerable position and perhaps find some new understanding and humility. “Be courageous, leaning into fear, finding a voice and embracing vulnerability, humility and personal risk taking”. If we feel that we have more to lose by engaging in dialogue over staying silent, that breeds a culture of silence and therefore we lose the opportunity to challenge systematic biases. We need to foster a sense of curiosity about what “people are really thinking”. When people keep their thoughts to themselves due to a fear of saying the wrong thing, people getting upset or offending people, we then lose the opportunity for any hidden or unconscious biases or beliefs to be revealed, which then means that the opportunity to challenge but more importantly educate is lost.
We are all finding our way, and it is OK to not have all the answers, but more importantly to recognise that we don’t have the answers, instead of never asking the questions for fear of not having a solution.
