I wonder how many of you have been ‘The First’ in any workplace?
Having worked in publishing at the start of my career, I have been ‘The First’ many times.
(When we lament the lack of diversity in the tech industry, it is worth considering the state of much older industries: ‘Diversity in publishing – still hideously middle-class and white?’ the Guardian asks here.)
As a result of well-meaning inclusivity initiatives, I was one of those “lucky” individuals offered the Golden Egg of a paid traineeship; aimed at getting BAME candidates from non-traditional backgrounds into career in the publishing industry to tackle “the diversity problem.”
In my first role in the industry, I was the first person of colour to be employed at an independent but well-established publisher. This was my first professional publishing job out of university.
The day after Boris Johnson won the London Mayoral election, I went into the office particularly despondent. Noticing my despondence, a colleague responded by saying, “Well, I think it’s great he won; now he will sort out crime with the Blacks.”
My line manager changed the subject to work as I stood in the office rendered speechless, stunned, alone and unable to move. I cannot tell you how long I stood there in silence.
I’ve never been shy or afraid to speak but in this moment, I felt intensely humiliated, overtly “othered” and violently complicit in my silence.
It’s been more than a decade since this happened; I’ve never written about it and only spoke about it publicly for the first time at uncodebar this year and still feel intensely ashamed of my silence in that moment.
The guilt of not immediately calling out such explicit racism, particularly as it was not directed at my minority, remains a part of me and a real source of anxiety in sharing this incident.
I resigned from the traineeship without another job and with no connections in the industry a month later. I cited this incident and the ensuing silence and implicit institutional support as the reason for my resignation.
But the purpose of this blog is not to exorcise my shame or to shame that company; it is to highlight a single story of how this microaggression was experienced and how it manifest as silence within me.
I am interested in my reaction and the internalisation of inferiority that rendered me unable to speak for a month and even only then in a resignation letter.
In that moment, I remember feeling so visible. In truth I feel it now: if I speak about racism, all I do is make myself even more visible, more of a target. And I become that person.
I am interested in why silence feels like a safe option and why we want to avoid being that person.
What do I mean by that person? I work on the fellowship programme at Makers; I actively encourage Fellows to write about their experiences (positive and not-so) and their journey to becoming software developers.
I have found myself often asking them be that person and write about their own widely varied experiences of marginalisation (and, indeed, of privilege).
In sharing my experiences with Fellows, I have found them more willing to share their own stories and I have noticed some startling parallels with my own reaction, particularly the retreat into silence.
I have been told that they don’t want to for fear of being labelled as “the victim” or “the troublemaker” or sometimes simply the “representative-of-this-group”. The most potent silencer seems to be the fear of being penalised as they seek their first jobs as software developers.
It is with this fear in mind that they won’t write about their experiences of marginalisation. And so the silence continues and certain narratives remain invisible.
Yet now, I am asking all of us (including myself) to own our narratives and understand the value of our voices and experiences. We need to know that by putting a story out there, we are helping to create a new collective narrative: by its very existence, it breaks the silence.
Know the value of your voice and of your story and own it. It is only as I have begun to share my experiences and my learnings more widely with Fellows in 1:1 sessions that I have really started to learn the value of storytelling.
Sharing stories is powerful - while it might not be the entire answer to creating inclusive spaces, it is an important step. We can learn so much from one another if we share and really hear one another’s stories and use the opportunity to act on them.
The stories shared with me have already taught me a lot about the ways in which I have been subconsciously exclusive through my own prism of privilege, enabling me to question my assumptions and alter my behaviours.
There has also been another rather brilliant outcome of sharing this story at uncodebar - in the subsequent hallway conversations with Alex Bailey, Charlotte Zhao and Kara de la Marck, we discussed new ideas for enabling conversations and moving away from silence.
The idea that has garnered the most traction has been the creation of inclusive, supportive improv sessions aimed initially at women and gender minorities in tech. We have started working with an incredible facilitator who will deliver the first experimental workshops next month.
This is a great example (without having any sense of how this might go!) of how sharing our stories and experiences is immensely powerful for innovation as well as inclusivity: in fact, I’d suggest that they go hand in hand.
[1] Huge thank you to codebar for creating a space where I was able to speak about this for the first time and to my colleagues Alex and Adele for all the support getting there.
[2] The fellowship is basically a long term programme, where outstanding students are given the opportunity to take the £8k course for free and then continue on a pathway to move from junior to mid-level developer in around 17 months.
