‘In this engaging and informative book, June Sarpong examines the research behind diversity and discrimination while grounding them in personal narratives, highlighting our common humanity.’

Kofi Annan

‘As a survivor of Auschwitz, I sadly lost my father and brother to the brutality of the Holocaust. As a child I unfortunately witnessed first-hand how quickly diverse cities can be hijacked by dangerous demagogues and unravel in the process.

‘My experiences during the Holocaust have led me on a lifetime mission to promote the benefits of diversity by travelling the world, bringing people from diverse backgrounds together, telling my story and that of my stepsister Anne Frank, and why civil society must do all it can to protect and celebrate our diversity.

‘Diversify lays out a practical framework about how we best achieve this and helps us take the first steps on the journey to tolerance.’

Eva Schloss

JUNE SARPONG MBE is one of the most recognizable faces of British television. A media phenomenon, she has interviewed hundreds of people, from politicians to celebrities and members of the public.

In addition to twenty years of television work, June has hosted a wealth of events, including Make Poverty History in London’s Trafalgar Square and Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday celebrations alongside Will Smith in London’s Hyde Park.

June has worked extensively with HRH Prince Charles for ten years as an ambassador for his charity the Prince’s Trust. She is the co-founder of WIE UK (Women: Inspiration & Enterprise) and, in 2007, was awarded an MBE for services to broadcasting and charity.

A former board member of Stronger IN, the official campaign to keep Britain in the EU, June is now a board member of the pro-EU think-tank Open Britain.

She is co-host of The Pledge, Sky News’ flagship weekly political discussion show.

To Sammy – love you to the moon and back.

See you next lifetime

Contents

Cover

Praise

Title Page

Dedication

Introduction – The ‘Other’ Side of the Story

Only Connect

Part 1 – The Other Man

The Old Way

Chapter 1: Colour Is Only Skin Deep

Chapter 2: Brown Is the New Black

Chapter 3: Whitewashed Out

The Other Way

The First Degree of Integration: Challenge Your Ism

Part 2 – The Other Woman

The Old Way

Chapter 1: In the Boardroom

Chapter 2: In the Media

Chapter 3: In the World

The Other Way

The Second Degree of Integration: Check Your Circle

Part 3 – The Other Class

The Old Way

Chapter 1: Poverty

Chapter 2: Power

Chapter 3: Opportunity

The Other Way

The Third Degree of Integration: Connect with the Other

Part 4 – The Other Body

The Old Way

Chapter 1: Pigeonholing

Chapter 2: Invisibility

Chapter 3: The Lost Workforce

The Other Way

The Fourth Degree of Integration: Change Your Mind

Part 5 – The Other Sex

The Old Way

Chapter 1: Old Views

Chapter 2: New Opportunities

Chapter 3: The Cost of the Closet

The Other Way

The Fifth Degree of Integration: Celebrate Difference

Part 6 – The Other Age

The Old Way

Chapter 1: Generation Y

Chapter 2: Agents of Change

Chapter 3: Intergenerational Living

The Other Way

The Sixth Degree of Integration: Champion the Cause

Part 7 – The Other View

The Old Way

Chapter 1: The Argument for Debate

Chapter 2: Burst the Bubble

Chapter 3: Doing the Interfaith Work

The Other Way

Part 8 – The Other Way in Action

Chapter 1: FAQs

Chapter 2: The Three Ps – Personal, Private, and Public

Chapter 3: A Timeline of Progress

Conclusion

Be the Change

The Final Number

Acknowledgements

The Ism Questionnaire: How the Nation Responded

Bibliography

Searchable Terms

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

THE ‘OTHER’ SIDE OF THE STORY

‘Diversity may be the hardest thing for a society to live with, and perhaps the most dangerous thing for a society to be without.’

William Sloane Coffin

Only Connect

The British humanist and novelist E. M. Forster famously wrote ‘Only connect’.* And he was absolutely right. While the Earth is vast, we live in a small world full of opportunities to connect with each other, and it’s only when we do this that the walls between us come down. Yet the majority of us seem to find this incredibly difficult, caught up as we are in the things that divide us.

In one sense, of course, we are more connected than we’ve ever been before. Whether we live in the remotest parts of the world or in great international cities such as London or New York, we can connect across the globe at the click of a button. So it’s a great irony that the economic gap between those at the centre of society and those at the periphery is ever-growing. Our great cities of culture and commerce are in fact cities of strangers, where individuals have rejected relationships with neighbours in favour of superficial relationships with an online community. We often ignore passersby as we get on with our lives. We may SMH (Shake My Head) at news-feeds that show injustice at home and abroad, yet somehow we continue on, unaffected by what happens to ‘others’.

And yet, as the MP Jo Cox argued so passionately before she was murdered in 2016, we have far more in common than that which divides us. This isn’t head-in-the-clouds liberalism speaking; this is scientific fact. Genetically, human beings are 99.9 per cent identical.* Our bodies perform in the same way – we breathe the same, we eat the same, we sleep the same – and yet we choose to focus so much on the 0.1 per cent that makes us different – the 0.1 that determines external physical attributes such as hair, eye and skin colour. This focus has been the cause of so much tension and strife in the world, yet by re-evaluating the importance we place on it, we have the power to change how it affects our future. What if we celebrated that 0.1 per cent rather than feared it? What amazing things might follow for our society? The need to do this has never been so urgent – thanks to the recent political upheavals of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, the rise of extremism and economic instability, we are now more divided than ever before – but the ability to change this is firmly within our grasp. To heal the wounds that have been exposed, we need to diversify, and we need to do it now. This is an issue I’ve felt passionate about for a long time: it informs my work, my relationships and my everyday life. And it’s more than a question of encouraging human kindness; I’ve long suspected that there is a hidden financial cost to our lack of diversity. The research that I have undertaken for this book has confirmed that.

I decided to write this book, often drawing on my own experiences, to present the issues that a lack of diversity is causing for us today, alongside the arguments for the social, moral and economic benefits of diversity. You’ll also find practical tools and ideas for how we might go about creating a new normal that is equitable, diverse and prosperous.

Why now?

On 28 August 1963, Dr Martin Luther King – for me, one of the greatest men of the twentieth century, without question – delivered his iconic ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. I have always found his words, laying out such a powerful and clear vision for global equality and unity, and delivering a message of hope that we could all be part of, absolutely mind-blowing. He presented a comprehensive vision and framework for the much-needed journey that would get us there, and I firmly believe it’s one of the best examples of the type of society we should all be striving to create. Now, over half a century later, where are we on that journey that Dr King laid out for us, and what does this mean for humanity?

The sad truth is, it’s a journey that many of us are yet to embark on. Prophesying his own assassination, King ended his last speech with ‘I may not get there [to the Promised Land] with you’, and indeed he didn’t. And there have been claims that if Dr King were still alive he would be incredibly disappointed by what he saw: a world divided by gender, nationality, class, sexual orientation, age, culture, and, of course, the two big Rs of Race and Religion.

I would argue that, actually, Dr King would not be so disappointed in what he saw, but rather in what he couldn’t see. It’s what lies beneath the surface and facade of ‘tolerance’ and political correctness that causes the real malaise – the limiting viewpoints that are hidden inside us, that we rarely speak of but often think about and, worse, sometimes act upon. Whether they are conscious or unconscious, it’s these hidden, unexamined attitudes that shape the inequality we see in society.

The evidence of that is clear in the political upheaval that has occurred in both the UK and US recently. There are many parallels between the shock results of Britain’s Brexit referendum and the Electoral College victory of Donald Trump in the US in 2016. As a board member of the official Remain campaign, I was certainly not in favour of Brexit and put all my passion and energy into trying to convince the British public that Britain was Stronger IN Europe. The result was a painful and bitter blow, and one that still hurts. We will only see the true fall-out now that Article 50 has been triggered and the negotiations have begun …

However, we are beginning to see what this new world looks like. For many, Brexit represented freedom. Yet one of the worrying repercussions of Brexit, which the experts didn’t anticipate, is the rise in hate crime and the open season on anything or anyone deemed ‘other’. Since the referendum I’ve heard phrases such as, ‘This doesn’t feel like modern Britain’, ‘A victory for xenophobia’, and ‘The revolt of the working class’. The same seems to be true of Donald Trump’s victory in the US, with David Duke, the former KKK leader, celebrating it as ‘one of the most exciting nights of my life’. I feel huge disappointment for those who wanted us to stay part of the EU, and fear what might happen to tolerance of the ‘other’ in the US – but, more importantly, I want to understand why these results went the way they did, shaking up the status quo in response to campaigns which focused on immigration and fear. The short answer is that both Brexit and Trump were symptoms of our failure to address the issues of fairness and inequality in our globalized economy.

The majority of us recognize that there are things greater than ourselves that can unite us: the world we share and our common humanity. We know that the need for understanding, connection and solidarity as one human family is more urgent now than ever. The greatest challenges of our time demand our cooperation. But how do we achieve this? When we have been separate for so long, change is not easy. But it is necessary. That’s where this book comes in.

Why me?

The daughter of Ghanaian immigrants, I was born and raised in the East End of London, home to a diverse range of people. The part of town that I grew up in, Walthamstow – or Wilcomestu, as the Anglo-Saxons called it – means ‘place of welcome’. Coincidentally, the Ghanaian greeting for hello is Awaakba, which also means ‘welcome’, so being welcoming is part of both my British and Ghanaian heritage – literally.

During my early years, Walthamstow more or less lived up to its name. We had the longest street market in Europe, where you could get anything from anywhere. The older generation of market stall-holders were mainly white working-class survivors of the Second World War. They were community-minded, and would call out to you if they knew your mum, chucking you an apple or a bag of sweets from their stall. My school was like a blue-collar version of the UN and proclaimed the belief that diversity was an asset. All the main religious holidays were celebrated – my Indian friends always brought in the best sweets on the Guru Nanak celebration. I was well liked and, being an inquisitive soul, I often found myself at my friends’ houses celebrating Shabbat, Eid and Diwali. My best friend, Levan Trong, was Chinese Vietnamese, so this meant free Mandarin lessons and amazing New Year parties.

This multicultural upbringing served as a great basis for my media career, paving the way for me to connect comfortably with people from all walks of life. After leaving school, I started an internship with Kiss FM, a vibrant, fresh radio station that looked to unite the young people of London through music. So wherever I went, it was a given for me that difference was not a problem. In fact, it was cool, and what London was all about. I carried this belief with me from radio to television, to my first presenting job. I was getting to do what I had enjoyed my entire life: meeting and talking to people from anywhere and everywhere.

In 2008 I moved to the US in the hope of finding that holy grail: the secret formula for ‘cracking America’. I wouldn’t say I ‘cracked’ America – rather, I made a small dent in her West and East Coast – but with the support and mentorship of Arianna Huffington, Donna Karan and Sarah Brown, I was able to sample a slice of the American Pie when they helped me to co-found a women’s network that was designed to facilitate this generation’s female leaders paying it forward to the next: Women: Inspiration and Enterprise (WIE) (www.wienetwork.co.uk).

I was also lucky enough to start working in American TV quite quickly, and one day, when I was filming in Las Vegas, a young sound assistant appeared on set. I noticed him straight away – and immediately felt uneasy around him. He hadn’t behaved aggressively towards me, but he was covered in tattoos. And I’m not talking David Beckham-style ink, but rather what looked like gang markings. I suspected he’d probably had a tough upbringing, possibly had a few run-ins with the law in his time. But had I really just painted this picture and gained this insight into another person’s life based on some tattoos and a bad ponytail? Yes, I had. And, regardless of the illogic of my assumptions, I began to feel intimidated.

As a woman of colour, I am all too aware of the problems that can be caused by stereotyping. In fact, being excluded as a result of being a woman, and being excluded because of your race, are two forms of discrimination I understand first-hand. So you might think that I, of all people, should know better, and should get over my discomfort and preconceived ideas and just have a conversation with this man. But in that moment I couldn’t do it. And in that moment I suddenly understood both sides of this enigma – and how our fear of the ‘other’ (whatever that ‘other’ is for you) subconsciously influences our behaviour. Whether we like it or not, ‘other-izing’ is something we all do, and ‘other-isms’ are something we all have.

I was about to quietly exclude this young man – not overtly (I’m far too polite and British for that), but subtly, which is even more soul-destroying: no eye contact and false politeness. Basically, I was prepared to pretend he wasn’t there so I could feel comfortable. But I’m happy to say that I didn’t. In that light-bulb moment, I chose to be my better self and to challenge some of my own limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs that I didn’t even realize I had. So I went over nervously and did what usually comes very naturally to me: I spoke to him.

As it happens, he had indeed had a difficult start in life. However, he had also done a great deal of studying and self-development, and was now committed to making a better life for himself and was extremely excited about the possibility of a career as a soundman. He was brimming with enthusiasm and full of dreams – dreams that, I sensed, he secretly hoped wouldn’t be dashed by those prejudging him. Fortunately, our lead soundman had looked beyond his exterior and taken him on as an apprentice, but I couldn’t help but lament what it would take for him to rise above the limiting beliefs of others in order to achieve his full potential. He was truly a gentle soul, yet I could sense the unspoken burden he had to carry because of his appearance and the effect it had on people like me – he had to go out of his way to seem unthreatening, and to overcompensate with helpfulness.

Now, I grew up around men like this, so it was not as if I had never encountered someone like him, but I had never encountered someone like him in this context. I work in an industry that, in both its on- and off-screen talent, is not known for its diversity. I have been a very outspoken critic of this, yet I didn’t realize that I had become so accustomed to the lack of diversity at work that when the status quo was challenged, even I had to adjust.

I ended up having one of the most enlightening conversations of my life with this young man – and I realized that, had I not been able to put aside my issues around his appearance, I would have missed out on a defining moment that not only changed the way I think, but also enabled me to truly understand both sides of a problem that affects me personally. It made me wonder how many of us miss out on enriching, enlightening, even magical moments every day due to our failure to put aside our issues with external packaging.

Part of the reason so many of us are reluctant to honestly address our ism’s or voice our pain from being otherized is because it involves guilt and shame, two emotions most humans seek to avoid at all costs. Family issues that involve these emotions often go unspoken and unresolved, and the same is true for societal issues; but, as we know from our personal relationships, ignoring conflicts doesn’t dissolve them, it just allows them to fester, breed resentment and then sometimes explode. I still have a funny feeling in my stomach every time I recount this story, because to own the positive outcome, I have to accept that I went into the situation with prejudice. And this is not who I consider myself to be. But this belief is itself limited, because we are all hardwired with stereotypes – perceptions of what looks like safety and comfort, and what looks unfamiliar, something to be kept out. At times these ideas protect us, but they often trap us, too. Stereotypical assumptions on who should lead and who should follow limit potential, which in turn limits us all. Those to whom we mentally close our gates may well possess the answers to some of the greatest challenges of our age: extremism, economic instability, poverty, and the sustainability of the planet itself. To solve these complex problems (which don’t appear to be going anywhere), we need to nurture the greatest minds of our age – whatever body they reside in.

Why this book?

The aim of this book is to help people take a more positive view of others and their differences. It is not, by any means, about privileged white male bashing, but rather the opposite. My argument throughout this book is that by operating in a more inclusive way towards everyone we will be able to realize the talents and potential of everyone. Scapegoating any one group or defining an individual solely by their demographic or otherness blocks us from having the honest and open dialogue we need in order to create a fairer society. To achieve ‘business as unusual’ we have to make a compelling case that demonstrates that diversity is better for everyone, even those who will need to share a little more than they have previously, thus helping the UK and the US – two of the richest countries on the planet in terms of diversity (and in terms of monetary wealth) – to meet and overcome the challenges of the twenty-first century.

This isn’t a book that offers a whimsical argument for being nice to one another. It provides solid evidence of what’s going wrong and why, and offers practical tools and arguments for how we can change things. To use a business analogy, even the novice investor knows that the best way to achieve a return on your investment is to diversify your portfolio. If you invest all your capital in one place, you leave yourself vulnerable to fluctuations in that particular market. In the same way, companies need to ensure a diverse mix in their employee portfolio so that new ideas from people with different skill sets give them a competitive edge. Because when everybody thinks the same, we miss out on the opportunity to meet challenges with fresh ideas, we become complacent and we continue to do what we’ve always done before. The question that every company and every community has to ask is: ‘Is everyone in the room?’ And this book will try to help make sure they are.

How this book works

In Diversify, I will be primarily looking at the social, moral and economic benefits of diversity from a UK and US perspective, arguing that these two nations are probably best placed to lead the way on tolerance and equality. Both nations have ‘United’ in their title, both countries are born of the concept of ‘union’, and its essence is in their DNA. And both countries, as we’ve seen, are at a critical stage politically, economically, and socially.

The Others

You will notice that each section in Diversify is titled according to an ‘Other’. So what do I mean by labelling a group as ‘other’? Well, for the purpose of this book, ‘other’ refers to any demographic that is excluded socially, politically, or economically because of their difference from the dominant group(s) in society. If you are not a white, non-disabled, educated, heterosexual, middle-aged, middle- or upper-class male adhering to a version of Christianity or atheism that fits within the confines of a secular liberal democracy, then on some level you will have been made to feel like an ‘other’. The ‘others’ that I have chosen to look at here are as follows:

• The Other Man: This section looks at disenfranchised males in society: black, Muslim and white working-class men.

• The Other Woman: This section explores gender inequality in the workplace, in the media and in wider society, and what the barriers are to female empowerment.

• The Other Class: In this section I look at the class divisions that separate societies, in particular the economic gap between the elites and the working classes.

• The Other Body: This looks at what society deems as valuable bodies, and how we treat those who don’t fit the physical and mental standards of the so-called ‘able bodied’.

• The Other Sex: This section looks at how LGBTQ communities have been perceived and treated throughout the ages to the present day.

• The Other Age: This section covers ageism from the perspective of the young and the old, by analysing the disproportionate value we place on those of ‘working age’.

• The Other View: This section looks at the divisions caused by opposing political views and the vital importance of listening to the other side of the argument.

• The Other Way in Action: The final section will focus on what a fair and inclusive society might actually look like and how we might practically achieve it.*

Each chapter within these sections will feature theories, data and real-life stories that examine the perspective of each of the discriminated groups and the solutions to combat that discrimination. Each one opens with a look at The Old Way for that group – how things are and have been in the past – and closes with a vision of The Other Way – outlining how things could be. And at the end of each chapter you will also find action and discussion points to help you kick-start change in your own life, right here, right now.

The Numbers

Where diversity is concerned we have long heard the moral arguments and the rational reasons for equality, but Western society is primarily financially driven. So, to support my case further, I’ve partnered with some of the leading academic institutions and organizations in the world, including Oxford University, LSE, and Rice University TX, to provide the cold, hard numbers that demonstrate just what we stand to lose, economically as well as socially, by failing to diversify. Each of these institutions has provided some of the research and data in the book, and the Centre for Social Investigation at Nuffield College, Oxford, in particular, has provided the statistics you will see at the end of each chapter. This data is a combination of both new and existing research that delivers an overview of the challenges facing each ‘other’ group. Perhaps the most striking data in this book comes from LSE. Professor John Hills and his team at the International Inequalities Institute have calculated what must surely be the most important number of them all: the actual economic cost of discrimination – a shocking figure that brings this book to a close.

The Six Degrees of Integration

Finally, you will also find in this book what I’m calling the Six Degrees of Integration. Famously, it is said that there are just ‘six degrees of separation’ between any two individuals on the planet – from a newborn child in the most isolated tribe of the Amazon to Queen Elizabeth. The concept originates from social psychologist Stanley Milgram’s 1967 ‘small world experiment’, in which he tracked chains of acquaintances in the United States, by sending packages to 160 random people, and asking them to forward the package to someone they thought would bring the package closer to a set final individual: a stockbroker from Boston. Milgram reported that there was a median of five links in the chain (i.e. six degrees of separation) between the original sender and the destination recipient.*

But while Milgram’s experiment proves we may be linked, are we really connected? Misunderstanding and strife dominate our world and its politics, and there is now an urgent need for understanding and connection. None of us can be fulfilled in a life alone. We need others in our lives, yet many aspects of modern life are leaving us increasingly isolated. Social networking as we now experience it generally limits us to the people just one degree away, people we already know.

We need a human revolution that opens a world of possibilities for us to connect with the members of our human family who are living beyond our comfort zones and our cultures. So, in order to do this, rather than six degrees of separation, I’m introducing the Six Degrees of Integration: six steps or degree shifts in our behaviour patterns that will bring us closer to having a more diverse and integrated social circle. You will find these Six Degrees dotted throughout this book, and each one is a tool that will show you how to break free of prejudice and take action as you go on your journey towards diversity. They are:

– Challenge Your Ism

– Check Your Circle

– Connect with the Other

– Change Your Mind

– Celebrate Difference

– Champion the Cause

Human beings are notoriously creatures of habit, so change is of course difficult, but my goal in writing this book is to show how change for the willing might be made easier – and my hope is that in choosing to read this book you may indeed be one of the willing. So by undertaking the Six Degrees outlined, you will be changing your behaviour patterns bit by bit, edging ever closer to creating your own truly diverse circle. When this is true for the majority, then we will be able to change the way we think and the way we do things.

Diversify.org

Accompanying this book is www.Diversify.org – a revolutionary online space that opens up a world of possibilities for us to connect with the members of our human family who are living beyond our known horizons. www.Diversify.org is the next generation of social networking – ‘emotional networking’ – and breaks the mould as we now experience it: networking that limits us to the people one degree away that we already know. We will use the Internet in the spirit in which it was created – to connect with the lives of others, to promote our own humanity. From our own doorsteps to the most distant horizon, together we can create the unity that eludes the conventional grind of politics and diplomacy. Together we can share. Share information. Share imagination. Share vision. Share a movement that unites us, thus making it that much better and fairer for us all.

As well as being an online community, this innovative multimedia platform will also act as a resource tool for many of the elements I refer to in this book, housing content such as the ISM Calculator, case studies, interviews, videos and campaigning tips.

Remember Anansi

Changing attitudes is not easy to do, and must come from within, but we can draw on inspiration in order to empower us to do this. As a result of my Ghanaian heritage, I have always been fascinated by mythology and the power that storytelling has to shape our image of ourselves and the world around us. Ghanaian culture is steeped in folklore and myths that have been passed down from generation to generation through an oral tradition, one of the most important being the tale of Anansi – or ‘Kweku Anansi’ as he is called in Ghana – the original Spider-Man! Anansi’s story is itself a parable of self-belief and succeeding against the odds. It is a story of hope for anyone with an uphill climb to face between themselves and their dreams.

The story goes something like this: Anansi is a spider and the smallest of creatures, almost invisible to the naked eye. But he has the audacity to ask the Sky God, Nyan-Konpon, if he can buy all his stories. The Sky God is surprised to say the least. Even if Anansi could afford to buy his stories, what was a lowly spider going to do with these stories – the most valuable items in the animal kingdom?

I suppose Anansi took the view that if you don’t ask you don’t get, and what’s the worst the Sky God could do? Say no? At the bottom of the animal kingdom, ‘no’ is a word Anansi is very much accustomed to.

Still confused, the Sky God asks Anansi: ‘What makes you think you can buy them? Officials from great and powerful towns have come and they were unable to purchase them, and yet you, who are but a masterless man, you say you will be able to?’ Anansi tells the Sky God that he knows other high-ranking officials have tried to get these stories and failed, but he believes that he can. He stands firm and challenges the Sky God to name his price. Now the Sky God is intrigued, but also slightly on the back foot. When you’re a God you don’t expect to be challenged by a spider, after all. So the Sky God sets Anansi the same ‘impossible’ challenge he set the others: to bring him a python, a leopard, a fairy and a hornet. (Yes, we do have fairies in Ghana, just like everywhere else.)

Anansi is not the strongest creature on earth, but he is the most resourceful – he has to be to survive, right? Otherwise he ends up down a plughole or flattened by a newspaper. By using his wit and cunning, Anansi manages to catch all of these creatures. This involves some elaborate hoaxes and traps, but true to his word Anansi delivers to the Sky God the animals, and in return the Sky God gives Anansi the stories. Stories that Anansi goes on to share with the whole of humanity, spreading wisdom throughout the world. From that day on, Anansi grows in stature above all other creatures.

This story is dear to me because it tells us that when you have equal opportunity coupled with purpose and self-belief, anything is indeed possible. Even though the Sky God did not believe Anansi could complete the task, he gave him the opportunity anyway – the same opportunity he had given the previous, seemingly worthier, candidates, who had each failed. Fortunately, Anansi believed in himself, and with a little help from the Universe, he achieved the impossible. It’s this theory that I want to explore in more detail in this book – as well as how limiting beliefs about ourselves and each other prevent us all from achieving our full potential, and how society is robbed as a result. It’s the equivalent of mining for treasure: we are standing in a vast, mineral-rich landscape, but deciding only to dig a small section of the Earth, and so we’re missing out on all the gems the rest of the ignored land has to offer.

We have no template for a truly fair and equal society from any major civilization in recent history. In fact, we have to travel as far back as 7500BC to Çatalhöyük, a Neolithic settlement in southern Anatolia, Turkey, to see an example. Çatalhöyük is extraordinary for many reasons, not least its vast population (over 10,000 inhabitants), which makes it our first known ‘town’. However, perhaps its most notable characteristic was its inhabitants’ egalitarian ways and their lack of societal hierarchy. The town comprised an enclave of mud structures, all equal in size – there were no mansions or shacks. There was no concept of ‘rich’ or ‘poor’, no nobility or slaves, and no separate or lower castes of people. Men and women were considered equal with a balanced distribution of roles and participation in civic life.

Our so-called ‘civilized’ way of living would have us believe that a fair and inclusive society is wishful thinking – a naive or utopian idea. We are naturally programmed to follow the Darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest – a system that has only worked for a privileged few, caused social polarization and proved unsustainable. But as Çatalhöyük shows, this doesn’t have to be the conclusion. Its exact model is perhaps unrealistic in a modern capitalist society, yet we can incorporate some of the philosophies of our ancient ancestors and make our communities much more inclusive. We have the chance to change gear and move towards a more meritocratic model – a thrilling and exciting destination.

The old way isn’t working; the first country that gets this right will be a beacon to the world. The first economy that is efficient enough to capture the talents of all those available to contribute and utilize its greatest minds will produce a model that the rest of the world will be desperate to emulate.

My sincere hope is that the arguments, evidence, stories and tools in this book will help us to get there – to that Promised Land that Martin Luther King dreamed of. If we remember the story of Anansi, give each other equal opportunities, and believe in ourselves, we can achieve this seemingly impossible utopian ideal. Put simply, to make progress, we must diversify, transcend the six degrees of separation and move towards lives connected by six degrees of integration.

Because the world is separate enough.

PART ONE

THE OTHER MAN

‘It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.’

Frederick Douglass

The Old Way

Making up slightly more than half of the world’s population, women are probably the largest ‘other’ group – but it’s the ‘other’ man that I want to discuss first.

If you genuinely want to identify and understand the ‘other’ man (and the fact that you have chosen to read this book gives me confidence that you do), he is not hard to find. The ‘other’ man is a diverse group found across the Western world in working-class communities, blue-collar jobs, and weekend football matches. These are the men I was raised by and raised with. They have been taught from a young age not to cry, not to be a sissy, and to stand up for themselves. They are more likely to have been celebrated by their peers and perhaps even their teachers for their physical prowess than their mental agility. This other man is black, Muslim, or white working class, and each group is the victim of their ‘otherness’ in a different way. But each will have been taught early on to understand the importance of a man being able to provide for himself and his family – and each will have encountered barriers in trying to achieve this.

Discrimination against men is important to address because of the impact it has on the rest of society. The exclusion of the ‘other’ man can often have violent and devastating consequences. This isn’t always the case, obviously, but men have a different way of dealing with fear and frustration to women, as does each person to the next. Some of this is due to socialization, but some of it is pure biology. Leading neuroscientist Dr James Fallon explained to me that our genetics can result in striking differences in our response to stress, abuse, and rejection: ‘People with “vulnerability” forms of genes are extremely impacted … while those with highly “protective” [genes] are remarkably resistant.’ This suggests that some people are genetically more likely than others to develop damaging responses to environmental stressors, such as depression, PTSD, substance abuse, and personality disorders. And, says Dr Fallon, ‘males often [have] poorer mood and personality outcomes than females’. So men are in fact more vulnerable to exclusion than women, and no man – no matter how much he may have been taught to suppress his emotions – is immune to its effect.

We’ve seen this in action throughout the UK and US in recent years. The failure of these societies to prevent the economic and social exclusion of their ‘other’ men has weakened and divided communities, and created a ticking time bomb that we must deactivate. It has caused feelings of inferiority and led to a fractured society. It has compromised social mobility and created artificial bubbles whereby the situation you are born into dictates your job and educational prospects. It has opened the doors to radical groups, and nurtured breeding grounds of extremism. In short, it has led to a lack of diversity, which then leads to a lack of empathy on both sides: cue demagogues fanning the flames of division for political ends.

For it has been the exclusion of the ‘other’ man with muscle where it still counts – at the ballot box – that has had the most profound implications. In the UK, the white working-class male vote delivered the shattering of Britain’s 40-year union with Europe; in America, it brought the election of Donald Trump, a President with zero experience in public office and some unsavoury views and conduct. Whatever your opinion on either Brexit or Trump, 2016 provided the two most extreme examples in recent history of how a marginalized group can dictate the social and economic future of society.

And of course, politics aside, the exclusion of any ‘other’ man impacts more than just him. His family will share the impact of his pain – sometimes literally, if alcohol and low self-esteem are part of the toxic mix. This scenario played out within a family has a multi-generational impact, and can cost the state millions of pounds in welfare and social services professionals, called in to address family breakdown and deprivation. Failing to diversify and include all ‘other’ men is not something we can afford economically or socially. Quite simply, it will cost a lot less – financially, but also in pain and suffering – to expand opportunities to the ‘other’ man rather than continue to exclude him.

While preparing to write this book, I wrote to three such ‘others’: prisoners in the UK with strikingly similar stories; young men – one black, one Muslim, one white working class – who all once had dreams that turned into nightmares. You will find their letters in response to mine at www.Diversify.org. I read their personal accounts of how life had taken them on a path that led to prison, a powerful line from philosopher Susan Griffin’s A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War kept running through my mind: ‘“There is a circle of humanity,” he told me, “and I can feel its warmth. But I am forever outside.”’ And this ‘circle of humanity’ excluded for them behind bars, too: The Young Report of 2014 found that: ‘Most of the prisoners, said that they experienced differential treatment as a result of their race, ethnicity or faith. Black prisoners felt that they were stereotyped as drug dealers and Muslim prisoners as terrorists.’

These three young men may not possess the tools to express themselves as eloquently as Griffin’s subject, but their words of despair and hopelessness are no less powerful. They are men who, thanks to mass social media and globalization, knew what bounties the modern world had to offer, yet felt that they and their kind were not wanted, valued, or needed. Is it any wonder they ended up where they did?

CHAPTER ONE

Colour Is Only Skin Deep

‘I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.’

Maya Angelou

A black male child growing up in America or Europe will, by the time he reaches school, already have an understanding that he is different from the majority. Whether it’s the images he sees in the media, or family members attempting to prepare him for the exclusion he’s likely to experience outside the home, he will know that the rules are not the same for him and boys that look like him. In many cases, he will be told that anything is possible, but that he has to be twice as good and work twice as hard as his white counterparts in order to succeed and be worthy of acceptance. Many will take this message on board and strive for academic excellence in a pressured education system. Others, seeing black role models in sport, music, or some other art form, will pursue a career in that field, hoping that their talent (as has been the case with stars such as Jay-Z, Usain Bolt, Floyd Mayweather, Stormzy and Tinie Tempah) will enable them to overcome discrimination and other obstacles to success.

The men in my family experienced this first-hand. My father was gifted and well educated as a child and rose to become somebody of stature in his native Ghana, but when he arrived in Britain as an immigrant in the 1980s he had to start afresh. A political coup in Ghana meant that he had lost his position and his finances. He still had his education and experience, though, which surely would be enough for him to make a new life for himself and his family? Unfortunately not. In 1980s Britain, his thick foreign accent and skin colour meant he was visibly and audibly different from what employers assumed was right for a job in banking. There was an unwritten understanding that non-white migrants from commonwealth countries could settle in the UK to do menial or low-paid jobs that indigenous people didn’t want to do. Immigrants like my father, regardless of education and career experience, were not going to be allowed to just parachute into middle-class occupations like banking.

It soon became clear to my father that Britain was not going to be the land of opportunity he had first hoped, so he decided to take his talents and my brother to America. America did provide more opportunities, and Dad was able to secure a job in banking and then eventually launch his own successful real-estate and construction company. Perhaps America, despite its poorer record on race relations, was more amenable than the UK to the idea of social mobility for an African man.

Starting again for the second time in America was not easy, but Sam Sarpong Sr thrived against insurmountable odds and built a very comfortable upper-middle-class life, and I can’t help but beam with pride when I look at the journey he has made. A few years ago I made a pilgrimage to the rural village he was raised in, and I couldn’t fully comprehend the vast leap from where my father started in life to where he now resides. I doubt I would have had the same level of grit and strength to overcome such odds.

Life wasn’t all smooth sailing for my brother, Sam Sarpong Jr, either. African in parentage, British by birth, and raised in America – as you can imagine, he didn’t fit neatly into any particular category. As an actor/entertainer, my brother shared the desire for the visible signs of affluence – luxury cars, designer clothes, and beautiful women. However, as flamboyant as he was, during one of my visits to America I saw my brother become humble pretty fast. Driving through LA in one such luxury car, Sam was pulled over by the police. This being a regular occurrence for black men in America, Sam had his contrite responses memorized: ‘Yes sir, no sir, sorry officer,’ etc.

Witnessing this exchange and knowing the type of person Sam was, I felt upset and indignant – especially as he had done nothing wrong and there appeared to be no valid reason for the stop. My friend and mentor Baroness Margaret McDonagh – white and well spoken – was also with us in the car. As Sam delivered his usual routine, Margaret and I weren’t so agreeable, as this is not something either of us are accustomed to. We demanded the officer’s badge number and a detailed explanation as to why we were stopped. The police officer seemed taken aback, as he hadn’t expected to be met by two British women, and his tone changed immediately to become less threatening and more like a public servant. We received the badge number but no valid reason for why we were pulled over.

With US police officers being fully armed, black men in the US have to humble themselves to an almost humiliating degree to ensure their survival each time they encounter law enforcement. Regardless of the outcome of these exchanges, they serve as an overt reminder to all young black men that, whatever your achievements, aspirations, or character, you can be brought down to the level of a criminal at any time. Male pride makes this a difficult reality to live with and can generate anger in the most excluded and vulnerable black men. However, anger and resentment at authority are costly emotions that black men can ill afford in Western society. In both the UK and the US, it’s an uncomfortable truth that in spite of claims of equality and calls for fair treatment, young black men continue to be targeted for no other reason than the colour of their skin.

These stories show just how difficult it is for black men – even those of education and affluence – to negotiate life in the UK and US as an ‘other’. Their colour is always the first thing people see. But where did this obsession with race and skin colour come from? And why have we allowed it to become such a divisive and alienating factor in our society? These are fundamental questions that scientists may now be able to answer for us. And perhaps, by answering them, we can tear them down.

The false social construct of race

Anthropologist Nina Jablonski has conducted extensive studies into this issue from her research lab at Pennsylvania State University. I’ve been lucky enough to spend time with Jablonski and listen to her speak about the origins of the social construct of race, and her findings are fascinating. In her book, Living Color: The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color,* Jablonski investigates ‘the social history of skin color from prehistory to the present’ and finds that, biologically, ‘race’ simply does not exist. In a separate article she states, ‘Despite ever more genetic evidence confirming the nonexistence of races, beliefs in the inherent superiority and inferiority of people remain part of the modern world,’† and she goes on to explain that the most influential ideas on the formation of historic racism came from just one man:

The philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was the first person to classify people into fixed races according to skin color. To him and his followers, skin color was equated with character. People of darker-colored races were inferior and destined to serve those of lighter-colored races. Kant’s ideas about color, race, and character achieved wide and lasting acceptance because his writings were widely circulated, his reputation good, and his audience naïve. The ‘color meme’ was born. The linking of blackness with otherness and inferiority was one of the most powerful and destructive intellectual constructs of all time. Views on the inherent superiority and inferiority of races were readily embraced by the intelligentsia of Western Europe and eventually by the general populace because they supported existing stereotypes.*

It’s hard to overstate the damage this kind of thinking has done over the centuries.

Geneticist Spencer Wells, founder of The Genographic Project and author of The Journey of Man,† goes even deeper, using the science of DNA to tell a similar story to Jablonski – that ‘we are all one people’.‡ By analysing DNA from people in all corners of the world, Wells and his team discovered that all humans alive today are descended from a single man (Y-chromosomal Adam), who lived in Africa around 60,000–90,000 years ago, and from a single woman (mitochondrial Eve), who lived in Africa approximately 150,000 years ago.§ (It’s a quirk of our genetic evolution that our two most common recent ancestors did not have to live at the same time.)

Due to this common ancestry, the human genetic code, or genome, is 99.9 per cent identical, which suggests that the 0.1 per cent remainder that is responsible for our individual physical differences – skin colour, eye colour, hair colour and texture, etc – has primarily been caused by environmental factors. Like Jablonski, Wells believes our early ancestors embarked on their first epic journey out of Africa in search of food, which led them to gradually scatter across the Earth. Wells explains that the physical appearance of these early travellers changed depending on which part of the world they migrated to. Those who ended up in Europe – in the northern hemisphere – received less sunlight, so their bodies did not need to produce as much melanin (a natural-forming skin pigment that protects from the sun’s ultraviolet rays), and so they developed lighter skin and straighter hair to match their new cold conditions. The same is true for other communities around the world whose appearance adapted to match their new environment. And so our physical differences – once just mutations of survival – became embedded in our DNA, to be passed down through the generations for millennia.

Wells’s deep understanding of human DNA has also influenced his views on humanity and the false social construct of race. In an interview with the UK’s Independent newspaper, he commented: ‘It’s worth getting the message out, that we are related to one another, that we are much more closely related genetically than people may suspect from glancing around and looking at these surface features that distinguish us … Race, in terms of deep-seated biological differences, doesn’t exist scientifically.’

Many of us have instinctively felt and argued for a long time that the concept of ‘race’ is a misleading human construct used to divide us, but it’s reassuring to now have the science to back this up. If more of us understood the epic voyage that our early ancestors embarked upon, which led to the rich diversity we see around us today, perhaps we wouldn’t be so fixated on race. Indeed, we really are all one, and that oneness began in Africa.

The daily reality

Sadly, this understanding hasn’t yet reached everyone. Even when young black men play by the ‘rules’ today, some find that many of the people they come across are still unable to see their academic and career achievements, but have less difficulty seeing their skin colour. Regardless of their personal journey, young black men learn to take the stop-and-searches in their stride (after all, it’s nothing new), as long as it results in their walking away without being too delayed (or physically wounded, as we’ve seen in the US with the rise of police brutality). At work, he is frustrated with his lack of progress in relation to his contribution, although he is careful in office environments to mask his feelings for fear of being viewed as ‘angry’, ‘threatening’, or potentially violent. And he may have qualifications but is unable to get a foothold in the sector he has trained for, or has been given an opportunity and is expected to feel grateful while he remains at entry level and is surpassed by other colleagues, some of whom may be less qualified.

This is the reality for young black men, although it’s fair to say that being prepared for the possibility of rejection on account of your colour from an early age does foster determination and can lead to success, as it forces one to develop astounding levels of resilience. Like diamonds, this pressurized environment can produce spectacular gems, such as Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Colin Powell, Barack Obama, Kofi Annan, Sir David Adjaye, Ozwald Boateng OBE and many of the great men of colour who have helped shape our world for the better. However, it can also cause deep-rooted feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. The sense of never fully being accepted doesn’t go away, especially as it is reinforced daily, which continuously erodes a sense of belonging and self-worth.

For some black men, this can result in the rejection of education and the world of work, and the pursuit of validation from a subculture where material possessions are valued above those things deemed further out of reach, such as employment and schooling. This route can indeed bring more immediate rewards than academia and employment, where rejection will already have been experienced, but it stands in the way of true social mobility.

Young males in poorer black communities can also fall prey to the trappings of a prescribed form of masculinity that thrives in these subcultures: one in which using violence to defend your reputation is seen as acceptable and sometimes necessary. Men in these environments – gangs, particularly – are often considered weak by their peers if they fail to defend their honour or respond to a slight, the consequences of which can be disastrous. Ironically, the ability to reason oneself out of conflict or to avoid it altogether would be applauded outside of the subculture, but is often seen within the community as cowardice. And the rewards within the subculture – respect, and attractiveness to women – are hard to refuse, especially if escaping the subculture is not seen as a possibility, which makes it pretty difficult to bring about a change in behaviour.

The revolving door

For many black men, this route leads to only one destination: in America especially there is a revolving door from the classroom to the prison cell. Mass incarceration has reached epic proportions, with one in three black men imprisoned at some point during their lives.* This has big implications for their futures; the ramifications of a criminal record can be catastrophic for employment prospects and, once the step along the criminal justice path has been taken, it’s near impossible to turn back.

When it comes to the American criminal justice system, the odds are stacked against you if you are black. A 2016 report by The National Registry of Exonerations found that 47% of all wrongful convictions involved black defendants. The figures for serious crimes such as murder show that black defendants account for 40% of those convicted, but 50% of those wrongfully convicted (in comparison to whites, who account for 36 percent of those wrongfully convicted for murder). It’s a similar picture with sexual assault: 59% of all exonerees were black defendants, compared with 34% for white defendants†.

As well as falling victim to police brutality disproportionately, US blacks are also more likely to be victims of police misconduct, such as ‘hiding evidence, tampering with witnesses or perjury’. This may also have contributed to the aforementioned racial disparity; the report concluded that black defendants accounted for 76% of wrongful murder convictions where police misconduct was involved, in comparison to 63% of white exonerees*.

50%: the percentage by which US prison populations would decline if African Americans and Hispanics were incarcerated in the same proportion as white people.†

Ava DuVernay’s powerful BAFTA-winning Netflix documentary 13th chronicles how the abolition of slavery and the subsequent exploitation of the 13th Amendment, which deemed it unconstitutional to hold a person as a slave, have led to more black men being locked up now than there ever were during slavery. On the surface, the 13th Amendment seemed honourable and straightforward enough. But there was a loophole that excluded ‘criminals’, and so began the hyper-criminalization of the black male as a means of maintaining the free labour that had been so easily available during the years of slavery. Fast forward to today, and this loophole has morphed to fit the times: from the Jim Crow laws of segregation, to mandatory sentencing and Nixon’s ‘war on drugs’, Reagan’s ‘war on crime’, and, more recently, Clinton’s ‘Three-Strikes Law’; 150 years of systematic discriminatory policy-making has led us to the black male mass-incarceration epidemic in the US today.

American lawyer and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative Bryan Stevenson has spent the best part of three decades fighting to highlight the plight of those caught in the crosshairs of the US criminal justice system, and he argues that at the crux of the problem is how we treat the marginalized and dispossessed:

Proximity has taught me some basic and humbling truths, including this vital lesson: each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. My work with the poor and the incarcerated has persuaded me that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice. Finally, I’ve come to believe that the true measure of our commitment to justice, the character of our society, our commitment to the rule of law, fairness, and equality cannot be measured by how we treat the rich, the powerful, the privileged, and the respected among us. The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavoured, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.*

Stevenson also states that the criminal justice system unfairly favours those who are ‘rich and guilty’ over those who are ‘poor and innocent’ – after all, the poor can’t afford a good defence lawyer. It seems prison-for-profit is a very lucrative business, and is now a booming industry – it pays to send people to prison. One of the final acts of the Obama administration was to issue a memo to bring an end to the Justice Department’s reliance on private prisons (which now account for approximately 18 per cent of US federal prisons – a figure that is steadily increasing). The memo, issued by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, cited more ‘safety and security incidents’ in private prisons than public ones as the reason for this change in policy. Unfortunately, a month after Trump took the Oval Office his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, rescinded this and announced a reinstatement of private prisons.

This, coupled with the fact that a whopping 90–95 per cent of prisoners accept a plea bargain and never go to trial,† has created a system where poor people of colour are disproportionately incarcerated. This is not only ethically wrong, but also in the long term it is economically insane. To discard one-third of all black males when they are in their prime and most able to contribute to society is a cataclysmic dent in the moral, social, and economic fabric of America.

Yes, we can!

Clearly, this is by no means the story of every black male. The majority will play by rules that are stacked against them and will seek inclusion, complete their education, and make sacrifices in order to achieve this by going the extra mile, conforming to a mainstream culture, and focusing on presenting an acceptable and ‘unthreatening’ outward appearance, harbouring dreams that this will help people to focus on the content of their character as opposed to their colour.

Having lived in America for eight years, I consider it my second home – and a paradox. In one country, we see dreams and aspirations realised that would be impossible anywhere else. But we also see that the fear and division present at the birth of the nation remains.

For me, the election of the first African American president was a watershed in American and global history akin to the election of Nelson Mandela. I count myself privileged to have played a small civic part in the Obama election campaign, canvassing on the eve of the election in Virginia – a deep red Republican state that had not been blue since Lyndon B Johnson’s (LBJ) victory in 1964. And even though LBJ won the state back then, many white residents in Virginia were against his landmark civil rights legislation and had wanted to keep segregation after that point. Virginia would never again be a true-blue state. Or so it seemed.

I had flown out to Virginia with my friends, Labour party strategists Margaret McDonagh and Anji Hunter. At campaign headquarters, I was struck by an elderly white gentleman whose face was badly bruised. Feeling concerned, I walked over to check if he was okay and asked how he had injured himself. With a voice full of emotion, this southern gentleman revealed to me that he was in his nineties and owned a farm that had been in his family for generations. He had fallen over a few days before and had hurt his face on a rake. But, against doctor’s orders, he was determined to come and support the Obama campaign efforts.

He explained to me how, as a young man, he had been an ardent segregationist and saw this as a route to some sort of redemption. He never thought he would live to see an African American President, but felt he needed to actively support Obama in order to right some of the wrong doings of his past. After speaking to this gentleman, I felt something momentous was about to happen. That evening, Margaret and I attended the final Obama rally in Virginia. It was a cool, crisp night and the atmosphere was electric as we all sensed history was about to be made.

The then Senator Obama had just lost his grandmother, who had died that day in Hawaii, so he was flown in by helicopter to the rally. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house as he paid homage to his grandmother, Toot, and the vital role she played in helping to shape him as a man. He went on to explain the origins of his campaign slogan, ‘Fired Up & Ready To Go’, which we all were as we left this poignantly magical evening.

The next day, Margaret, Anji and I watched the election results at the home of legendary Democratic pollster and close Clinton confidant Stan Greenberg. His DC townhouse was heaving with guests, many of whom were close allies of the Clintons.

Everyone was jubilant as the results started coming in and it began looking like victory was on the horizon. Once Ohio was called, we knew it was game over. Everyone began cheering – then, we all sat in silence as we watched the footage of the victorious Obamas and Bidens take the stage in Grant Park Chicago, with Oprah and Jesse Jackson shedding tears of joy in the crowd.

As Anji, Margaret and I left Stan Greenberg’s house, we were met with cheering and dancing in the streets of DC. Cars were beeping their horns, Obama 2008 signs were everywhere, and a joyful crowd was roaring ‘Yes We Can’. The atmosphere was like the homecoming of a winning Superbowl team x10. America was proud of itself because, in that moment, it had chosen to look beyond its complex issues with race and chosen ‘change’ and ‘hope’ over the status quo. In doing so, they had done something that, in all likelihood, no other Western country would have been capable of at the time. This is the dream personified by the Obama presidency, which has been both an inspiration and a post-racial challenge to young black males everywhere. If Obama can do it, why can’t you?

In the UK, this is certainly easier said than done. A recent study conducted as part of a BBC documentary hosted by British actor David Harewood examined the probability of the UK ever having a black prime minister. Using empirical evidence to project how likely it would be for male children from different backgrounds to make it to the nation’s highest electoral office, the findings were shocking, to say the least. Statistically, a black child born in the UK has a 1 in 14 million chance of becoming prime minister, while a white child has a 1 in 1.4 million chance, and a white child with a public school (not state-funded) education and a degree from Oxford University has a 1 in 200,000 chance.* What this effectively means is that we are severely restricting the talent pool for political leadership, and rebirthing the same ideas and thought patterns again and again.

This presents numerous issues, perhaps the most concerning being that by completely excluding ‘other’ talent pools from the decision-making process, the changes that many of us seek become even more unlikely. With few exceptions, it seems that whichever side of the political aisle they sit on, most of the leaders available to us have all trodden the same path and share a similar worldview. It seems pretty clear that in order for there to be sustainable change, the people leading us need to change, too. But in order for this to happen, the education and employment opportunities for young black men need to be firmly put in place, as well as an atmosphere of real, attainable aspiration – in contrast to what, currently, is often an atmosphere of poverty and lack of opportunity.

Twice as likely: the Pew Research Center in the US finds that African Americans are twice as likely to be in poverty as white people.

Because in reality, regardless of the data suggesting that the odds are heavily stacked against black men becoming president or prime minister, the truth is that most don’t want to anyway. The dreams and aspirations of black males are no different to the dreams and aspirations of men in general – the difference is that many will have a shortage of realistic role models in the media or within their own families, who successfully do what is ‘expected’ of a man (i.e. support himself and his family), are supported by the education system, and are able to work hard, attain the right training or qualifications, prove the right to ‘belong’, and be rewarded accordingly. For the ambitious, hard-working black male, this unlevel playing field can be extremely demoralizing. He must ask himself: am I the problem? Is it my colour, or am I simply not good enough? Is he one of those men with a chip on their shoulder, imagining prejudice?

Nina Jablonski believes that a new form of education and honest dialogue is needed to turn back this tide of hundreds of years of misunderstanding and mistrust, and I wholeheartedly agree. She argues that endemic racism is holding back not just black people, but the whole of society:

Erroneous and deep-seated notions about race persist because we are scared to discuss misconceptions about colour and race in our classrooms and boardrooms. Paranoia about race born of political correctness has led to the perpetuation of misconceptions about colour and race, the cloaking of discriminatory behaviour and language, and the persistence of racism. Racism is probably humanity’s single biggest impediment to human achievement.*

Racism is an ancient problem and, thankfully, society has moved on in the last century. We now have anti-discrimination policies and legislation in place, and yet clearly these are not doing enough. The stats prove that a young black man still rarely sees himself reflected in any positions of seniority. He can only hope that things will be better for his son – a hope he believes in as things are certainly better for him than they were for his father. But hope may not be enough. Nina Jablonski is not alone in demanding real, tangible change. ‘Race at the Top’, a comprehensive study by Race for Opportunity on black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) representation in leadership in UK business, concluded that there had been virtually no ethnicity change in top management positions in British business in the five years between 2007 and 2012.* In a letter to the British government, Sandra Kerr – the CEO of Race for Opportunity – urged them to deal with this problem as a matter of urgency before it was too late:

By 2051, one in five people in the UK will be from an ethnic minority background, representing a scale of consumer spending and political voting power that business and government alike cannot afford to ignore. The gap must not be allowed to widen further, but without action little will change. I am calling on government for a review to amplify understanding around the barriers BAME employees face in reaching management positions, and for two simple words – ‘and race’ – to be added to the UK Corporate Governance Code. We urgently need this to happen if we are to ensure that we don’t pass the point of no return.†

94.5%: the percentage of police officers in England and Wales who are white*.

If governments heed such stark warnings, if we can undo the centuries of false racial programming and teach our children the scientific truth of our common ancestry and foster a wealth of role models for young black men at home and in the media, then maybe, just maybe, the achievements of men like Barack Obama can become the standard, rather than the exception to the rule.

ACTION POINT: Watch Ava DuVernay’s documentary, 13th

DISCUSSION POINT: Should positive discrimination be employed to ensure ethnic minorities are represented proportionally in the police service and justice system?

CHAPTER TWO

Brown Is the New Black

‘Conquering others shows strength, but conquering one’s self shows true power.’

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

If the Obama presidency has been the modern defining global event for aspiring black males, then terrorism has been the defining dictate of the Western view of ‘other’ Muslim men. It has arguably led to Muslim men overtaking black men as primary figures of fear: ‘brown’ has become the new ‘black’. This group is the most diverse of the ‘other’ male groups, covering a wide variety of ethnicities, nationalities, and socioeconomic groups, with Islam being the world’s second biggest faith. However, in the modern collective Western psyche there are only really two kinds of Muslim men: those who will harm us, and those who probably won’t. And nobody seems to know the difference.

Integrate or separate?

Though the religion’s main presence has been in the Middle East, Islam has had a longstanding presence in the West, predominantly in mainland Europe, where rulers and warlords of Muslim faith ruled over Christian populations before extending to parts of Asia and Africa. This led to periods of Holy Wars in the medieval era, as well as phases of coexistence between Muslim and Christian populations. Fast forward to the twentieth century – post Second World War – and we have Muslims migrating from Africa and Asia to Christian America and to Christian/secular Europe.

Muslims, for the most part, hail from countries that were less dominated by the West. So, unlike most colonized communities, Muslims were able to keep their language, faith, and customs rather than adopting European equivalents. This is something they were also able to maintain during modern migration, still retaining their faith in predominantly Christian and secular societies. Many also chose to retain the language and style of dress of their country of origin, protecting, in theory, a clear cultural identity and sense of belonging. So we have a scenario in which the British Muslim male child finds himself in a Western society where he is visibly different, sometimes in dress as well as beliefs and complexion, and with a family at home who often wish to retain many aspects of their original culture. As is the case with most immigrant communities, Muslim families wish their young men to gain acceptance and develop the ability to pursue success and support a family of their own. To this end, many young Muslim men will study diligently and embark upon a career path and seek the same respect, recognition, and acceptance that we all strive for.

For some it’s not acceptance at any cost, however, and as we’ve seen with black men, when ‘other’ men feel excluded by the main culture, they form a subculture. British Muslim communities tend to be close-knit, and they have a strong economic presence, especially in London, that provides a back-up option for those who may fall outside the confines of wider society.* So the question for these young British Muslim men is in fact not so dissimilar to the one the British people have recently faced in their relationship to their European neighbours: integrate or separate?

15%: the proportion of Muslim prisoners in 2015 (up from 8% in 2002)*.

Let’s be clear: the vast majority of Muslim men have chosen integration, while still proudly retaining their Muslim identity. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and nor should there be. Keith Ellison, Mahershala Ali, Aziz Ansari, Hasan Minhaj, and Reza Aslan in the US, Zayn Malik, Rageh Omaar, Mo Farah, Sajid Javid, Riz Ahmed, Adil Ray, and London’s mayor Sadiq Khan in the UK are all examples of Muslim men who have made a contribution and commitment to their respective countries, while celebrating their Muslim identity.

However, on 11 September 2001 the question of the integration of Muslim men suddenly became acutely urgent. If you happened to be a Muslim man – indigenous or otherwise – failing to display visible signs of integration into Western society, you immediately became an object of suspicion and fear. In fact, you didn’t necessarily have to be Muslim – just of a light brown complexion and rushing to work, as in the tragic case of Jean Charles de Menezes, who, on 22 July 2005 (two weeks after the London 7/7 bombings), was mistakenly identified as a potential suicide bomber and shot dead by a team of armed police at Stockwell Tube Station in London. We have reached a point where society has demonized these people in the worst possible way, assuming Muslim men are a threat to our lives and the lives of others.

The backlash against Muslims following the rise of terrorist incidents by Muslim men born in Western countries has been phenomenal, and is probably the greatest challenge to date to our Western model of secular multiculturalism. In response, both Muslim communities and the Western societies they are part of have become vulnerable to extremist views from each side of the argument. The rise of populism has destabilized the political and liberal centre ground in many Western countries, and Muslim men across the socioeconomic groups find themselves on the fault line. For all our sakes we must face the epic twofold challenge in front of us: to tackle the root causes that lead Muslim men to become radicalized in the first place, and to quash the Islamophobia that has reared its ugly head in response.

Five times: the amount more media coverage a terrorist incident receives if the perpetrator is Muslim.*

The route to radicalization

We know that poverty, lack of employment opportunities, and alienation from wider Western society offer a more direct route to radicalization. When disenfranchised young Muslim men, who do not identify with their parents’ interpretation of their faith or with mainstream Islam, can opt for a political extremist interpretation, which resonates with their anger over Western foreign policy towards Muslims around the world, everyone is at risk – especially the young men themselves. Our lack of diversity has a lot to answer for.

However, poverty and lack of opportunity is not the only route to radicalization, as well-educated and relatively affluent Muslim men have also embraced and acted on extremist views. This is difficult for liberals and centrists in the secular West to reconcile. How can Muslim men who have been afforded the opportunity to be part of Western society and been rewarded for their contribution opt to actively work towards the destruction of that society? Indeed, the destruction of their neighbours, colleagues, and fellow citizens who, you would assume, are also friends and acquaintances? You’d think that religious freedom, democracy, and the opportunity to achieve prosperity is a pretty good deal. We’ve covered all the bases, right? All the things that should matter to them? What are we supposed to do?

Sadly, it’s never that simple. Growing up in East London, I witnessed the insidious creep of radicalization and its divisive effects first-hand. I had friends at college who I suspect became radicalized before I even knew what that meant. They became estranged from their friends, were told they needed to separate themselves from ‘infidels’ in order to get closer to God. Their style of dress and patterns of behaviour changed, and they became strangers, while we became ‘others’ to them. These were young men we had all previously socialized with and considered friends. Our teachers had no idea how to reach out to them, and neither did we. But we shrugged our shoulders and continued on our life journeys, as it’s only natural that some friends will drop off as we progress from adolescence to adulthood. So what if those who ‘dropped off’ happened to be disenfranchised Muslims with an underlying resentment of Western foreign policy? Who cares?

Well, Londoners did on 7 July 2005 when our citizens were killed and maimed by fellow citizens, for whom Britain was their home but no longer where their hearts resided. I would later discover that two of the bombing suspects had attended a mosque not far from where I grew up.

Twelve years later, London and its global visitors would face the same horror again, but the Westminster terror attack on 22 March 2017 forced us to rethink our assumptions of those most likely to do us harm. We’d always thought young Muslim men were the danger – radicalized, impulsive, and with not too much to lose – but this time the perpetrator was not a young man and neither was he born a Muslim. He was a 52-year-old mixed-race male born Adrian Elms, and was a late convert to Islam. Having previously been imprisoned at Her Majesty’s pleasure several times for violent attacks, he drove a car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge and went on to stab Police Constable Keith Palmer, killing four people in total.

This atrocity, as well as the murder of MP Jo Cox in June 2016 by 52-year-old far-right extremist Thomas Mair, and the Finsbury Park attack on 19 June 2017, perpetrated by 47-year-old Darren Osborne – both middle-aged, non-Muslim men – have proved that radicalization in all its forms – be it Islamism, far-right extremism, or Islamophobia – is equally dangerous and that the profile of a ‘terrorist’ is far broader than we thought. It seems some men do not grow out of violence but rather into it, and isolation and exclusion from society leaves them and us vulnerable to the impact of the indiscriminate violence of terrorism.

The multifaceted threat we all now face, not just from terrorism but from extremist responses to it, became disturbingly apparent just two months after the Westminster attack, when the city of Manchester fell victim to perhaps the most heinous of terror attacks so far; this time the target was children – mainly young girls attending the concert of pop sensation Ariana Grande. The devastation resulted in 22 fatalities and 59 injured. And to make matters worse, following the Manchester atrocity there was a reported 500 per cent surge in Islamophobic attacks in Greater Manchester. This is something we must denounce with all our might. We have to stand up for compassion and the rule of law, even when it is hardest to do in the face of hostility – in fact, this is when it’s most important. Less than two weeks after the Manchester attack, London was hit again, this time on London Bridge and in nearby Borough Market, where people were enjoying a night out in cafés and restaurants. The attack lasted just eight minutes, thanks to the brave and speedy acts of the police, but in that short space of time, three young Muslim men armed with knives were able to murder eight innocent victims – from Britain, Australia, France, Canada, and Spain – and injure an additional 48. And again, the police reported a 40 per cent increase in Islamophobic attacks immediately afterwards. London still stands as the multicultural jewel in the United Kingdom’s crown – but the threat to our unity remains.

This is where we must consider the devastating effects of a lack of diversity not only on the minority who are excluded, but also on wider society. And of course the problem is not unique to the UK and US. In recent years Europe has also experienced numerous horrific incidents of Islamist terrorism that have left the world stunned and citizens traumatized. The civil wars in Iraq and Syria have been used by purveyors of a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam to attract young European Muslim men and women to travel to these war-torn regions, and this in turn creates a challenge for the authorities: what to do with returning citizens who may pose a terrorist threat following weapons training and potential involvement in atrocities? Some suggestions I’ve heard here in the UK have been that we should remove passports, revoke citizenship from dual nationals, or imprison without trial. I understand the desire and the need in some cases for harsh measures. But these are short-term responses when what we need is a long-term solution: prevention. We must explore other options, since marginalizing these men and allowing them to be ‘other’ exposes them to the very extremism that many would not turn to if fully accepted and supported by society.

The route to integration

So what can we do to tackle this proliferation of radicalization? How about the tough love approach? What about banning burkas and burkinis (French proposals) and enforced English language tests for Muslim mothers (a British proposal advocated by David Cameron)? Oh wait, all those proposed measures, supposedly aimed at dealing with the threat of extremist Muslim men, target Muslim women instead – how unfortunate. How about a ‘Muslim travel ban’, as ordered by the Trump administration in early 2017? Well, according to UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd, this gave ISIS a ‘propaganda opportunity’ – and the evidence suggests that the more we isolate or alienate a particular group, the more vulnerable to extremism they are. Again, all these measures are short-term and short-sighted, and motivated as they are by Islamophobia and prejudice, they relegate all Muslim men to the category of ‘other’.

We have allowed this fear to prevent us from applying the one thing we haven’t yet tried: diversity, inclusion, and tolerance – allowing these men to truly belong. Surely, to transform the minds of these radicalized young men we must create a powerful and undeniable counter-narrative to extremism? Believe it or not, some political decisions can be guided by compassion and love as much as self-interest, even though we shy away from this in the face of right-wing pressure. This is where we offer something the extremists can’t.

A brilliant initiative that shows how this can be done is currently underway in Denmark. After Britain, Denmark has the second largest number of its citizens fighting in Syria, and Steffen Nielsen – a crime prevention adviser in the country – is trying a fresh approach to reach out to them. He has helped develop an innovative rehabilitation programme for young radicalized Danish Muslims, offering them a second chance and the opportunity to be reintegrated back into Danish society. The programme runs in collaboration with welfare services and police in Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city. Ex-radicals are offered intense therapy and psychological treatment, mentors, and assistance with rebuilding their lives by finding work or accessing further education. The programme also provides support for their families.

Nielsen is the first to admit that the programme is still ‘trial and error’. However, he is committed to this rehabilitative approach, even though not all of the political class in Denmark approve. ‘We are experiencing more political pressure to do something more like the British stuff,’ said Nielsen – revoking British passports, etc. ‘The entire political debate is rife with simplifications. You can choose to shut them out and say, “Okay, you chose to be a jihadist, we can’t use you any more.” Or you can take the inclusive way and say, “Okay, there is always a door if you want to be a contributing member to society.” Not because we are nice people, but because we think that is what works.’*

It’s an important point. The problem is far too complex to try only one approach, and we cannot assume there is no way back for those young European citizens who feel disenfranchised and have chosen hatred as a means of finding purpose and meaning. Men who perpetrate violence are, after all, themselves victims of their own violence, whether they die by their own actions – flying a plane of innocent people into a building or detonating a suicide bomb – or are killed or imprisoned by the authorities.

Prominent anti-extremist campaigner and LBC presenter Maajid Nawaz, a former jihadist himself, has clear views on what needs to be done and believes it’s a process we all need to participate in: ‘The only way we can challenge Islamism,’ he says, ‘is to engage with one another. We need to make it as abhorrent as racism has become today. Only then will we stem the tide of angry young Muslims who turn to hate.’

Maajid is not alone. British Muslim businessman Iqbal Wahhab, has put this idea into practice and made it his personal mission to help rehabilitate disenfranchised men by giving them work and responsibility. Through his thriving restaurant Roast (which coincidentally is based in Borough Market, the second location of the London Bridge attack), Iqbal hires ex-offenders and helps train them for a career in the food industry. You can read about one of his most heartening success stories, Mohammed, a young Muslim who now manages a chain of busy cafés, at www.Diversify.org. It’s a clear example of the key role the business community can play in helping to steer at-risk men onto a productive path.

It’s ironic that the day after the Westminster attack we buried former IRA commander and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Martin McGuinness – initially a man of violence and a former terrorist who then became a statesman and a man of peace. It took many years to end the violence in Northern Ireland, precisely because we weren’t prepared to examine and address the causes of it. I recognize that reaching out to men of violence is never easy or palatable, but violence comes from vulnerability and the inability to achieve aims by other means, so we need to recognize this in potential perpetrators and work with them to achieve much more benign aims, so that we’re not all left to deal with the tragic aftermath of their frustrations.

Of course, when faced with destructive acts of terror, there is an understandable urge to err on the side of enforcement. Those involved in such heinous crimes obviously must be severely prosecuted – but we cannot ignore that there is also a contingent who have lost their way and have not yet reached the point of no return. These young men are British citizens. So what do we do with them? This is the question that determines who we are. Which path do we choose? Rehabilitation or retribution? Our future safety depends on how we answer.

ACTION POINT: Find out when the next #VisitMyMosque day is, go along and meet local Muslims (if you are a non-Muslim yourself).

DISCUSSION POINT: How would Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ have been received if it had been proposed before 9/11?

CHAPTER THREE

Whitewashed Out

‘A working-class hero is something to be.’

John Lennon

The last of the ‘other’ men I am going to look at is by no means the least. They are probably the most powerful group politically and, unlike black and Muslim men, they are not a minority. In fact, they are a sizeable voting bloc who, when mobilized, have the ability to swing a referendum (as we saw with the Brexit vote in Britain) or take over a political party that is the bastion of the elite, as we saw with Trump’s triumph in the Republican primaries. This group has the potential, perhaps more than any ‘other’, to cause waves of social, political, and economic change: 72 per cent of non-college-educated white men voted for Trump*, and 70 per cent of those with only GCSEs or less voted to leave the EU.† Their status as ‘other’ comes not from their race or religion, but from that age-old British institution: class.

Both votes were an expression of white working-class men’s frustrations over globalization and the decline in their living standards. The winners on both sides of the pond were able to link this decline in living standards and employment opportunities to immigration. They successfully promoted fear of the ‘other’, inciting a revolt against the establishment by white working-class men in the UK and US – resulting, in some extreme cases, in violence.

Fear of the ‘other’ is not endemic or inevitable. The UK has not had the same history of segregation as the US, and ‘other’ ethnic groups in the UK have lived alongside the white working class for decades. White working-class men in the US even helped to elect the first African-American president in US history. So what’s changed?

White working-class men have been manipulated and discarded for political and economic expediency for longer than any of the other groups. They’ve been conscripted to colonize the Earth, to fight wars, and to fuel the industrialization of the West. And the reason they have endured these hardships and the exclusion from the full bounties enjoyed by the elites until recently is the unspoken agreement of entitlement – the idea that they, like the people who rule them, are the indigenous group, and are therefore entitled to a modest but credible standard of living, provided they are willing to work. It’s not an unreasonable expectation by any means, considering the contribution they and their predecessors have made to their nation’s prosperity, but somewhere along the way that unspoken agreement has been broken by the ruling class, and it’s left a lot of working-class white men behind. So how exactly did this happen, and what can we do to heal these wounds and regain the trust that has been lost?

The lost world

If you were lucky enough to grow up in a white working-class area in East London as I did, you will have experienced a real community. This area endured the Blitz during the Second World War, so I grew up among a community of elders for whom being a good neighbour was part of survival. If a bomb dropped on your home, it was one of your neighbours who would shelter you and your family. Britain survived the war, and this is a badge of pride among white working-class men, especially if your grandfather served. And this pride and strong sense of community, along with standing up for yourself and your country, doing a good day’s graft (usually manual work), and a willingness to appreciate your lot, were values instilled in white working-class males as standard.

And so they just got on with it. The blue-collar vocations laid out for them did not require higher education, focusing much more on practical and skills-based learning. Back then, the economy had a clear place for this group of men – there would be a job at a local factory where many of their mates worked, and there they would stay until retirement. A lack of social mobility was not a deal-breaker for white working-class men as long as they had employment and their way of life remained unchanged.

But change was in the air, whether they liked it or not. As soon as the elites in Europe and America came to realize that the movement of industry and people was required to maintain their margins as the rest of the world started to develop, the argument that the indigenous population should be entitled to work for a fair day’s pay became worthless. The need to meet the demand for labour after the war ushered in immigration, nearly always in working-class communities. Some working-class men did resent the newcomers, fearing change as many people do, but most welcomed migrants into their homes, local pubs, and families. Some even marched in solidarity with these new immigrants against far-right groups. It’s fair to say that the response to Windrush, the ship that brought one of the first groups of post-Second World War immigrants to the UK, and the subsequent waves of immigration that followed, was mixed across the country. But unlike in America, the overarching moral response was always ‘live and let live’, enabling Britain to claim the mantle of being a bastion of tolerance and diversity. However, this was based on the expectation that the ‘agreement’ between the working class and the elites would be upheld.

But as infrastructure in other parts of the world developed, it was no longer necessary to import labour and skills to the West, since we could just as easily export the working-class jobs to the rest of the world where costs (wages) were cheaper. Great for bosses and those with capital to invest; not so great for the white working-class male.

Fast-forward a few decades to the twenty-first century, and working-class neighbourhoods have experienced yet more dramatic change. The Thatcherite revolution in the UK, and Reaganomics in the US, oversaw deindustrialization of their respective industrial bases, resulting in the erosion of traditional white working-class jobs. Economically, the decline in manufacturing has hit the working-class male the hardest, demoting him in many cases from full-time breadwinner for his family and household. His jobs have been replaced by less well-paid and often part-time service sector jobs that (from a traditional male perspective) require skills aligned more with female workers. Many of these jobs are paid as zero hours contracts intended to supplement the family income, as opposed to replacing a bread-winner’s salary, yet in many cases this is exactly what has happened. The result is quite a come-down for the white working-class man: as a factory worker he took pride in the goods he made, which were shipped across the globe, but somehow making and serving lattes for a minimum wage doesn’t quite match up.

If white working-class males wanted to maintain their standard of living they would need to do what ‘foreign’ parents were demanding of their kids – work hard at school. But by now, white working-class males had the lowest levels of educational attainment and parents without a traditional reverence for higher education, and this trend continued.

A white working-class boy is less than half as likely to get five good GCSEs, including the core subjects, as the average student in England.*

At present, white working-class boys have the lowest literacy levels in British schools and are the least likely group to attend university. Throw in the free movement of higher-educated and skilled multilingual migrants from former communist Eastern Europe, with a couple of colourful demagogues who can spice up discontent with provocative statements, and we have ourselves a working-class populist revolt seasoned with an unfortunate taste of resentment. As an ardent pro-EU campaigner, I am disheartened to see the results of this shift to the right in Western democracies – but I also understand the legitimate concerns of those communities that have been failed by globalization. I have no criticism for the victims – they are the symptom, not the cause – and until we treat the cause, the symptoms will just get worse.

Toxic masculinity

A key exacerbating factor in the populist revolt we are now witnessing is the disenfranchised white working-class male’s notion of traditional masculinity. Within this subculture, authority tends to be spurned, and violence – often in the form of hooliganism – is deemed acceptable. Males in academia and office jobs are not viewed as ‘proper men’: they have soft hands, never break a sweat, and don’t build or make anything. They put on ‘airs and graces’ and work in offices where political correctness wins the day. The white working-class male prefers blunt straight-talking.

But what happens when the world moves on from this version of masculinity? Professor Michael Kimmel, a sociologist at Stony Brook University in New York, is one of the world’s leading authorities on masculinity. He examines the parallel phenomenon happening in the US in his book Angry White Men, and writes that many of the white working-class men from forgotten Rust Belt communities feel ‘betrayed by the country they love, discarded like trash on the side of the information superhighway’. In many ways the plight of the white working-class male may perhaps be the easiest to dissect in terms of understanding where the growing dissent comes from. According to Kimmel, the men he studied see positions that were once their birthright disappearing, and are no longer sure where they fit in the societal pecking order. They are white and male in a society that values those two attributes above all others – yet being white and male no longer has the same guarantees, at least not for white men who look and sound like them.

In adult men this state of confusion can lead to what Michael Kimmel describes as ‘aggrieved entitlement’, and the need for scapegoats in the form of ‘feminazis’ like Hillary Clinton or Mexican immigrants, who need to be ‘walled’ out of America in order to make the country ‘Great Again’.

This is not a new phenomenon: Kimmel’s book was written in 2013, long before the 2016 US election, and documentary filmmaker Michael Moore also tried to alert Liberals and Democrats about the anger that was building in rural communities up and down the country,* even predicting in his 2016 film, Michael Moore in Trumpland, that Trump would win. But it’s only now that the real scale of the problem is making itself apparent. Aside from the obvious political ramifications, in America it has also resulted in an alarming increase in early death rates among the middle-aged. This growing pandemic has been termed ‘deaths of despair’ by Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton.† They argue that there is a direct correlation between the economic decline of this group and a sharp rise in deaths caused by drugs, alcohol poisoning, and suicide.*

In part, the growing pushback against patriarchy and ‘toxic masculinity’ has made politicians reluctant to address the issues of white working-class boys in our education system. In a warped kind of way it’s easier to acknowledge inequality where women or people of colour are concerned, and harder to have that same level of concern for white males in a society that was designed to promote their dominance and progress. What we mustn’t forget is that not all white males have been beneficiaries of this system.

Daily Telegraph reporter Martin Daubney has been a passionate advocate for tackling this emergency. He believes the problem is in part due to a breakdown in the family structure in many of these communities, with high numbers of absent fathers and a serious lack of positive male role models.† Daubney also thinks that we need a larger number of male teachers from this background who can fill the void – currently 85 per cent of teachers are female. The general consensus is that ‘boisterous’ masculine energy is often viewed as ‘disruptive or destructive’ in the classroom, and cuts to physical activities in our schools mean we no longer have an adequate outlet for this energy. Daubney advocates a similar programme to the ‘Young Men’s Initiative’ in New York, designed to train and promote more black male teachers in New York schools. He believes it is vital that we encourage more white working-class men into teaching.

Indeed, had a concerted effort been made by governments through education and training to ensure that white working-class men (and in fact all ‘other’ groups) were adequately equipped and able to benefit from globalization rather than becoming victims of it, this erosion of faith in the system and anti-establishment rage in the West could have been averted. Had the impact of migration been more evenly distributed and integration more carefully managed in the UK, so that traditional white working-class areas had not changed beyond recognition, this could have addressed the resentment.

And lastly, if a genuine effort had been made to accommodate and accept working-class values and culture rather than neglecting them, we may have achieved a much higher degree of social mobility within this group. Instead, we have marginalized frustrated young white men, who have gone from being part of the national culture to a subculture wrapped up in a crumpled English flag, unfairly characterized as work-shy, nostalgic, and parochial.

The rise of extremism

The crisis that this subculture is in has reached fever pitch in recent years, and the urgency with which we must deal with it has become painfully apparent, not just because of the political ructions it’s caused with Trump and Brexit, but because of the alarming rise in far-right extremism that we’ve seen come with it. Who could forget the horror of 16 June 2016, when the MP Jo Cox was murdered by far-right extremist Thomas Mair, shouting ‘Britain first’? Before his wife was murdered, Brendan Cox had actually been studying this frightening trend. Speaking a year after Jo’s passing at the 2017 Amnesty International General Meeting, he warned of the grave challenge facing us and issued a clarion call to all those who believe in a fair and inclusive society:

We are facing a new threat today – one that we still haven’t fully appreciated. We have got into the absurd position of celebrating fascists coming second in national elections, rather than first, as if that is a great outcome.

I’m not suggesting that we become defeatist, but unless we are clear about the size and scale of the challenge, we will be defeated by it.

As well as understanding the scale of the problem – we must also call it what it is. Populism is too kind a term. In fact, in most countries these groups we refer to as populist are consistently unpopular.

More importantly, the people who lead these movements are not populists – they are racists, bigots, and xenophobes, intent on tearing our communities apart. And we should call them out for what they are.

The threat of rising far-right extremism is real and it isn’t going to go away quickly. But with resolution, a concerted attempt to reach out, and a focus on building closer communities, we can and we will defeat it.

These so-called ‘populist’ leaders have manipulated and exploited the genuine concerns of a group who are witnessing their traditional way of life evaporating in front of their eyes, and who haven’t been given the right tools to adapt to this change. Fuelled by a ‘Cause Conspiracy’ ignited by the dangerous rhetoric of a new breed of charismatic social-media-savvy demagogues, there has been an exponential increase in far-right membership and incidents. In the UK alone, the ‘suspected far-right extremists flagged to the Government’s key anti-terror programme soared by 30 per cent in the past year’.*

Having a cause to get behind is one of the most powerful of all callings, especially for men who are often lacking in words and therefore prefer action. Our ‘other’ young men who are excluded due to race, class or religion are all more vulnerable to radicalization and the rhetoric of causes, which will supposedly give their life greater significance while at the same time putting it in jeopardy.

America is facing its own issues with a rise in white supremacy movements. Having experienced first-hand the uplifting feeling of unity in Virginia during Obama’s 2008 election, watching the clashes between the far-right extremists and anti-racism protesters in Charlottesville on the news 10 years later filled me with dread; it felt like America had gone back in time, to racial tensions and the strife of the sixties. We had reverted to arguing over whether to celebrate Confederate generals who fought to keep slavery. We were, once again, seeing the KKK marching with lit torches – only this time the marchers were brazen enough to do so without hoods.

This against a background of the mass incarceration of African Americans and their falling victim to countless acts of police brutality and shootings. The one difference with the 1960s is that the then President Lyndon B. Johnson, when faced with the decision of whether to pander to his core base or lead the country to better tomorrow, chose the latter. He paid a price in losing the support of some Southern states, but he took an important step in America’s redemption and progression.

Unfortunately, the current President’s response to overt racism has been tentative at best. He took 48 hours to condemn the violence of the white supremacist protesters and the senseless murder of 32-year-old Heather Hayer, an anti-racism protester, at the suspected hands of James Alex Fields Jr, a far-right extremist and accused domestic terrorist.

Many of these far-right extremists were courted shamelessly by Trump during his campaign as they lapped up his rhetoric on Muslims and Mexicans. However, once in office, his chickens had come home to roost and he found himself in the difficult position of having to denounce them, albeit two days too late. Trump must now address the real issues affecting white working-class men in America: the fears from a changing world where their dominance is diminishing. What’s needed are realistic solutions that allow everyone to thrive in the modern world rather than return America to an older, more racist and less progressive nation. The country has come too far to turn back now.

And there are of course many correlations between radicalized Islamists and radicalized white supremacists. If you explore the lives of many of the perpetrators, it is clear that they were excluded men looking for deeper meaning in their lives, even if that meant ending it and hurting countless innocents in the process. Their lives, as they were, were clearly not worth much, and this was the only way to give them purpose. Radicalized men from opposing sides, ironically working towards the same aim.

A different script

If the Finsbury Park mosque attack (when, targeting a Mosque on 19 June 2017 in the ethnically diverse North London neighbourhood of Finsbury Park, which was over 300 miles away from his home in Wales, Darren Osborne acquired a van and drove it into Muslim worshippers during early-morning Ramadan prayers) showed us one thing, however, it’s that we can change the prescribed narrative surrounding this pattern of behaviour. According to the existing script, the enraged mob at the Finsbury Park mosque, fuelled by fear and a desire for revenge, should have then butchered this lone assailant, fuelling more fear and mistrust. But that’s not how it happened. Mohammed Mahmoud, the imam of the mosque, calmed and reasoned with the crowd and protected the terrorist from attack until the police arrived to make an arrest. Mahmoud was later dubbed a ‘hero’ by the British press and was personally thanked by Prince Charles when he visited the mosque days after the attack. Thousands of Londoners would also show their solidarity with the Muslim community by participating in a flower march the following evening and delivering thousands of bouquets to the mosque.

This is a prime example of how extremism can be fought. This was homegrown terrorism that failed to divide society because good Muslim men were prepared to stand up for compassion and the rule of law, and because the people of London came together in support of this ‘other’ community. Where radicalization is concerned, there is more than one side involved. The conspirators show no sign of quitting, so neither must we in fighting for the values we hold dear.

It’s clear that we can no longer sit back and ignore the disintegration that is brewing in white working-class communities both in the UK and US; it’s their values that for centuries have been the bedrock of British and American society, after all. The traditional values of the white working class are translatable into any setting: loyalty to a cause, hard work, and a grim determination; they are attributes that we want not only in our employees and citizens, but in our leaders and bosses, our friends and family. If we can harness these qualities, equip these men with the education and skills they need to contribute to this new globalized world, and show that they are valued, then the damage that is currently being wrought at every level can be prevented and reversed. Now that’s a cause worth pursuing.

ACTION POINT: Find out how many university degrees are open to applicants without A-levels.

DISCUSSION POINT: What job do you instinctively think of a white working-class man doing?

The Other Way

‘If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.’

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If you are one of the ‘other’ men reading this, then I thank you for persevering in the face of life’s obstacles. I hope I have given an accurate account of your plight – generalizations notwithstanding. To the rest of us who regard these ‘other’ men as ‘them’ rather than ‘us’, I would say this: there is another way.

To create a new normal, each of us must change the way we see, treat and include the ‘other’ man – to break down the stereotypes that we ourselves have created based on nothing more than outward appearances. Equally, we must turn our attention to class: in a report entitled ‘Elitist Britain’ by the UK Government’s Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, it was concluded that elitism was so ingrained in British society ‘that it could be called “social engineering”’. Too often, this is at the expense of the ‘other’ man.

And across all three of these ‘other’ groups, we must reassess our understanding of ‘masculinity’ in the round. As we’ve seen, these men inhabit their respective subcultures where their own rules and norms apply, which will often conflict with mainstream values – particularly the acceptance of violence as being part of a man’s DNA. If we can help change the script within these subcultures about what a man ‘ought’ to be, then we can surely help to stem the flow of violence that often spills out into the world as a result of their frustrations.

On a wider scale, the issues society has with its ‘other’ men are ingrained and complex, and we require effective leadership to fully address them. We need politicians and policy makers who are not just driven by self-interest, but are willing to make tough decisions and take the long-term approach needed to fix these problems. Our ‘other’ men trigger three of the toughest issues that society is yet to reconcile: race, religion, and class. However, there are countless examples of regeneration and integration programmes that have been proven to work (go to www.Diversify.org to see the remarkable case study of Braddock, Pennsylvania, where Mayor John Fetterman is spearheading a fantastic regeneration drive of this ailing steel town). What they show is that it’s only by turning our attention to marginalized groups such as the ‘other’ man that we can reach our full potential as a society, and that when we get it right, we all benefit.

THE OTHER MAN:

The Numbers

Disparities in earnings and unemployment in the UK and the USA *

Disparities in rates of incarceration *

Facts and figures

• 15%: the proportion of Muslim prisoners in 2015 up from 8% in 2002.

• The Young Report of 2014 found that ‘Most of the prisoners we met with all said that they experienced differential treatment as a result of their race, ethnicity or faith. Black prisoners felt that they were stereotyped as drug dealers and Muslim prisoners as terrorists’.

• 50%: according to Unlocking America, if African American and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rates as whites, today’s prison and jail populations would decline by a half.

• 12%: the percentage of drug users in the USA who are African American, but 38% of arrests for drug offences and 59% of those in state prison for a drug offence are African American.

• Twice as likely: the Pew Research Center finds that, in the USA, blacks are twice as likely to be in poverty as whites.

• 50%: the percentage of Muslim households in poverty in the UK, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, compared to the national average of 18%

THE FIRST DEGREE OF INTEGRATION

Challenge Your Ism

‘Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.’

James Baldwin

We all have so many ‘isms’ that keep us apart; isms that are buried so deeply within us that we are unaware of them and their ramifications on ourselves and others: race-ism, sex-ism, class-ism, sectarian-ism, age-ism … the list is endless. And all of us are guilty, myself included (mine, of course, being tattoo-ism).

If you had asked me five years ago to name my ism, I would genuinely have told you I didn’t have one. This, in fact, was one of the things I prided myself on the most: my self-perceived ‘open-mindedness’. For most of my life, I have happily revelled in this bubble of self-satisfaction, and never felt the need to partake in an inventory of my own limiting beliefs.

How many of us question our beliefs and the way we see the world, and whether or not these beliefs prevent us from being the best we can be? Are these beliefs even our own, or have they been passed down to us by our parents and our surroundings? Are they logical? And, most importantly, do they best serve us, society, and humanity? How often do we ask ourselves, ‘Should I hold these beliefs? If not, do I want to do anything about it?’ These questions are much deeper than surface prejudices – they go to the core of the way we think.

Having said that, isms are a two-way street, and the responsibility for change does not solely lie at the door of the instigator. Isms require both parties to subscribe to the stereotype. It takes one party to apply the label, but it can only hold relevance if the other side accepts the label. In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.’

Recognizing half-truths and our role in perpetuating them is at the core of Degree One in the Six Degrees of Integration. Accepting our individual responsibility for stereotypes gives us the power to challenge them. So, what are your isms? Are you sexist? Are you class-ist? Do you have a race-ism? A gay-ism? The Ism Questionnaire below has been put together by the Centre for Social Investigation at Nuffield College, Oxford, to get to the heart of your beliefs.*

So take five minutes to reflect – and be honest in how you answer the questions, no matter how uncomfortable or embarrassing it may be. Only by identifying our prejudices can we confront them. If you turn to page 381 you’ll see that, whatever your view, you are not alone. Absolute honesty is the only way to begin the process of change.

The Ism Questionnaire

Attitudes towards other political views

1. As far as you are concerned personally, how important is it to try to understand the reasoning of people with other opinions?

Choose a number between 1 and 7, where 1 is ‘Not at all important’ and 7 is ‘Very important’.

2. How would you feel if you had a son or daughter who married a Conservative?

Not upset at all

Somewhat upset

Very upset

Not sure

3. How would you feel if you had a son or daughter who married someone who was Labour?

Not upset at all

Somewhat upset

Very upset

Not sure

Attitudes towards ethnicity and race

4. Do you think some races or ethnic groups are born less intelligent than others?

Yes/No

5. Do you think some races or ethnic groups are born harder working than others?

Yes/No

6. Would you say that some cultures are much better than others, or that all cultures are equal?

Some cultures are much better than others

All cultures are equal

7. How much would you mind or not mind if a person from another country who is of a different race or ethnic group was appointed as your boss?

Choose a number between 0 and 10, where 0 is ‘I wouldn’t mind at all’ and 10 is ‘I would mind a lot’

8. How much would you mind or not mind if a person from another country who is of a different race or ethnic group married a close relative of yours?

Choose a number between 0 and 10, where 0 is ‘I wouldn’t mind at all’ and 10 is ‘I would mind a lot’

Attitudes towards gender, family life, and sexuality

9. All in all, family life suffers when the woman has a full-time job?

Disagree

Agree

10. A man’s job is to earn money; a woman’s job is to look after the home and family.

Disagree

Agree

11. A working mother can establish just as warm and secure a relationship with her children as a mother who does not work.

Disagree

Agree

12. One parent can bring up a child as well as two parents together.

Disagree

Agree

13. A same-sex female couple can bring up a child as well as a male-female couple.

Disagree

Agree

General ism questions

14. Do you think your opinion of people might be swayed by social class, even if in subtle ways (style of dress, way of talking)?

Yes/No

15. Would you have concerns if a girlfriend of yours starting dating a Muslim man?

Yes/No

16. Imagine you are a businessperson about to negotiate a deal with a company: would you rather deal with a businessman or a businesswoman in your negotiations? If you have a preference, why?

Businessman/Businesswoman

Reason:

17. Would you want to make friends with someone with different political beliefs to you? If not, why not?

Yes/No

Reason:

18. Can you remember any moments in life that changed your worldview? Were you influenced by someone ‘other’ from outside your social circle?

Yes/No

Details:

19. Imagine you meet a friend’s 3-year-old daughter for the first time: would you compliment her for wearing something pretty? Is there something better to say?

Yes/No

Details:

20. Have you ever made a judgement about someone based on their appearance and been really wrong?

Yes/No

Additional questions can also be found at our website: www.Diversify.org

PART TWO

THE OTHER WOMAN

‘Stereotype of females begins when the doctor says: ‘It’s a girl’.’

Shirley Chrisholm

The Old Way

In 1969, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm delivered a powerfully emotive speech to the House of Representatives demanding ‘Equal Rights for Women’. She remarked:

The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says: ‘It’s a girl.’ At present, our country needs women’s idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else.*

Heeding her own advice, three years later Chisholm would become the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, and the first African-American to run as a major party’s nomination for President of the United States.

It was 1972 and, alas, America was not yet ready for a woman, let alone a black woman as bold as she; her presidential bid was ridiculed, laughed at, and met with cynicism and disdain by most of the elite. But even so, Chisholm still managed to secure 151 delegates in the Democratic primaries. As a prominent member of both the civil rights and women’s movements, her courage and belief in the possibility of change helped pave the way for a Barack Obama and a Hillary Rodham Clinton. She most certainly lived up to her gutsy tagline of ‘Unbought and Unbossed’ – she famously espoused that ‘if they don’t give you a seat at the table then bring a folding chair’ – but Chisholm was the exception and, unfortunately, her remarks are still as relevant today as they were in 1969. Because it’s true that when a child is born and the doctor says, ‘It’s a girl’, that tiny, innocent miracle already has the odds stacked against her and will have to play on a field that most certainly isn’t level.

Women are the largest oppressed group in the world, and the degrees of subjugation vary from country to country, with women in the West faring much better than their counterparts in developing parts of the world. In their 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, Nicholas Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, argue that: ‘In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world.’ A struggle it may be, but it’s one that will be 100 per cent worth it, given the rewards that are to be won. So, in this section, I will challenge the idea of women as ‘other’, and argue that the results – personal, cultural, and economic – of diversifying gender will be spectacularly beneficial, for women, for men, and for society as a whole.

CHAPTER ONE

In the Boardroom

‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.’

Marianne Williamson

On 29 May 1851, a heckler disrupted the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention, leaving the room stunned with a speech that would go down in history as one of the most iconic feminist speeches of all time.

The heckler was Sojourner Truth. Born a slave 54 years earlier, she was the complete antithesis of the aristocratic women who had gathered there to discuss female emancipation. Her ‘Ain’t I a woman?’ speech was unapologetic, courageous, and humorous, and it brought the audience to their feet with rapturous applause. Sojourner Truth’s powerful words of female empowerment were a clarion call then as they still are now:

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne 13 children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [A member of the audience whispers ‘intellect’.] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with women’s rights or negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.*

Those final words are still being quoted centuries later. Sojourner Truth’s breathtaking performance at the convention would thrust her into the limelight and turn her into an icon for both gender and racial equality. A year later, she would meet Harriet Beecher Stowe – one of the celebrated abolitionists and feminists of the day – and these two great women would discuss women’s rights. In 1863, Beecher Stowe wrote an article in the Atlantic Weekly about their encounter, entitled ‘Sojourner Truth – the Libyan Sibyl’. She quoted Truth as saying: ‘If women want any rights more than they’s got, why don’t they just take them, and not be talking about it.’ If only it were that simple.

Imposter syndrome

The truth is, the gender confidence gap is real. For centuries, women have been told that they are not good enough to receive an education, not good enough to be able to vote, not good enough to have the same jobs, power, and pay as men. They have been told this so often that deep down they have learned to believe it, even though their conscious mind knows it isn’t true. So sometimes we women are our own worst barrier to change due to our learned self-criticism, our internalized misogyny, which cements our status as the ‘other’ woman – someone who never feels quite at home with success. As a starting point, we must learn to confront this self-criticism in order to embrace a diverse society.

Introducing Agyness

Truth’s courageous attitude in relation to equality is way ahead of many twenty-first-century women, even though we have far more opportunities than she could ever have dreamed of. So many of us still suffer from ‘Imposter Syndrome’, perfectly described by Sheryl Sandberg in her 2013 book, Lean In:

Many people, but especially women, feel fraudulent when they are praised for their accomplishments. Instead of feeling worthy of recognition, they feel undeserving and guilty, as if a mistake has been made. Despite being high achievers, even experts in their fields, women can’t seem to shake the sense that it is only a matter of time until they are found out for who they really are – impostors with limited skills or abilities.*

This form of female professional insecurity is something I thoroughly relate to. I spend hours on the phone with one of my dear friends, dissecting the multiple layers of this syndrome, which can manifest in a range of ways – from simple self-deprecation to all-out self-sabotage.

We decided the best way to tackle our Imposter Syndrome was to name and shame it, sort of like Beyoncé–Sasha Fierce in reverse. The only name suitable for such a destructive foe? Agyness (with no offence to any Agynesses out there). And the funny thing with Agyness is that she is unpredictable; you have no idea when she is going to rear her pernicious head. And, when she does, she can wreak havoc.

70%: the percentage of girls who believe that they are ‘not good enough’ in some way (including looks, education, and relationships).*

4%: the percentage of CEO positions held by women across Fortune 500 companies.†

I remember, a while back, Agyness had tricked me into believing she was finally gone for good. I had been overdosing on ‘you can do it’ books and thought I was permanently rid of her. While riding this Agyness-free wave, I was invited by Bill Clinton’s team to present at his annual Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) opening gala. The line-up included Matt Damon, Eva Longoria, Angélique Kidjo, Carlos Slim, and many more luminaries from the worlds of business, public life, entertainment, and philanthropy. I was brimming with excitement, and felt no nerves as I casually made small talk backstage with former president Clinton, then San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and the actress Rosario Dawson. I felt a million dollars as I waltzed onto the stage in a black-beaded evening gown to introduce Seal, who was performing that evening. Perhaps, I thought, I was finally worthy enough to rendezvous in these revered circles … Wrong!

The next day, during the CGI preliminary session, Agyness returned with a bang. President Obama was delivering a speech on women and gender equality, so the room was packed full. Even so, somehow among the 600 or so people, I managed to sit next to Jochen Zeitz, former CEO of Sport & Lifestyle for the Kering Group (owners of luxury fashion brands such as Gucci, Puma, and Alexander McQueen). Jochen has been a real pioneer in ethical fashion and is the co-founder of The B-Team with Sir Richard Branson – an organization that is committed to business fairness. So, needless to say, I’m a huge fan of his work. For months I’d been trying to secure him as a speaker at a conference I was organizing and was having difficulty finding the best route to reach him – and here it had been handed to me on a plate.

As I opened my mouth to introduce myself, Agyness took over and I froze. I couldn’t speak, my palms began to sweat, and I was overcome with insecurity and self-doubt. Agyness was on a roll, bombarding me with numerous reasons as to why I shouldn’t ask him to speak at our next event. An hour passed, he even smiled a few times, but I averted my eyes and looked to the floor. Eventually he and his team left.

I was furious with myself for not having seized the opportunity that was right in front of me. I got up to leave and bumped into an old work colleague in the seminar foyer. As my colleague and I chatted, Jochen and his team walked past and stopped yards away from where we were standing. They say there are no second chances in life, but here I was, being given one just moments after I had blown the first. This was my opportunity to take the reins from Agyness and redeem myself to myself. But, unfortunately, Agyness overpowered me and I froze again as Jochen and his team left the building.

That was a pivotal moment for me, a moment when I let fear win the day. What was different this time, compared to when I was walking onto that stage? Why did I make a choice to play it safe rather than risk rejection? On another occasion, there could have been an entirely different outcome – there have been plenty of times in my life when opportunities have presented themselves and I’ve jumped at them, because in that particular moment I was feeling confident and sure of my abilities.

I’ve nicknamed this moment a ‘Jochen Moment’ – basically the opposite of a light-bulb moment. Fortunately, ‘Jochen Moments’ do not occur as much as they used to, but when they do, Agyness is usually lurking somewhere not too far away.

I’m pleased to say this story has a happy ending: a few years later I did manage to summon up the courage to ask and, yes, Jochen did end up speaking at one of my events. In this case opportunity actually knocked thrice, but obviously this is by no means the norm. I got lucky.

I encourage you to muster up the courage to seize all good opportunities when they arise. Courage requires risking failure and rejection, but it’s a muscle that needs to be regularly exercised in order to develop core strength.

The Agyness Challenge

My cousin Reg has an interesting theory about women and fearing rejection – he believes that part of the reason men are better at dealing with rejection is because of the practice they get in the dating arena. According to Reg, from the time boys hit puberty and start asking girls out, ‘no’ is a word they become well acquainted with. Therefore they take ‘no’ less personally, and see it as a numbers game. As far as Reg is concerned, for every ten women he asks out at least one is bound to say yes – two if he’s lucky. Those aren’t bad odds.

And he might actually have a point. The research suggests that in the workplace men are better at dealing with rejection than women, and certainly don’t judge themselves as harshly. Sharon Vosmek, founder and CEO of Astia (a US not-for-profit organization that supports women-led businesses), cites a study by Professor Shelley Correll at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, which monitored the reactions of ‘C’ grade calculus students. This is what Vosmek discovered:

The men were perceiving they had passed and were wizards, and would potentially use it to go on and negotiate a higher salary. Women in the same calculus class – the majority would drop the course, perceiving they had failed and never mention it again. So what happens when women are rejected? They are already rejecting themselves.*

My ‘Jochen Moment’, it turns out, was a classic female response, hardwired from centuries of gender conditioning. It forced me to face my insecurities and stop avoiding the fact that they existed, something I had been doing my whole adult life. And using Reg’s theory as my guide for healing, I decided to develop my own ‘Agyness Challenge’ based on Jason Comely’s ‘Rejection Therapy’; I suppose this is a sort of Degree for the Others. Comely, a Canadian entrepreneur, devised a social self-help ‘game’ for overcoming a fear of rejection, whereby to ‘win’ required you to receive at least one rejection each day for a period of time, with the intention of training yourself to overcome the fear through extended exposure.

Do this today: the five objectives of Rejection Therapy

1. Be more aware of how irrational social fears control and restrict our lives.

2. Smash the tyranny of fear and reap the treasures (treasures include wealth, relationships, and self-confidence).

3. Learn from, and even enjoy rejection.

4. Do not be attached to outcomes, especially when it involves the free agency of other people.

5. Permit yourself to fail.

My challenge involves me journaling which of my career choices have been led by Agyness, and which by my confident self. I also do simple things, like seeking advice or mentorship from people I admire – this can be by cold email, or by approaching them at events and seminars.

I force myself to do this much more than I am naturally comfortable with. Even though I work in television and on the surface seem to be very much an extrovert, I am actually quite shy, so this is a real effort for me. However, the benefits far outweigh the safety of staying in my comfort zone.

One example of this is a friendship I now have with Simon Collins, former Dean of the Parsons’ School of Fashion in New York. I wanted Simon’s help with Ldny.com, a fashion social enterprise I was launching. I emailed him more than five times and he ignored me on each occasion. Something similar happened with Ed Burstell, then CEO of Liberty.

Usually, I would have let Agyness’s fear of rejection win, but this time my challenge meant I couldn’t. So even though it wasn’t exactly a boost to my ego, I refused to give up, and persisted until both of them responded. I can now confidently say they are both glad they did. We’ve gone on to work on some great projects together as well as to form great friendships, all of which we would have missed out on had I not persisted – which causes me to ask myself: what have I lost on those occasions when Agyness has prevailed?

So, I urge women and other ‘others’ everywhere to challenge their own Agyness. We have to learn not to take rejection personally, and rather view it as part of the pathway to success. Once women allow themselves to fear that they are not pretty enough, not clever enough, not strong enough, they behave in a way that limits themselves and makes their dreams less likely to come to fruition. I don’t know if it’s ever possible to rid ourselves 100 per cent of our Agyness – a lifetime of conditioning cannot be erased overnight. However, facing rejection head-on means you become desensitized to it and better equipped to rise above it, which will help level the playing field not just for ourselves but for future generations.

Having it all

The payoff, for ourselves and for society, when we push beyond our worthiness barriers is priceless. Through my work, I’ve been fortunate enough to come up close and personal with some of the most inspirational women of our time – women who fearlessly embody the Sheryl Sandberg philosophy of ‘leaning in’; women who defy (present-day) expectations and limitations.

These women are creating a new normal – one that is centred around female-friendly working practices – and it’s being led by women like Mary Callahan Erdoes. As chief executive officer of J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Callahan Erdoes is one of the most important people in finance and supervises over $2.2 trillion in assets. A wife and mother to three children, she explained to me how she used her seniority to make it easier for other working mothers within her organization. She leaves the office early enough to collect her children from school every day, and loudly announces it daily to her team: ‘I’m leaving to go and pick up the kids.’

Another leading working mother who is unapologetic about it is Helena Morrissey, former CEO of Newton Investment Management, a £51 billion Bank of New York Mellon European fund. Morrissey is also the co-founder of The 30% Club, a campaign to make UK FTSE-100 boardrooms 30 per cent female. She is a trailblazer and has risen to the top of the UK finance industry. However, she is almost as famous for her professional achievements as she is for her nine children, who range in age from seven to twenty-four.

Morrissey leaves the office every day at 6 p.m. to be home in time for family dinner and the odd bit of ironing. She credits part of her success to having a stay-at-home husband, Richard: ‘The idea that a woman can have a family and friends and hold down a difficult, high-octane job when both partners work full-time – that is a very tall order. I am not saying it’s impossible, but it’s a bit unrealistic.’

Morrissey believes that the key to having it all is for modern couples to determine which career should take precedence while the children are young. And, crucially, this doesn’t have to be the man’s. In Morrissey’s case, after their fourth child was born she and Richard, then a journalist, decided he should stay at home and she should continue with her career – a decision that has paid off considerably. The return on investment (ROI) has not only benefited their family (as Morrissey is one of the highest paid executives in the city), it’s also benefited British society – for, in this couple, we have a high-profile example of what The Other Way could be.

Obviously, Callahan Erdoes and Morrissey are unique examples, as these two women are at the very top of their industries. Parent-friendly working practices are easier to implement when you are the boss. However, if more women rise through the corporate ranks, from VP level to the coveted C-suite (Corner office), these sorts of flexible working patterns will become more and more commonplace – because they will have to.

A new kind of role model

Role models are important, for women and men; they give us a glimpse of our possible futures and can keep us on track when our dreams seem out of reach. I remember having a conversation about this with my friend Toby Daniels, founder of the highly successful Social Media Week conferences. I’ve often chewed the fat with him regarding gender equality, as I do with all my male friends and colleagues, and on one occasion Toby made a point that stopped me in my tracks: ‘Men don’t see women as role models.’ In an attempt to halt my jaw from hitting the floor, he went on to explain:

Mark Zuckerberg grew up wanting to be Bill Gates, Mark Dorsey grew up wanting to be Steve Jobs, Marissa Mayer probably looked up to the same male role models as Zuckerberg and Dorsey with a few female ones too. I doubt Zuckerberg and Dorsey would have had female business role models. When we have a woman who creates and is credited for the next groundbreaking innovation that moves humanity forward, such as the next Internet or the next Apple, then there will be a generation of boys and young men wanting to emulate those women.

I had never even thought about whether or not boys, or indeed girls, grew up with any female business role models. I’ve always had a slew of male business icons I’ve looked up to and whose biographies I’ve devoured. As it stands, women have many professional male role models, but the reverse is seldom true.

I have no idea if Toby is right about Marissa Mayer growing up inspired by Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, but I do know that Mayer has a surprising female role model whose ‘against all odds’ story deeply resonates with her own – the 2002 Olympic Gold medallist Sarah Hughes. In a 2013 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Mayer likened her appointment as CEO of Yahoo to Hughes’s unlikely winning performance. ‘No one thought Sarah Hughes had a chance to win. Afterward, Hughes said that she didn’t quite know how she had done it and she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to repeat it. It was the routine of her life … I feel like Sarah Hughes. Actually, I still have her performance saved on my TiVo.’

At 37 and seven months pregnant, Mayer managed to pull off an incredibly impressive career move and leapfrog from vice president, location & local services at Google, to president and CEO of Yahoo. Many industry insiders were stunned, as there were numerous tech execs who were more senior and would have seemed more likely candidates for the job, but Mayer had something these didn’t: the power of the personal brand.

While at Google, Mayer carved out a stellar profile for herself as spokesperson for the company. She was also well known and respected outside of tech circles and able to explain complex technologies to the masses via the mainstream media. Undoubtedly her public profile would have played a role in helping the board of Yahoo in their decision. They would have been savvy enough to know that not only did Mayer have the ability to do the job, she also had the brand to sell the company to shareholders and potential advertisers. Even though Mayer’s tenure at Yahoo has been viewed as mixed, she undoubtedly brought something extra – something unquantifiable on a CV, but nonetheless impactful in real life.

Every female in a leadership position is a role model for a new generation of both men and women about what is possible. One such woman, who’s always been one of my favourite role models, is Clare Boothe Luce, a woman who carved out a phenomenal life for herself in mid-twentieth-century America, then very much a man’s world.

A Vanity Fair excerpt from the second volume of Sylvia Jukes Morris’s biography of Boothe Luce opens with: ‘What Clare Boothe Luce wanted, Clare Boothe Luce got: a man, a seat in Congress, an ambassadorship.’ All this was true, but Boothe Luce also managed to achieve so much more. She was able to soar to great heights in three distinctly different careers. Starting out as a journalist, she rose to become managing editor of Vanity Fair in 1930, aged 24, making her one of the youngest magazine editors in history. She then tried her hand at playwriting, penning the smash hit The Women in 1936, and later the screenplay for the movie Come to the Stable, which earned an Oscar nomination in 1949 for Best Story. After writing came a foray into politics, where she became one of the first women in Congress after running as a Republican and winning what was then a safe Democratic seat. She rounded out her political career as an ambassador to Italy for the Eisenhower administration.

Boothe Luce was very much aware of the double standards women of her day faced, and that her success or failure would affect not just her personally but the perception of female ability in general. ‘Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, “She doesn’t have what it takes”; they will say, “Women don’t have what it takes.”’

Any woman who works knows that Boothe Luce’s words are as true today as they were when she uttered them over four decades ago. Even so, she never let the barriers she faced prevent her from succeeding. Instead, she used them as motivation to defy expectations for women of her day. Hers was a life well lived and a life that has inspired generations of women who have followed in her footsteps.

The American Dream seems to provide a better breeding ground for these kinds of entrepreneurial women. By default, American women benefit from this system more than their UK counterparts. British women are still so underutilized, especially once they become mothers, when we still have so much more to add to the British economy. In a 2012 speech about female economic empowerment, then Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg declared that the ‘absence of women from our economy is costing us dearly. If the United Kingdom had, for example, the same proportion of female entrepreneurs as the United States, we would see an extra £42 billion on GDP. In the words of the World Bank, gender equality is “smart economics”.’ He closed with, ‘Greater equality, a fairer society, a stronger economy too.’

Having lived in both the UK and US, I’ve seen for myself that this is an area US women excel in. And it’s not just about the job, it’s about what you stand for. Across the pond, being of service is very much expected – even in the case of Sheryl Sandberg herself. Becoming a fearless spokesperson for female professional empowerment has opened countless doors and brought all sorts of new opportunities to her and to others, and has also helped to establish Sandberg as one of the most admired women of our day. She and others like her have proved that when we leap over the barriers within as well as without ourselves, we can achieve incredible things. This new normal hasn’t yet filtered all the way up to influence the top job, as we know, but as Hillary Clinton said after her defeat in the 2016 presidential election: ‘The future is female.’

ACTION POINT: Take the Rejection Therapy Challenge for seven days.

DISCUSSION POINT: What if Steve Jobs had never tried again – and never gone back to Apple?

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