We bear witness to an ever increasing rise in racial tensions, spilling into overt violence on a global scale, as seen in the racist pogroms in Belfast, to the riots of Southampton, to the modern Gestapo in Trump’s ICE Agents terrorising marginalised communities in North America.
On these shores, we’re also hearing from racialised communities that the violence we see is not confined to just the streets and news reels. Unsurprisingly, as has always been the case, it’s leaking into boardrooms and casual counter-talk conversations between colleagues as white people become more emboldened to lean into their racist opinions. The reality of this is that Black women are often the ones who bear the brunt.
A report from People Like Us and Women in PR has evidenced this. One in five Black and racialised respondents shared that they had experienced microaggressions at work. In almost every single area of work, Black and racialised women reported the highest levels of workplace friction. A recent survey from Spark and Sistren Legal Collective also revealed that almost 85% of racialised respondents have experienced indirect racism or witnessed it at work, with almost half experiencing direct racism themselves.