As the UK reflects on what have been the most significant urban disturbances and overt racism in over 20 years, a number of critical questions come to mind: what sparked this urban conflict? And, what is the role of UK employers when it comes to addressing social issues? How do we promote a sense of corporate cohesion within our overarching DE&I strategies?
In 2023 I gave a keynote presentation at the WeAreOpen conference in Budapest, in which I set out how the rise of global identity politics posed a threat, not only to Western societies, but also to relationships between diverse employees within the corporate world.
Across the West and beyond we are witnessing a rise of far-right political parties, partly fuelled by a DE&I backlash. This has manifested in the US as a response to the Black Lives Matter movement, across Western Europe where we have seen a surge in the elections of right-wing parties and governments, such as the election of Giorgia Meloni in Italy, and the AfD in Germany for instance. Before the recent election in the UK, we had elements of our former government moving ever closer to what some would consider to be a far-right position.
The recent riots that we have witnessed across the UK should not been seen in isolation to wider trends of identity politics and the push-back on corporate ED&I goals.
In 2011 the UK witnessed a series a race riots across the UK. Like recent events, these were fuelled by social media, and were described as copycat violence by the media. Further back in the summer of 2001, we witnessed race disturbances in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham. The root causes of these riots, according to a report by Prof Ted Cantle, was the idea that while communities may be diverse, they were leading ‘parallel’ and ‘polarised’ lives where people from different backgrounds living in the same communities didn’t mix.
The idea of communities living ‘parallel’ lives holds true today, and not just in a social context. Our approach to diversity and inclusion within the workplace, while good in intention, has created a sense of separation, division and ‘othering’ for both minority and majority groups. ERGs, for instance, which are designed to offer psychologically safe spaces for diverse groups, do very little to bring different communities together.
Additionally, workplace approaches to diversity and inclusion, while good in intention in focusing on increasing the numbers of women and other under-represented groups into positions of leadership, do little to address the root causes of bias and this approach has sparked a backlash from majority groups.
Is it now time for organisations to re-consider their current approach to inclusion management? We need a A new approach that broadens inclusion of the majority groups in our conversations, without slowing down our efforts to address under-representation, as this must remain a DE&I strategic priority. There should be no roll back on the end game goal, but perhaps a re-direction of resources that seeks to address the social root causes of workplace inequity – and a ramping up of our effects to bring diverse colleagues together by re-structuring existing practices, supported by a zero-tolerance approach to out of work hate by co-work and employees.