As Will Smith said "Racism isn't getting worse, it's getting filmed." Last Thursday night, in our home in SF, next to my husband with my son in the next room, I didn't sleep particularly well. Thoughts of George Floyd and Christian Cooper and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arberry and so many others who we don't know about, weighing heavily on my mind. As a mum to a six-year-old boy who is shoulder height on me already, we already know he has maybe two or three years before he starts being perceived as a man.
Written by Temi Adamolekun, Founder & CEO, Pembroke PR
While it's great to see so many people up in arms on social media, please make sure you and your clients back up your claims by actually doing the work. Have the difficult conversations. If they make you uncomfortable… welcome. You don't know what to say? Amplify the voices of those that do.
If the brands you work with haven't created an internal or external document of proactive steps they will commit to, to ensure they play their part in dismantling systemic racism, show them the way. That is your job.
Read the books, make the donations, stand up and march, but know this is just the warm up to the marathon we are in to dismantle systemic racism. Have the conversations with your team, with your children, with your family members. Police brutality is one form of racism. There are a million microaggressions that come before that. You are all PR professionals. Use your power. Pitch stories that shift the narrative. Do the work to find them. They exist. You have either just ignored them or not looked hard enough. Do better.
Silence is complicity, so the next time you see a racially-charged situation, don't step away and pretend you didn't see it. See something? Say something. A few months ago on a full bus taking my son to school in SF, an old woman swore at me and my son. While I felt confident enough in a busy space to address her instantly, the ONLY person that spoke up in our defense was a black man. As I showed my son that in this life, do no harm but take no rubbish, I saw a bus full of people pretending not to see.
