Letter from the Executive Director | |
This time round, I thought it would be great to read and hear from individuals about their own DEI experience. All this while, we have been sharing expert opinions, views and analysis but touched very little on what the people have to say and have offer in terms of their own experiences and insights to DEI.
For this month's issue, I wanted to share the voices from the street at the global stage.
Besides giving a voice to those who have an experience to share, I hope this newsletter will make one realize how much appreciation and recognition we must give to the amazing work the DEI practitioners and advocates are doing on a daily basis.
This is my last newsletter to you (my last day is March 31, 2023). As I move on, I wish to thank all of you for giving me this opportunity to lead this organization. I am happy to have put the organization in a better place.
I wish our readers all the best, and please stay in touch with the Centre for Global Inclusion.
Thank you,
Dr. Sudeep Mohandas
Executive Director
| |
|
The stories behind the numbers
We might get caught up in the statistics and the sheer numbers, but diversity, equity, and inclusion are issues that affect everyone. DEI is not limited to the workplace, a board room, or numbers in a research paper – whether it’s a stranger passing you by on the street, or your closest friends and family members – everyone has a story to tell.
|
|
|
We celebrate International Women’s Day in March, and while we’ve made some strides in recognizing women’s rights and empowering women, there are still areas where we can improve. Body shaming is prevalent all over the world, unfortunately, but it rings especially true in East Asia.
In Hong Kong, Naomi Chui talks about walking into a Hong Kong clothing store and being unable to find clothing sizes for her plus-size frame. The rack was labeled “fit for all Asian body types.” “Well this Asian can’t fit,” Chui thinks. She asks, “Where do I fit in if I don’t fit in with my own race?”
Elaine Chong is journalist who shares her struggle with body-shaming and its connection to Asian culture. “I admit I don't have the healthiest relationship with my body,” Chong writes. “East Asian women tend to be smaller on average at 5ft 1in and 9st (57kg). I'm 5ft 10in and up until the beginning of last year, I was technically obese. My weight has yo-yoed up and down since my teens. Regardless of my size, body image is something that presses on my mind all the time.”
As a British-born Chinese individual, Chong says that cultural pressure adds an extra layer to dealing with body image issues and sexist expectations on women. “We are being encouraged to eat more and more, but at the same time, there are incredibly harsh body expectations being put on Asian people, especially Asian women.”
This anxiety around weight can begin early in childhood. In fact, a study done among South Korean kindergarteners showed that children as young as five and six years old were concerned about their weight, and exposure to Korean pop music (Kpop) was a factor. Euodias shares her near brush with Kpop stardom, but quit despite going through the grueling trainee process.
“I was a child when I made the big move from my home in the north-east of England to South Korea, where I trained for two years to become a K-pop star. My burning ambition was to become an actor and perform. One way of doing that in South Korea is to become an ‘idol’, which means someone who does everything: model, act, sing and dance. So K-pop seemed like a route to achieving my dreams.”
“The company favored me, because I am very small. … Don't get me wrong, I love eating, but I'm lucky to have a high metabolism and don't gain weight easily. Weight was the constant obsession of everyone there. --- If you were over the designated weight, then they would ration your food. Sometimes they would even take away entire meals and those ‘overweight’ trainees would just be given water.”
Today, there are strides being taken to be more accepting of different body types, not just in East Asia but all over the world. But this new era of self-love presents a new challenge. “Big girls can’t win,” Evelyn Mok writes.
Mok is an actor and comedian who grew up as a Chinese immigrant kid in Sweden. “A lifetime of being medically obese led to me having my BMI constantly rammed down my throat by well-meaning healthcare professionals, many of whom did not realise that their moralisation of my body and lifestyle as ‘bad’ simply added to the societal fat-shaming I’d already spent years internalising. At the time, I was “bad” if I didn’t change my fat body; now, in the era of fierce ‘self-love’, I am bad if I do because – twist – I’m incapable of loving it the way it is. We big girls really can’t win.”
| |
|
Nicholas Brown grew up in Sydney, Australia and has done film and television work in Australia and India. He shares what it’s like to navigate a world where opportunities are more accessible to those with lighter skin. “My background is Anglo-Indian, which is very much a product of colonial India,” he says. “The fairer you are the more chance you have of being beautiful or successful. Because my parents are quite fair, they expected my sister and I would be as well, and we're both
really brown.”
“My mum used to use skin bleach when we were little, and she use to put some on our skin as well. … She was brought up like that from her Anlgo-Indian parents … being mixed race in India was really difficult.”
In the Philippines, discrimination based on the color of one’s skin remains an issue. Voiceover artist Inka Magnaye talks about what it was like to grow up surrounded by the persistent social messaging that lighter skin was strongly preferred over darker skin. “The colorism seed within me bloomed when I was in high school, when beauty brands could still praise whitening … and all you could see on mainstream media and advertising were brown = dirty, white = divine. I remember crying for days as I scrubbed my elbows and knees raw, thinking about when a classmate said to me: ‘What? You could have been beautiful if you were white!’”
However, Magnaye also writes, “I’m glad I stopped listening. …whether you are fair or dark, you are beautiful either way, exactly the way you are supposed to be. We are all born in the bodies in which we were meant to live.”
| |
Just because I don't sound like you | |
Accent discrimination is “the most powerful and overlooked feature responsible for social discrimination,” says Tej K. Bhatia, who serves as a Professor of Linguistics and Director of South Asian Languages at Syracuse University, New York. “We talk about gender and height and ethnicity. Language is the most invisible and powerful source of discrimination and we don’t talk about it.”
Even within native speakers of a single language, accents tend to box people into stereotypes, and can go as far as affect the availability of work types.
“Language doesn’t belong to everyone,” says Argentinian-born novelist Hernan Diaz. “It is shared.”
“In England a Russian writer may adopt an upper-crust British accent. In California, a Texan actor may aspire to a San Fernando Valley cadence. Even though everybody has an accent, there certainly is such a thing as accent discrimination.”
“People appear to correlate accent with intelligence and capability,” says journalist Sakshi Udavant. “My work entails talking to people from different countries all over the world. But the moment I get on a call, I’m inundated with questions like, ‘Where are you really from?’, ‘How can you write for a US/UK magazine if you don't live here?’, ‘Are you really capable of pulling this off? From your accent, you don’t seem experienced in the industry.’ All because I have an accent that shows hints of my Indian heritage. … Just because I don’t sound like you, doesn’t mean I can’t work like you.”
“Language is shared,” says Diaz. “It is, in principle, a space where everyone is welcome and cooperates toward mutual comprehension. And the very fact that there are accents in the first place, the fact that we can still understand each other through all the differences, is the most conclusive proof of the hospitality at the heart of every language.”
|
|
Old wounds in strange homes | |
|
Despite having settled into a new home in Indiana, Katy Goshtasbi still encounters racism, and shares an experience she had while walking through a nearby neighborhood with her husband. “I have experienced much discrimination and racism. Growing up in Indiana as a refugee, I didn’t exactly look like everyone else. Kids were mean and not accepting. I know how it feels to be singled out. I know the pain and confusion well.”
Aside having to adjust to a new place, culture, and customs, racism against refugees adds a layer of stress to individuals who are looking for a fresh start. Even fleeing a country of origin towards safety can be further complicated by matters of race. In Ukraine, non-Ukrainian refugees have faced notable difficulties in getting out of the country as opposed to Ukrainian refugees.
Racism can also look different in various historical and geopolitical contexts. Alena El-Hussein, a Moscow-born linguist of Russian and Sudanese descent, shares “Racism here isn't so much against black people as against people from the former Soviet republics. People from Central Asia are the target of serious racism.”
| |
Being a light in the world | |
|
Sports have always had an uncanny ability to bring people together. From tennis to football to swimming (and everything else!), sports offer people the opportunity to set their differences aside and bond over the sheer love of the game. Sometimes, however, deep-seated beliefs about race continue to reveal themselves in instances of discrimination.
Coby Rowe, a defender for Sutton United, shares his experience:
“I went to get the ball out of the net and that’s when someone shouted at me ‘you black ****’ and I kind of lost my head for a bit. [I] was being held back by a couple of people, and Tom (coach) came on, and we all just kind of decided to leave the pitch. We thought that was the best thing to do.
“During your normal job if you were at your office and someone was to say that to you, the person would be sacked. So just because you’re kicking a ball around a pitch for people to watch it shouldn’t be accepted at all. We're not surprised, we’re not shocked, it’s nothing new to us in our lives really.”
He talks about an experience when he was a teenager. “I went to a game when I was about 15 or 16. We played Swansea and won 1-0 and some old man was making gestures of ‘1-0’ to this bus that had a load of Swansea fans on it. He was a white guy and I was just stood next to him laughing and I wasn’t doing anything to egg him on and then about six or seven of them started doing gestures and making monkey noises to me. It’s always been about and it's still here.”
It’s not an easy burden to carry, but Rowe tries to keep his head in the right space: “I just try to be myself and tell as many people as I can to be nice to other people because I feel like that’s the only way people will change. I just try and be a good person, I try and help people and make them smile even if it’s just waving at a little kid in the supermarket. I just try and be a light when there’s a lot of dark in the world.”
| |
|
Colorism
n. prejudice or discrimination especially within a racial or ethnic group favoring people with lighter skin over those with darker skin
| |
|
Video: Managing Diversity and Inclusion: An International Perspective
Ayn Bernos expounds on the concept of colorism in the Philippines–the beauty standards that the country has appeared to be in favor of those who are lighter-skinned. Ayn, as a content creator and entrepreneur, has made use of her platform to bring about these conversations , empowering many to find confidence with their skin tones, sizes, and shapes.
| |
|
This March, we will be holding a Mental Health Event that showcases issues associated with mental health and DEI from an Asian perspective. For anyone who wishes to gain a broader, more global view of these issues, this event is not to be missed!
Choice of 2 Sessions:
| | |
22 March 2023 11am EST,
3pm London, 7pm Dubai
| |  | |
23 MARCH 2023 11am Singapore, 2pm Sydney,
7am Dubai
| | |
|
The Forum on Workplace Inclusion will also be having its Conference on Combining Forces 2023 on March 27-29, 2023.
This event brings together many amazing people from across the globe to share their expertise on DEI. Join us for this exciting exchange of ideas. Several of our Expert Panellists will be presenting at this year's Forum on Workplace Inclusion. Take a look at:
- Dr. Joel Brown, Global Inclusion Partners
- Tanya Cruz Teller, Spaciousness Works
- Bernado Ferdman, Ferdman Consulting
- Dr. Karen Francis, American Institute for Research (AIR)
- Dr. Alan Richter, QED Consulting
- Riikka Salonen, BCT Partners
- Mary-Francis Winters, Winters Group
Register for The Forum on Workplace Inclusion 35th annual conference – Combining Forces(x): Fueling Our Collective Capacity for Change, March 27-29, 2023
Facebook page: @WorkplaceForum
LinkedIn page: @WorkplaceForum
Twitter page: @WorkplaceForum #WorkplaceForum2023
| |
We are forever grateful for the support our sponsors have been giving us throughout the years. This year 2023, we are looking forward to your kind contribution as we embark on our Strategy for 2022-2025 and ensure we do make the difference to the DEI community. Feel free to check our website [https://centreforglobalinclusion.org/ways-to-help/how-to-contribute/] to understand and decide the various options you can personally or as an organization make to our work.
|
|
Sincere thanks to our sponsors | |
To review past newsletters from The Centre for Global Inclusion, click HERE | |
|
The Centre for Global Inclusion is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and home of the free Global Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Benchmarks: Standards for Organizations Around the World (GDEIB). Its mission is to serve as a resource for research and education for organizations and individuals in their quest to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion practices around the world. Go to www.centreforglobalinclusion.org.
| | | | |
