Grace won a place on a trainee scheme for young people from diverse backgrounds at a media company when she was 22 – it felt like a huge first step towards working in an industry she’d always dreamed of being part of.
But, instead of the fantastic springboard she hoped the opportunity would be, Grace says she experienced being bullied, belittled and treated unfairly by colleagues.
She now wishes she never applied, and says the way she was treated has had a lasting effect.
‘After the internship, I began to normalise being treated badly. That is something that has stayed with me,’ Grace tells Metro.co.uk.
‘I have had to remind myself that I don’t have to take that any more. But to this day, I still struggle with holding people to account.
‘It’s not nice to look back at how these horrible experiences have affected me. I don’t like to feel as though I am still suffering.
‘I never expected this to be the outcome of landing a dream job and starting a career that I have always wanted to do.’
The two-year internship, which began towards the end of 2018, was advertised specifically for young people from ethnic minority backgrounds. Grace is Black mixed-race, and she was delighted when she found out she was successful in her application. But that excitement didn’t last long.
‘If I could go back, I would turn that job offer down,’ she explains. ‘I would wait for something else. But I was young and impulsive, and I wanted to go to London to start my career.
‘It was clear from the beginning that the staff who worked there – from those in junior to senior roles – were not pro-Black. And they clearly hadn’t been briefed that they were going to be responsible for young people who were quite different from them. Lots of the interns hadn’t been to university, and didn’t have rich parents, for example.’
Grace says her manager barely acknowledged her, and when she did she would be cold and neglectful. Other staff members were abrupt with her as well, but it wasn’t until she came across group chat messages about her that she realised the extent of their hostility.
‘The messages said that I smelled, they talked about how they didn’t want to have to sit next to me,’ says Grace. ‘They said that the little bits of work I had been allowed to do were “ridiculous”. It was just a string of mean, unnecessary comments.’
Finding the messages made Grace’s blood run cold. She didn’t know what to do, so she took photos of the conversation, but didn’t say anything to anyone because she felt completely powerless.
When she was told that she had failed her three-month probation and might be let go, Grace took the photos to HR. She knew she would never be given a fair appraisal of her performance by people who clearly had a personal dislike for her.
‘The reasons they gave for me failing my probation seemed really weak,’ says Grace. ‘They said it was because I didn’t have an Instagram account, because I wasn’t being quick enough in some of the tasks given to me. They also said I didn’t have the right “tone” in my work – but I had barely been allowed to do anything creative, and I hadn’t been given any feedback to support that.
‘I went to HR with my screenshots, and I cried. I never thought I would be in this position where I would have to fight for my job like this. Thankfully, it was taken really seriously – and two of the girls who sent the messages were fired.’
Grace was kept on in her role, and she was eventually allowed to switch departments – but only after getting a third party advisory group involved. Throughout the rest of the internship, Grace could feel that she wasn’t liked, and there were other instances where she felt she was treated unfairly, or denied privileges that other colleagues were given.
As the only junior ethnic minority on both teams that she worked on during those two years (there was one Black woman in a slightly more senior position), it was hard for Grace not to link her alienation with the fact that she wasn’t white.
‘From start to finish, I knew that this wasn’t the place for me. They didn’t want me, and this scheme felt like a ruse – I felt like we were only there to bolster their diversity figures,’ says Grace.
The problem with diversity schemes
Sadly, Grace’s experience of a diversity internship is all too common.
Another young Black woman, who wished to remain anonymous, told us about a similar experience on a ‘BAME trainee scheme’ in politics, where she felt bullied and mistreated by senior staff members, and was even subject to a racial slur at the hands of a senior manager.
A 2019 survey of ethnic minority staff who had entered the publishing industry through a diversity scheme, found that a quarter said their experience as trainees has led them to want to leave the industry. Another 34% reported that career progression was like ‘wading through mud’, and 55% said they did not think the industry was welcoming to people from different backgrounds.
Despite the proliferation of schemes, programmes and internships explicitly designed to get more people of colour in the door across a wide range of industries, there has been a stagnation of diversity figures – particularly across senior roles – over the last few decades.
A 2017 review set a target that every FTSE 100 company should appoint at least one non-white person to their board. But, in 2019, the percentage of board members at FTSE 100 companies from an ethnic minority background fell from 9% to 7.4%.
Why aren’t these schemes doing what they are supposed to? As Grace’s experience illustrates, there is little point in improving diversity if the culture of a workplace is not equipped to help people from diverse backgrounds to thrive and progress.
Media diversity specialist and author of Access All Areas Marcus Ryder MBE, says the problem is not getting people of colour in the door, it’s keeping them there, and making sure they move up.
‘If you look at the stats, retention is a problem. People just leave,’ Marcus tells Metro.co.uk.
‘But poor retention is really a symptom of a culture that doesn’t help people to fit in, that doesn’t allow people to feel part of it. The phenomenon of being “the only one” in the workplace can feel incredibly lonely.
‘When you don’t have someone at work who you can relate to – your work suffers. Then employers will say, “Well, they weren’t very good in the first place.” Employers end up blaming you for under-performing, or saying that you never really fitted in anyway.’
Grace can relate to this. She says the lack of allies in the workplace made everything feel so much harder. Having other young people in entry-level positions from a similar background could only help so much, because none of them held any power.
‘I needed some of the managers, the heads of departments, to be from ethnic minorities too, to make sure there was someone who had the power to instill some kind of change,’ says Grace. ‘You don’t get change by hiring 12 interns under the age of 22, all on £15K salaries.’
‘When we talk about diversity, we need to find a way of creating a critical mass, so that we can change culture,’ adds Marcus. ‘And so that we can actually change the way a workplace feels, so that it is more hospitable and less hostile.
‘For many people of colour, offices are toxic spaces. We need to find a way to break down the office environment – where you are often the only one – if we are going to increase diversity.’
What is the alternative?
In the UK, there is still significant systemic inequality in employment, career success and average earnings.
Black graduates earn 23.1% less on average than white graduates, and young Black men have some of the highest unemployment rates in London.
People from Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic groups are twice as likely to be in the bottom fifth of incomes, and have the lowest median household incomes.
Something needs to change. And for many people from ethnic minority backgrounds, or those from economically deprived backgrounds, diversity schemes and internships are still the only way they would ever get a foot in the door in most majority-white industries.
But, Nicolas Treloar a research analyst at the Runnymede Trust, says diversity schemes have to be just the starting point. He says organisations need to dig much deeper if they are truly committed to improving the prospects of diverse staff members.
‘These schemes are often stop-gap measures that apply a plaster to the underlying issues,’ Nicolas tells Metro.co.uk.
‘Whilst we encourage all organisations to run such schemes and internships, they are only useful if they have a longer term plan behind them. Too often such schemes are used as tick-box exercises, which organisations can then point to as completing their “race-equality target”.’
Nicolas adds that diversity at entry level is also not enough.
‘If junior members of staff are at an early stage in their career but have no role models at senior leadership positions, or cannot identify with these members of staff, retention and progression become less likely,’ he explains.
‘It is also worth noting that this isn’t just a “race” issue, but also one of class. Organisations should ensure that their diversity, internship and other schemes are employing young BAME people from across the class spectrum. ‘
Nicolas describes the issue as a ‘leaky pipeline’ from university to high positions of employment.
‘Greater numbers of BAME individuals go to university,’ he says. ‘Within this, those students from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds who obtain as good or better degrees than their white counterparts, do not progress in the same way.
‘In other words, prior educational attainment does not account for differential outcomes in the labour market.
‘Until we address the very structural inequalities that exist in the labour market, diversity schemes and internships are likely to only scratch the surface of the deeper racialised problem at hand.’
How to improve diversity schemes
Nicolas says the solution has to be widespread.
He says we not only need a more representative workforce at all levels of the employment market, but we must also remove the barriers that lead to worse outcomes in education, housing, job security, financial precarity and health for minority communities.
‘Until these deeper societal inequalities are addressed,’ says Nicolas, ‘we will continue to see unequal outcomes in the labour market.’
Now, Grace is keen to put her experiences behind her and push on in her dream of working in the media.
She says that what she went through during her internship knocked her confidence, but two years on, she now feels grateful for the lessons she learnt, and proud of how she has grown as a person.
‘When I applied for that job, I just never thought that dealing with racism was something I would have to prepare for. I didn’t realise I would have to train that muscle’ she says.
‘I have really tried to suppress those memories and look towards the future.
‘Now, when it comes to career moves, I do a lot more research into the company, I look at the makeup of the team online. It has taught me that I have to find places that want me, places that are for me.’
The State of Racism
This series is an in-depth look at racism in the UK in 2020 and beyond.
We aim to look at how, where and why individual and structural racism impacts people of colour from all walks of life.
It’s vital that we improve the language we have to talk about racism and continue the difficult conversations about inequality – even if they make you uncomfortable.
We want to hear from you – if you have a personal story or experience of racism that you would like to share get in touch: [email protected]
Do you have a story to share? We want to hear from you.
Get in touch: [email protected].
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