Just yesterday, a Singapore lady was transferred to my hostel dorm. Upon learning that one of her roommates is from China, without saying 2 words, she jumped up and complained that the hostel is irresponsible. Is she racist or is she fearful for her safety?
It turns out that most small companies run by female founders have primarily female employees. Similarly, most companies are dominated by people of the same race. Could it be that the hiring manager only knows to evaluate their own ‘kind of talent’?
If you don’t know by now, we are all born racists. Not because we want to be divisive, in fact just the opposite. It is because it is the easy thing to do.
Sure, we have laws and quotas to help. And those are great for the short-term.
But in the long term, those are not magic pills because the real culprit is fear.
Curing racism begins with accepting that we are fearful. We resort to easy thinking when we are in un-safe territories.
The good news is, we can change it through the work of continual understanding and learning. Drip by drip, one generation to the other, one person at a time.
