Barack Obama may be the first black president of the USAbut the response of the local police force to the shooting of an unarmed blackboy raises the question has anything really changed. There are clear parallelsin the way the police responded between the shooting of Trayon Martin inFlorida and the murder of Stephen Lawrence in London. Are the Americans aboutto recognise much as we have done that overt racism in the police and otherorganisations has been replaced with the more subtle but no less corrosiveinstitutional racism? Racism is about hate, violent assaults, verbalabuse and overt discrimination against an individual because of theirethnicity. It is a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment, of course noorganisation would tolerate such behaviour. An organisations policies andprocedures will no doubt make this very clear and will be backed up bymanagement training. Institutional racism recognises that what goes on in theworkplace is not this type of crude behaviour but a much subtler formintentional and unintentional discrimination.People may be more careful in their language but theiractions may still be informed by the negative stereotypes, myths and ignorancethey are caring around in their head. Stereotypes that are constantly reinforceby stories in the media rather than people’s own experience of black people. It was these negative stereotypes leading todiscrimination intentional or otherwise that were identified in the Macphersonenquiry into allegations of racial discrimination by the police. It was foundthat within the police force it was a commonly accepted view thatAfrican/Caribbean youths were members of violent gangs, involved in drug dealingor using drugs. This was their rational for stopping and searching 30 times asmany black youths as white. And of course they considered their actionsjustified every time they or a colleague found a knife or drugs as a result.This was a very dramatic example of how institutional racism could beexperience by a black person. The police officers involved genuinely believedthat they were not racist, their colleagues supported them in this claim andthe chief constable stated that the force was not racist. In much the same waysenior managers in many organisations today claimed that racism isn’t aproblem.A young African Caribbean woman submits a grievanceagainst a manager because she was not shortlisted for a post. A quikinvestigation reveals the individual did not meet the person specification forthe post specifically she did not have management experience. So the decisionnot to short list was right. No she says I am complaining because that criteriawas added by the manger once he realised I was interested in the post. Furtherinvestigation reveals that a working group set up to agree a job descriptionand a person specification for this new post produced one that was accepted anddid not include a requirement for a management qualification. The complainantknows this because she was a member of the working group. She also knows thatthe requirement for a management qualification was added by the manger whorecruited for the post. She knows this because she asked HR why and who changedit. HR confirm this and say the manger argued that the innovatory nature of thepost meant it should be paid at a slightly higher level to attract existingmanagers. The person specification was changed to reflect this. The grievancewas not upheld. However this was not thefirst time a member of staff had commented that this manger would never employa black person as a manger. Within the black staff group this was just furtherevidence. Was he racist and clever enough to get away with it?Black people are still underrepresented in senior posts,a black manager is still likely to bedescribed as aggressive when the same behaviour from a colleague is calledassertive, black staff are more likely to describe their manager as unsupportive,in many organisations black staff are disproportionately subject todisciplinary action. Perhaps as a consequence black staff have less faith inthe organisations disciplinary and grievance procedures.Blair McPherson author of An Elephant in the Room-anEquality and Diversity training manual published by Russell House www.blairmcpherson.co.uk
