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My Relationship with Race
(It might not be what you thought it would be)
I was looking forward to writing this post every Sunday, I saw it as a way not only of providing catharsis for myself, but hopefully opening up debate and acceptance of some of the hardest topics I’ve had to deal with in business and in life.
Since the murder of George Floyd by law enforcement officers in the USA, we have seen the culmination of centuries of oppression and angst manifested in #BLM protests across the US and other western nations including the UK.
And as I observe what is happening elsewhere, I have been forced to examine my own relationship with race.
It’s more complicated than you might think.
I used to come across my fair share of bigots out in Papua New Guinea, and I used to ‘joke’ that I was whiter than any of them. Sometimes that was enough to diffuse tension, more often than not it wasn’t. In truth most didn’t even get that joke.
You see I am the product of empire. My grandfather left India in the early 1900s to seek a new life in Kenya. Both countries jewels in the Raj’s crown. My family (writ large) has lived and prospered in the region ever since, I myself was born in Mombasa in the late 70s, well past the country’s own independence over a decade earlier.
