The killing of George Floyd is unconscionable not just for its brutality and inhumanity, but for its inevitability.
Because in societies whose actions value the lives of some less than others, oppression doesn’t start with a policeman crushing a neck. It takes deeper roots to lead to these kinds of outrages.
Sometimes it is blatantly systemic discrimination (aka apartheid) e.g. on gender lines in Saudi or racial lines in Israel. More often, it is so normalised that it seems invisible on the surface but is keenly felt by its victims.
Which makes it incumbent on us not to glibly dismiss those at the receiving end simply because we can’t or don’t or refuse to see it.
Why here on LinkedIn?
Because business is as complicit as any part of society. We close off opportunities to ethnic minorities or to women, and too often without realising it. Just look around the room in nearly any senior leadership team.
And when it’s raised? I still see it too often dismissed. “But all lives matter! Men deserve opportunities!”
Agreed. But not the point. The point is that society AND business is systematically demonstrating a greater disregard to the rights and lives of some of its magnificent groups than it should.
And it’s up to us to listen, and to fix it.
RIP George Floyd. RIP Iyad Halak.
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