Forget Colour-Blindness. We need to be Colour Brave…

Here’s an interesting TED talk by an American finance executive, Mellody Hobson, imploring businessmen and citizens to make a concerted effort to not ignore race. She argues that speaking openly about race creates better businesses and a better society.

Mellody happens to be one of the only two black women in the USA to chair one of the country’s thousands of publically-traded companies. And yet she tells a tale of how, with all her accolades and shiny suits, she was still mistaken for kitchen staff when she arrived for a luncheon at a top media company in New York a few years back.

Mellody’s mission is not to berate or attack. She has succeeded in her life more than she ever imagined. But she would like for people to open their eyes and notice different races, and consciously allow each to be represented so that no child is left behind and so that we do not “rob another generation” of inequalilty.

“We cannot afford to be ‘colour-bind’. We have to be colour brave,” she insists. She would like there to be more role models for more minority groups so that children see people like themselves who they can relate to and aspire to be like one day.

When she was a child her mother told her “you can be anything” and Mellody credits these words for her phenomenal career. She says it’s because of these words that she looked forward to going to school and would “dream the biggest dreams…and it’s because of those words that I stand here right now full of passion, and asking you to be brave for the kids who are dreaming those dreams today.”

Mellody suggests “maybe if we could all be a little less anxious and a little more bold in our conversations about race”.

She tells a story many may relate to, of how when she was seven she was the only black child invited to a birthday party. When she returned home, her mother didn’t ask the normal questions like was it fun and how was the cake. Instead she asked “how did they treat you?”…and warned her then that she would not always be treated right.

“I am not asking you to be colour-blind, but to be colour brave so that every child knows that their future matters, and their dreams are possible,” she says.