Race Equity Series: Q&A with Mandeep Rupra

Whenever I’m asked this question I always say my CV will show the ‘official’ journey, but the real journey started from a very early age. As a second generation South Asian girl, I grew up acutely aware of my differences and having less value in society. I experienced gendered racism on a daily basis, which impacted and informed how I navigated every aspect of my life, such as schooling, my social life, or watching my mum be denied culturally competent care for her mental health condition.

These early experiences informed my commitment to fighting social injustice and my early teens were focused on human rights activism. Through my activism and early career, I began embracing the power of community and collective liberation. For instance, an integral part of my own healing has been sharing and holding space to discuss lived experience, reject narratives of white supremacy, misogyny, heteronormativity etc, particularly with women of colour. It is community and shared experience that has enabled me to understand the power and beauty of marginalised people and the potential impact of social justice work.

Hopefully, you can see my work is so much more than solely my career – I have a deep commitment to the work I do and how I do it.

If we go back to the ‘official’ journey then you will see I’ve been working as an equity change agent for 25 years, before that I was a primary school teacher. I began this work at a time when equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) was not the industry it is now. I specialised in race equity early in my career, including working at a Race Equality Council to implement the recommendations from the Macpherson Report and focusing on addressing racism in schools and higher education. A pivotal moment in my early career, and really my life, was when I completed my MA in Race and Ethnic Studies. It was here that I was able to learn from scholars such as Edward Said, Frantz Fanon and Angela Davis. Understanding the dynamics and origins of racism and studying theories of decolonisation, allowed me to strengthen my social justice practice.

Every aspect of my journey has informed my practice. For instance, experiencing racial trauma from an early age and my mum’s experience of the mental health system is why I’m hugely passionate about showing the mental health impact of oppression. My journey has also informed why I take a social justice approach to my work and talked about equity at a time when it was not the norm or widely accepted in the way it is now.

It is also the collectivism and support I’ve experienced from Black and brown leaders, activists, academics and colleagues, which is why my work is so person centred and  people of colour are always centred in the way I do the work.

Of course if you want to know my official journey we have LinkedIn for that but, ultimately I do this work because I want to be a part of creating systemic anti-racist change. To challenge the status quo, with honesty, transparency and compassion.

For me, there are 3 key components. Firstly, every organisation will be dealing with systemic oppression so we cannot start from a position where we say racism doesn’t exist in an organisation. There must be a recognition and acceptance of the realities of structural inequalities and the dynamics of racism at a societal, systemic, cultural and individual level by all, particularly leaders.

Some of the biggest barriers I’ve experienced to any race equity work is resistance, denial and tokenistic gestures. For instance, there have been times when I’ve heard leaders say ‘that doesn’t happen here,’ or ‘it’s only a few colleagues who feel this way,’ often referring to data on the experiences of Black and brown colleagues. Comments such as this not only deny the realities of racism but deny the marginalisation of Black and brown colleagues and cause harm. By educating colleagues on this, one of the hopes is that colleagues will understand and accept that no one and nowhere is immune to the impact of racism and that everyone holds a place in a racist system even if we don’t realise it, e.g. we will either have power and privilege from it or we will experience harm and barriers throughout our lives.

The second area for me has always been about ensuring any race equity work is tied to what an organisation says about themselves i.e. their purpose and what type of employer they want to be. For instance, we know many organisations will say that they value diversity and inclusion – but what does that really mean? Does it mean an organisation wants diverse ethnic representation at all levels and that colleagues of colour thrive and progress in the workplace? If so then an organisation must focus on race equity as a fundamental of all their people and culture work.

At Citizens Advice colleagues often hear me say that our equity work is part of the nucleus of the organisation and that anti-racism is an integral part of that. For instance, Citizens Advice speaks up for people each and every day and we exist to shape a society where people face far fewer problems with the advice we give. Marginalised communities are far more likely to be in poverty and experience systemic disadvantage, all of which leads people to seek our support. Therefore, it’s not possible to think about our work without thinking about how we ensure our services and work improves the experiences of systemic disadvantage faced by communities of colour, whether that’s through how Black and brown clients experience our services or our policy work. You only have to look at the data on poverty, no recourse to public funds, housing, benefits, and discrimination, to understand why we can’t be who we say we are as Citizens Advice and not work to address the systemic racism.  

Lastly, by building race equity literacy and tying the work to the organisation’s mission this will enable you to position your equity work as integral to the organisation’s success. This work requires collective responsibility and accountability. This one of the most important elements of making race equity work mission led – everyone has to understand their role in this. Ultimately the work should not be bound up with one person’s leadership or one department’s work. The aim is to make the work sustainable.

There have been a range of moments in my career where I’ve felt I’ve moved things forward, of course, it’s important to say there have also been times when the work hasn’t progressed. Some of the examples include leading the first national research project on the interrelatedness of the experiences of students of colour in higher education and the degree awarding gap. The report was nationally recognised and informed a range of work in higher education institutions to address systemic racism. I also developed the National Union of Students’ five-year Race Equity Plan to Tackle Institutional Racism, which was recognised as a sector-leading piece of work and highlighted as good practice across sectors and forums.

Most recently, I’m extremely proud of our race equity work within Citizens Advice. I joined Citizens Advice at the beginning of 2020, a few months after the organisation had been in the press in regards to internal training materials that included racist stereotypes about Black and brown communities. Charity So White was created as a response to this incident, so the spotlight was definitely on the organisation. A few months after my arrival we also saw the murder of George Floyd.

When I arrived in the organisation there was a deficit of trust in regards to our EDI approach, particularly from marginalised colleagues. When I arrived, and rightly so, this was focused on race equity. Staff of colour wanted us to be doing more and although there was a recognition of the need to improve practice there was fragility and fear of getting it wrong, as we knew this could result in the organisation being called out. The EDI team was also much smaller and the work didn’t have the strategic visibility it has now.

Can you tell the stakes were high when I joined?

Over the last 4 years, the national charity has pursued a transformational agenda to redefine our EDI approach around concepts of social justice and equity. We have sharpened our focus on systemic injustice, issues of power and privilege and how these impact the experiences of our clients, staff and volunteers. Advancing race equity is a flagship area in this work. The commitment to this work can be shown by the level of investment provided for the work including the EDI team, which has significantly grown.

To advance race equity, some of our work has included: developing the organisation’s race equity literacy, particularly with leaders; defining our anti-racist principles; setting up a race equity advisory group; and launching our Race Matters theory of change and programme of work to address the progression of Black and brown colleagues. This work has led to a range of tangible impacts. Our race equity work is viewed as credible. We have increased the representation of women of colour in leadership positions. The attrition rates of people of colour has reduced. More Black and brown applicants are applying for roles in the organisation. We have invested in a development programme to support the progression of colleagues of colour, which includes development for their line managers and senior sponsors. 

Last year Citizens Advice launched our new strategy and one of our three strategic missions aims at ending disparities in access and experience for marginalised people. Not only are we trying to reduce (and ultimately eradicate) these disparities in experience and outcomes, but also respond more holistically to the needs of marginalised clients. A priority area within this mission is our work to improve the experiences of our clients of colour. We know clients of colour do not have the same experience as our white clients and that is not acceptable.

We have a range of projects to address the systemic racism within our service, one of which includes understanding the drivers behind the gaps in experiences for clients of colour. To do this we commissioned an organisational wide, holistic piece of research to deeply understand the experience of our clients of colour. It is the first time we’ve done research like this, which is grounded in design justice principles and uses a participatory approach, recognising the power within communities. A key part of the project has been relinquishing power and we have worked in partnership with advice-giving organisations that work within communities of colour. People from organisations working with Black, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian and Chinese communities, alongside local office and national Citizens Advice representatives have led the design and delivery of this research. To ensure this research leads to tangible change we are now working on a race equity leadership accountability framework.  

There’s a lot more I could say here, and I don’t want anyone to read this and think it’s been easy advancing race equity in the way that we have. If it was easy this wouldn’t still be one of the biggest equity challenges for the sector! Some of the actions that have enabled our anti-racist journey include:

• Having humility, honesty and transparency in the work – we still have a lot more to do
• Building trust with colleagues of colour and ensuring they are centred in all that we do. We cannot undertake any anti-racism work without centering people of colour and I regularly meet with colleagues of colour to understand how our work is impacting them
• Aligning race equity to the organisation’s purpose
• Providing investment to support the work
• Developing colleagues’ race equity literacy, particularly with leaders
• Holding leaders to account and ensuring there is governance and scrutiny of the work   
• Coalition building and ensuring colleagues feel they have a collective responsibility to advance race equity
• Providing a supportive space for challenge and growth. I understand that this work can be challenging for many leaders because they don’t want to ‘get it wrong,’ however I actively call leaders in and hold them to account to show visible EDI leadership. 
• Ensuring race equity informs our cultural norms. This is just as important as tackling the systems and processes.

The relational element of this work is so important to me i.e. it’s not just about the training you do, books you read, the data we collect, but how we put the learning into practice in our daily relationships, the conversations we have about race and racism, how we make decisions, how we respond to the horrific and painful racism we continue to see in society, how we challenge inappropriate comments, how we apologise if we get something wrong.

This is such an important question and I hope what I share will also support those who may be earlier on in their anti-racist practice or who may have seen institutional resistance to change.  For those practitioners, I want to say I see you and understand how exhausting the resistance is.

The academic Sara Ahmed writes ‘when you expose the problem [oppression], you become the problem,’ i.e. rather than the organisation or individual wanting to address racism, they want to silence and even remove the individual exposing it. I’ve definitely experienced this in a range of ways and I’m sure, will continue to. As a brown woman talking about racism and holding organisations and people accountable for change, means I deal with whiteness in all its forms, whether that’s fragility, resistance etc. 

There’s lots of research on the experiences of women of colour in the workplace, particularly Black women and if you’re interested to know more you may want to look at a diagram that went viral on social media about the experiences of women of colour in the third sector from the Centre for Community Organizations in Canada. The “Problem” Woman of Colour in the Workplace, clearly shows the trajectory for many of us doing this work, which is why I’m constantly walking a tightrope to challenge and still protect myself in the work.

In addition to the personal risk race equity work poses, I also have deep care and commitment to all elements of it. Every aspect of it matters to me, whether it’s large scale institutional change or individual change and a colleague feeling seen/heard or that an incident has been dealt with. This commitment has meant that I have put myself under too much pressure to create change.

That being said, my practice has really evolved in how I keep well. Some of this has included:

• Community, community, community! I ensure I surround myself with amazing people who can provide me solidarity, safety, compassion, laughter and care. My community often reminds me that no one person can do this work.
• I’ve made sure I’ve developed my understanding of racism, including whiteness. This has allowed me to better understand my experiences and why the fragility and resistance exists to the work. This has enabled me to better deal with resistance to change or resistance to feedback in a way that I no longer internalise it.
• Working on myself. I’ve learnt how racial trauma and racial battle fatigue impacts me, allowing me to develop methods to regulate my nervous system, such as meditation and being in nature.
• As a part of my role at Citizens Advice I receive clinical supervision, which is a testament to the organisation recognising the impact of equity work. This allows me to unpack and work through the impact of the work on a clinical level. For instance, a therapist once said to me ‘retreat is not defeat’ to encourage me to rest and take time out to recuperate. This is one of the mantras I now live by. We all need to rest and take a break – no one person can create anti-racist change in an organisation, nor should they be expected to.
• Seeking what gives me joy. I’m proactive in nurturing joyful, healing spaces for myself, whether that’s having time for my creativity, animals and spending quality time with those I love.