As a communications company, we help clients talk for our living. Now we find ourselves at a loss for words.
Racism in America doesn’t start and stop with policing and police culture. George Floyd is but one of countless black people who have been singled out, profiled, judged, attacked, falsely arrested and/or killed for no other reason than the fact that they aren’t white.
We let this happen. And we continue to let this happen after it happens again. And again. And again. Can we all please say, “Enough.”?
There are deep rooted problems to tackle, but you can’t tackle what you don’t know or understand. We know we can’t solve them, but we must do our part.
Step one. We need to look in the mirror and accept what we see for what it is: privilege, the vast majority of it, lily white. We need to double down on our commitment to diverse recruiting and hiring practices, and we need to reinforce our zero-tolerance stance on bias, hate, xenophobia and discrimination in our workplace.
But that’s not enough. Nowhere near enough.
We need to commit. No more ignoring. No more excuses. We know we have our work cut out for us. But we recognize the issue and we’re making a change.
We are committing to change how and whom we hire. We are committing to investing in the future of a diverse and inclusive culture. And we are committing to being an active champion for change in the marketing and communications industry – ensuring that everyone has a place they feel welcome and safe, and a voice that will be heard.
This is our standing promise — one that goes beyond an outrageous incident in one moment in time — to doing better every day.
