Julian Obubo, brand strategy director at Manifest London on "How to be an anti-racist company" on the PRmoment Podcast

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Today, on the PRmoment Podcast, I'm talking to Julian Obubo, brand strategy director at Manifest London about "How to be an anti-racist company."

Julian is a member of the leadership team at Manifest and, I know, has been a vital part of the agency's impressive growth in recent years.

As has long been discussed, the diversity stats in PR are embarrassing with approximately 92% of the sector describing themselves as British White.

If you’d like to understand more about the diversity challenges and the solutions to PR’s diversity problem, here are a whole bunch of diversity articles, podcasts, and videos where we've discussed the topic.

Here are a few highlights of what Julian and I discussed:

04.53 mins Why Julian believes the typical approach to improving diversity and inclusion is broken.

06.55 mins Why one of the fundamental problems with the slow progress in the area of diversity is the lack of understanding of how interconnected the various issues are.

09.30 mins As individuals, as companies and as a society we need to start thinking, educating, and acting differently.

12.06 mins Why, as a society, our definition of racism is too narrow.

16.05 mins Why racism is usually about how our all of our subconscious behaviours make BAME people feel - rather than far-right uneducated skinheads

18.44 mins How did the term “not the right fit” ever become an accepted term within the interview process?

21.00 mins A recognition that it’s difficult to hire BAME PR people at the moment - because there are not enough of them! But also a recognition that an effective PR team needs to mirror the society it communicates to. 

25.10 mins Julian talks about Manifest’s reasons for signing up to the Blueprint process.

27.20 mins Why Julian likens the attempts to increase the diversity of the PR sector to "mopping up and drying the floor without ever trying to fix the leak." 

29.10 mins Why, when CVs of black people turn up in your inbox, you know you’re making some progress.

31.35 mins If you’re at the start of your journey to increase the diversity of your PR firm - where do you begin?

32.00 mins Why we all need to educate ourselves by understanding the sources of racism and lack of diversity in our society.

37.02 mins Julian explains why he believes PR’s diversity has gone backwards in recent years.

42.55 mins How our narrow definition of racism means that we fail to socialise with diverse groups. This means we are not able to recognise our own microaggressions and subtle racist behaviour within ourselves and our society.

44.40 mins The difference between anti-racism and non-racism.

45.52 mins How does PR start to increase its diversity? And realistically, what impact is likely in the short term (12-18 months), medium-term (2-5 years) and long term (5 years +?).