Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the How Not to Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So, pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. This is episode 18 and today I am delighted to be joined by the incredible Rania Robinson, MD of Quiet Storm, the ad agency responsible for the Haribo ads we all love, where the adults talk with children's voices. As a woman of colour raising two mixed race children, she shares her personal insights on how she has navigated discussions around race and discrimination. I believe we all have a responsibility to educate ourselves and our children so we can eradicate discrimination. So many parents have not known how to start discussions around Black Lives Matters and Rania shares the most incredible insights from her own family. This is a must listen for every parent, regardless of race or ethnicity. She also just happens to be my sister. So welcome and today on my podcast, I am joined by the fabulous Rania Robinson, who also just happens to be my sister, but she is here really not as my sister, but in terms of really having some really deep level conversations around conversations that we should be having with our children. And the idea with this podcast episode is I want it to be helpful for parents who have children who identify as being children of colour. But I also want this podcast to be for people who have, who don't identify as colour, but want to understand more about how they can begin to have these conversations with their children. So welcome, Rania. Hello. Thank you for having me. Oh, my pleasure. Let's start off, Rania, with some of your, you know, what were your early experiences as a child of colour?
Speaker 2Well, I think my very first, probably most visceral childhood experience was starting school for the first time. I think it was probably either nursery or reception. I can't completely remember. But it was certainly the first school style experience I'd had having kind of come from Egypt and grown up, you know, with my family, close to my, in my family unit. It would have been the first experience I would have had outside of the family. And I distinctly remember not being able, not speaking a word of English and not being able to. I remember sitting in the assembly hall with the, it was a Catholic school, Roman Catholic school, which was confusing anyway. But it was, and I remember having the hymn book and looking at all the, looking at all the other kids and they were apparently reading from this hymn book and singing. And I couldn't read a single word of it. And I distinctly remember that. I mean, it didn't, I can't remember learning the language. I mean, for instance, suddenly speaking fluent English. So you do, as a young child, you pick up the language very, very quickly. But I do absolutely, that's a, that's a memory that has never left me of that sense of, I am different to everybody else here. And I can't connect with them in the way that, and I felt a sense of difference. That doesn't go, that doesn't leave you that kind of feeling of really belonging.
Speaker 1And because there's so much emotion tied up to it, it's that memory that sticks with us, doesn't it? And obviously, you know. We both went to the same primary school. I was older than you when we came. So obviously I had a command of English to a certain level. But I think our experiences being of colour and looking very different in skin tone and hair to others, I think our experiences were affected by that. Can you, you know, when you think back to your sort of, to your childhood, can you remember very vividly aspects of, of how people treating you? Did they treat you differently or anything directly as a result of your colour?
Speaker 2Yeah. I mean, I was very conscious of my difference, not just in terms of the way I looked and the language and, but also the religious aspect of it. We were in a Roman Catholic school, our family were Muslim. So there was a big kind of, kind of self-consciousness around that as well, being different. And obviously we're in a community where there weren't other Muslims, there weren't other people from different backgrounds. There were very, very few people in the community, like tiny, tiny minority. So I was very, very self-conscious anyway about my difference. But then, you know, on top of that, you know, I did experience racial abuse, being followed home, being called names, being asked kind of really sort of strange questions and very personal inappropriate questions that, you know, around the way, you know, well, which to be fair in a way kind of probably doesn't, didn't hit home in the, in the way it might for somebody who was born. Yeah. But certainly kind of lots of preconceived ideas and assumptions around my ethnicity and my cultural background and my heritage. And, but I think probably also the level, the consciousness that you, with the TV and what was happening on telly at that time that the programming, you know, the jokes were, you know, standup comedians, Jimmy Davison talking very like, you know, it was like explicitly racist jokes, things like mind your language, hilarious. And actually we probably all found hilarious really. But again, when you think back on it, it was like compounding stereotypes around people coming from different cultures and different backgrounds. And so there was this kind of strong sense of not only being different, but not being embraced and welcomed and seen that there was some hostility and negativity coming, coming through as well. So I think, again, they're things that impact your confidence. They're things that impact your self-esteem. You know, what ends up happening is you have a really strong desire. Well, certainly this is how I felt, a really, really strong desire to fit in. And I think, I think there's lots of evidence of this. And I sort of see research around it, that kids that are in schools where they are a minority, it does impact on their self-esteem. I think that that's not quite the case when you have schools with a high percentage of kids of color and they don't have the same sense of the negative impact that it has on self-esteem. So I think there was a lot of, a lot of stuff around that. I just wanted to be like everybody else. I just wanted to fit in. I just wanted to be called Polly, have straight hair, all that kind of stuff. But it just, yeah, I just, I just, you just don't want to be different at that age. It's all about a sense of belonging. I mean, we as human, you know, as humans feel a strong sense or need to belong, don't we? And I think that's compounded as a child before you developed a strong sense of self.
Speaker 1Yeah. And I think certainly when I remember back to our childhood, there weren't really that many women in schools. And in the media or in, in any sort of, you know, position as such that we could identify with, they, they just, you know, it was all Charlie's angels with this perfectly blonde flicked hair and all of these other things. So, so that exacerbated the feeling different and not being like other people particularly in that. And certainly there's, I think there's been an article that's just been recently released, I think on the BBC talking about as a country, we are one of the most diverse, but certainly in some children's experiences where they are very much. And the minority, they don't, they don't experience that level of diversity.
Speaker 2No, there absolutely wasn't the role modelling or visibility of women of colour on TV and the ones that were didn't necessarily embrace their natural looks or their natural hair. So again, I mean, I remember my hair being a massive bone of contention for many, many years. It wasn't until I got much older that I started to really embrace and celebrate my natural hair and love my natural hair. But for years and years, it was sort of trying to straighten it, trying to make it do things that I didn't naturally want to do. And yeah, and it was just, and now it's like, you know, it's, I love that. I love, I love, you know, having, you know, big Afro and actually think about it. We were in the eighties and people were paying lots of money to perm their hair, weren't they? And we'd get those curls we had naturally. So yeah, I think, I think that again, that, that's something that took a bit of time for me. I just wanted, yeah, you want to, the people that are being positioned as kind of ideals of beauty. I think that's a really important thing. kind of later established was that she was just looking to me and I'm much fairer um than she is and i had to work really hard and the same with her hair she was asking me to straighten her hair from very young and i had to work really really hard to sort of find positive imagery um of you know beautiful natural hair black women and really show her a positive representation and as she's got older and it didn't to be honest it didn't take very long you know i i i don't straighten my hair you know i've you know i've always embraced well not always in recent years certainly since probably around about 1920 embrace my natural hair and so i've i've really encouraged her to not straighten her hair and and kind of love what she's been born with and actually you know she's completely different now she's a very proud black young lady now she wears her hair you know natural and beautiful and she's very kind of embracing and and proud of her natural looks now but it was a bit of a journey it it took a bit of work but i think for me it's important as a company we've done campaign work around it as well where we've delivered campaigns um celebrating natural black hair as well so i think it's something we're very active in in our work life as well um and putting out positive um imagery and representation because there's such a lack of it even now even now if you think about a lot of the you know famous black women they're not necessarily wearing their hair natural naturally so even still they're still seeing black role models female role models you know wearing leaves or straightening their hair or you know so so you you we i've had to work on that quite specifically with her but but she's you know that's not the case at all now she's very um embracing of that of her natural looks and with my son it's it's different i mean with him it's been about around how he carries himself to some extent in terms of not being perceived as a kind of you know angry black man or you know that that kind of side of things but also just his his how he conducts himself in the context of the likelihood that he will get stopped and searched at some point we know that black people attend particularly young boys or young adults black male adult adults are more likely 10 times up to 10 times more likely to be stopped and searched than their white friends so that's a conversation i've had to have with him around that the likelihood that he's going to get stopped and searched knowing his rights how to conduct himself in that situation and i think that's a really good conversation so you know conversations that probably most mums white caugasian mums wouldn't even think to have with their children so yeah that that's um those are
Speaker 1some difficult conversations to have because how do you as a parent when you're trying to explain that to your son particularly how do you how do you position that knowing that it isn't right that that happens so that you don't create this and you know this anger as well and sort of perpetuate some of these stereotypes how have those conversations and keep them positive i
Speaker 2think i think it can be challenging to some extent because obviously my husband grew up in the 80s during thatcher's government and at that time i think sus was introduced which is uh uh suspicious i can't remember exactly what the acronym is but it was the kind of early iteration of stop and search basically so he grew up as a young black man being stopped and searched relentlessly and being very badly treated by the police and being having experiences that were disproportionate being very sort of manhandled in to be frank and uh and experiencing a huge amount of kind of bias in the whole stop and search experience so he's got a very negative view of the police understandably from his young experiences that he struggled to kind of shape really yeah so i have to balance that a little bit with the kids and because i think it's unfair to generalize in any situation and and you know judge everybody by by the same same brush i certainly wouldn't be um trying to to talk about the police as all being racist or being bad or so i have to kind of balance that but with also giving the children a clear sense of awareness that this is a good possibility something like this is you know they're going to get stopped well certainly not so much my daughter but certainly my son so so i think for me i try to be the kind of the balanced voice of reason within it but you know they've seen what happened last year with george floyd they're very aware they were just coming into their teens around that time my son you know um you know it was at the time 13 last year but obviously that has put a huge spotlight and created a lot of opportunity for discussion around it and for us to be able to talk to our children about it and i think i try to give a balanced view but there is a reality and that reality is you know there will be you know there will be some members of the police force that are going to stop and search through their own unconscious biases and their own prejudices and may use disproportionate force or act in a way where you know um which is not appropriate so the best advice i can give him is is really you know to try and maintain a level of trust yeah in in authority and in police because there might be a situation where he's going to need to know that he can trust the police but equally understand what his rights are if he does end up in a situation where you know he's having to deal with with with this yeah you've
Speaker 1ronnie you touched on this this whole idea about black lives matters and i think personally i think many parents haven't actually had a conversation with their children about about black lives matters not because they don't feel passionately about it because i think they just don't really understand it properly and they feel scared to navigate it can you kind of succinctly for the parents that are listening to this who don't identify as color but want to raise children who are aware of diversity who embrace this concept of black lives matters there's lots of discussion about all lives matter and black lives matter can you shine a light so that parents who are listening understand it better to begin those conversations i
Speaker 2think people really need to try they have a responsibility to understand the challenges that black community face and have a real awareness and i appreciate that it's very hard to identify for me with these experiences when you've never had them but i think every parent has a responsibility to understand the inequalities and inequities and then the issues and challenges that the community face and i think it's been very easy for us all to just think racism doesn't exist or it's you know it's it's confined to a very niche group whereas actually you know there has to be this recognition that whilst you know probably most most people would think of racism as as terrible and you know awful and they wouldn't see themselves as racist what they do have to understand is these unconscious biases and these systemic inequalities that are that have come from decades and decades and decades of misrepresentation in media and or a lack of representative positive representation in media and through history of this country and you know so i i i do think it's like anything you you want your children to have a good understanding and a good grasp on our history on life on society on and this is part of it this is part of their education and they and they need to understand it and i think i think we've all got a responsibility to to to to have a a good sense of the the challenges um you know are at humana our
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Speaker 2our community face beyond our own experiences so i think we all want well rounded kids we all want kids that you know are well informed and inquisitive and curious and this is part of it particularly given how multicultural our society is now that these people are going to be interacting with people that come from different backgrounds who've had different lived experiences they need to understand their lives and and it's part of being empathetic and part of being a decent human being to be honest with you yeah so it's it's being able to relate to other people and relate to their experiences and understand what's inappropriate you know and understand what you need to do and it's something that they might not necessarily fully grasp and if people don't understand ask become informed i think i think it's a it is a very very sensitive subject matter and i do think it makes people feel very uncomfortable but we have a responsibility to to understand and appreciate other people's experiences yeah and i
Speaker 1think that you know that's part of just an acceptance of the diversity of the world that we live in this day is not people not treating people based on assumptions so speaking of that because i know that this this was part of the challenge i think for a lot of parents was the distinction between black lives matter and all lives matter how would you i think the
Speaker 2point is the black community are disproportionately affected by so much stuff that puts them in an unequal and disadvantaged position and they're not the only people don't get me wrong that are experienced experienced challenges in life but they are disproportionately overly affected more than other community, you know, and that is from, you know, prejudice, unconscious bias, job opportunities, right through to funding as a business, loans, how likely they are to get a loan from the bank. It's throughout every aspect. If you look at, you know, black representation and senior leadership positions within organisations, that, you know, it's very, very limited. And I think that's a clear indicator of their ability to progress in organisations. And there's lots and lots of other data points that stop and search, you know, they're 10 times more likely to get stopped and searched. So they are, they are disproportionately impact way and above any other community. Hence why, of course, all lives matter. Well, that's a ridiculous thing to say. But that's, again, it's just detracting from our responsibility to recognise the inequalities that the black community face. And above any other community in this country, in this country, obviously, you know, not when you look globally, but in this country.
Speaker 1Actually, that's beautifully put. And that makes it really much easier for us to sort of grasp. Rania, before we started recording, you were talking about, obviously, whilst you are identified as a woman of colour, you've not, you've had to sort of, in some ways, you've learnt through the experiences of being wife, partner, girlfriend to your husband. What it actually meant to be a black man. Talk, explain, because I know that there will be a lot of people who are doing their absolute best to be, you know, to live authentically and be, to make no judgment on people based on anything other than how they present themselves to, to us in terms of their actions and their behaviours, that will be thinking falsely, you know, we don't really have such a big racism problem here. It's only a small pocket of people who've got really antisocial assumptions and behaviours. Talk us through what you've have seen through your that has helped you see through the eyes of trevor specifically his experiences i think
Speaker 2for me i was probably one of those naive people in a way because i grew up in the 70s in a very white community where i personally experienced racism when i came to london which is a multicultural society i'm in an industry that feels very open-minded and liberal i naively and i'm embarrassed to say it now but i i naively felt like okay we don't have that same level of racism that we had in the 70s or that i experienced when i was growing up and it wasn't until i started dating trevor that i started to see with my own eyes this prejudice and racism that's still very much alive and actually is is more kind of it is probably more a mass scale than that kind of out and out racism that you that i think of which is people being you know called names and being harassed and and physical violence and things like that it's a much more insidious for insidious form of prejudice and racism which is this kind of unconscious bias and preconceived ideas and and prejudice and the way i saw it with trevor was taxi cabs not wanting to stop for him you know i used to have to go ahead of him and hail a cab and then he would come come after me so we could get a cab to stop if it was if it was him trying to hail a cab the amount of cabs that would just go go around or a woman you know moving her back let's sit you on the tube and they move their bag to the other side you know or once or someone you know they avoid sitting next to him and things like that and it's it's it's very i i hadn't even kind of couldn't even relate to that or identify with those experiences and it was very easy for me to sort of brush some of these these things to one side sometimes i'd say to him come on you're being oversensitive that was innocent and but actually after spending a period of them you realize this is not no no no you're not imagining this this is very real you know even i was in a bar um you know with with trevor one one day and he and he put his hand in my bag to get my purse out and actually to be fair they didn't know we were together and maybe you could go okay well they wouldn't have how would they know that you're together but i but i do wonder if it was because of how he looked that a woman sort of tapped on children said that gentleman's just taken your purse out the bag and was like actually he's my husband you know he's like you know so i don't know i mean maybe that you know maybe she would have done the same if it was anyone but we were clear i thought clearly together and you know we were together in the i don't so so yeah it's things like that so and i'm talking about seeing this over and over and over again it's not one incident it's repeated incidences the real consistent one is taxi drivers not wanting to stop yeah pick him up for a ride so which is you know he's a very established successful professional guy not that you know um that should be a sort of badge it should you know but it doesn't matter who it is but the point is it's they couldn't have got it more wrong in terms of thinking he's going to try and evade his fare or hasn't got the money to pay for it or whatever it is they think which is why they're not stopping
Speaker 1yeah and we're not yeah and of course there's me there's me sort of snickering which i shouldn't be doing but actually we're not even talking that long you know we're talking in the last decade this these sorts of things are happening and they're probably have you seen a shift more recently in any of these patterns well
Speaker 2i think what happened with george floyd and the subsequent sort of on what's happening in america and it's not just happening in america it's happening here as well to to you know a different degree but it's certainly happening here has made us all you can't argue with it it's happening it's there it's in front of our eyes we're seeing it and there's a lot more conversation around it and there's a there's a lot more of a desire to understand and make change and and for them for a lot of people i mean i don't think obviously everybody but certainly i would say there's a groundswell of recognition and recognition understanding and support you know so i do think that's been the shift the big shift has been the spotlight that's been on it a genuine desire to drive change i don't think you change attitudes and views overnight they're deeply deeply ingrained even in the most well-meaning people they can't help the environment they've grown up in they can't help the media that's been pushed out to them that's representing the black community in a certain way in programming in the news in you know so that's not going to happen that's not going to change overnight you know but what i do see is a groundswell of a recognition that there is a problem and there are inequalities and a desire to drive change yeah
Speaker 1it's there and i think part you know we have to as you've said quite eloquently as parents take ownership and responsibility we have a duty to raise our children with the information that they need so that they can be a well-rounded adult in society accepting of everyone for who they are and not carrying these prejudices with them and these assumptions and as you say these unconscious biases as they get become older that might impact who they interact with how they recruit how they might behave and all of those bits now ronnie i want i want to sort of you know i'm very aware that you do a lot of work not only within the advertising agency that you run but also the uh charitable part of what you do the create not hate could you just tell people a little bit more about those and particularly for those who might actively be able to get involved or yeah
Speaker 2well we're obviously advertising such a powerful tool you know it can persuade it can change minds it can change attitudes it can change behavior so we have always as a business felt a strong sense of duty is the wrong word desire passion to use the power of advertising and the power of creativity to do some good in the world and use it to support causes and organizations and issues that we care about and obviously you know a lot of that is to do also you know run the business with trevor so a lot of it is around supporting marginalized groups whether that's women or people of color or um you know other you know other sort of marginalized groups and so we've always done campaign work pro bono that is really important to us and we've always done campaign work pro bono that is really about sort of shining a light on an issue and getting people to see that issue differently and to drive behavioral change and attitudinal change to deliver kind of positive impact so we've always done things like that uh we've done campaigns around gun and knife crime we've done campaigns around you know embracing natural black hair uh we've done stuff around mental health and um stop and search and all sorts of things so what what we've done really is in 2007 trevor founded create not hate which was probably more of a youth engagement program that still the output was still about campaigning and developing campaigns to drive change but the big difference was was for him to bring in young people like him from his own background who either see advertising as well they probably don't even think of advertising as a career choice or they see it as a shut door not for people like them because they don't see like people like them in in the industry but for him it was like he felt there was this all all this brilliant talent untapped talent that we were missing out on as an industry so he wanted to run these programs really to make these young people aware of advertising in the creative industries and give them a real life experience of it with a view to unlocking their creative potential and getting them ultimately into the industry yeah so what we started to do with create not hate back in 2007 was get these young people to tackle social issues that they experience that they live with every day you know often they don't know what they're doing these campaigns are being run or being developed by people who have no real life experience. of these issues because it's not necessarily something they're close to or happening within their communities so he went back to his old school a kid had been stabbed in his old school and he asked the young the young people at the school to develop a campaign to tackle gun and knife crime and we as an agency produced a film off the back of it and we got it aired across the country and in cinemas and it got global um media coverage and and these young people got an opportunity to experience the industry and and from from literally coming up with the idea to everyone all the cast all the crew everyone was what came from trevor's old community um and actually one of the young guys who co-directed it with with trevor is now in the industry and he's now making films and doing more in the industry so i think but that's just one example so that was something that was started in 2007. we relaunched it in light of george floyd um and we've now set it up as a community interest company so it can be self-funded and we can run these programs and deliver it to sustainable programs so since then quite a few campaigns uh uh one around racism which reached 300 million people it went kind of stateside yeah huge massive reach we got support from the likes of the transfer and spotify and uh ocean outdoor and just loads of financial times the guardian channel four like we just got a huge amount of media support where we were able to showcase this work that these young people have developed around racism and we tackled things like microaggressions and yeah you know asking people to kind of check their prejudice and so and we've since then done like as i talked about mental health we've just done some films around stop and search and we're petitioning at the moment to get the police to review their uh training and and approach to to stop and search that's really you know so for people who want to get involved if you're you know if you know young people who uh want to participate then we've got uh do get in touch it's create not hate dot org also info at create not hate dot org um and there's we also have a gofundme um if you did want to just um contribute because it is a not-for-profit we rely on funds uh fundraising to run these initiatives there's a lot of stuff that we do pro bono ourselves as an agency and we get a lot of industry support um but we do rely on um contributions to events and we
Speaker 1will share we will share the link so um if you go to the usual so www.drmaryhan.com library you will then if you pop your email address in you'll then have access to all of the free resources across all of the podcasts but specifically all the links that rania has spoken about and clearly it's something that both you and trevor are phenomenally passionate about and you're you're making impacting change from the bottom up you're living and doing this and i just feel so proud and honored that you're my sister too just to finish off before i go super gushy if you could give a parent of who has a child that identifies as color one piece of advice what would you give
Speaker 2them oh wow oh god it's uh well that's a difficult question one piece of advice oh god just uh gosh it's very difficult i just think for me it's about that kind of sense of self strong sense of self no matter what you experience no matter what you see no matter what how other people's kind of behavior to maintain that sense of self and that strength and that power and the beauty and the fabulousness um that we that we embrace and we encompass is just to not let other people define how you feel about yourself
Speaker 1oh that's amazing and then one piece of advice for a parent who is not who wants to educate their children who wants to start having those conversations what would you
Speaker 2say understand really make an effort to and take the time to try and really understand these these experiences and these um putting yourself in somebody you know somebody else's shoes if you don't have friends of color who can talk to you and explain to you some about some of their experiences i mean this is something that we've both trevor and i found you know happened after george floyd and particularly trevor was his his friends were asking him about his experiences they wanted to understand what he'd experienced and you know things they had conversations they've never had before but you know so obviously that helps if you've got friends of color but if you don't take the time to there's lots of lots of brilliant books out there that give you a real insight um you know there's a lot that happens around black history month as well there's a lot of literature out there and a lot of you know editorial and and kind of coverage take the time to read that stuff and and try and kind of put yourself in the shoes of the black community and some of the experiences understand the history learn more about the
Speaker 1history brilliant awesome phenomenal advice thank you rania thank you so much for being here and i hope you have all enjoyed this is a podcast i think that you should be listening to time and time again and maybe even sharing with your children so if you have enjoyed this podcast episode as always please follow rate and review the podcast so that we can share the love so until next time at harmony bank we believe that better happens
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