RACIAL CAPITALISM IS NOT CULTURE!

Not a day goes by that I don’t get to speak to a parent of a young future athlete. Invariably the conversations start on one trajectory and conclude on another. So it was, that yesterday I was speaking to a parent about plans for 2024 and beyond and we ended up talking about the choices that her daughter is making about her future. I was so heartened to hear the parent speak of the ambitions of said daughter and how driven and determined she was to further her pursuits. She wants to play golf and study law and is setting out her path. Her parents and we as a platform are going to do everything in our power to support her.

In the same conversation, I found myself confessing to the parent that, I am increasingly weary and cautious about opening Instagram in front of my kids because I don't know what the algorithm will throw up. As I'm sure a lot of you will have been following the proceedings in the US this past week where the bosses of Social Media companies were grilled about the impact of social media on young people. It's a much broader conversation that I won't get into here at this point but I wanted to raise this in the context of something else that is directly linked I.e. the concept of racial capitalism. What is  racial capitalism?… "[A] concept reframing the history of capitalism as grounded in the extraction of social and economic value from people of marginalized racial identities, typically from Black people."

It is, I've found a useful framework to contextualise a lot of the broader conversations that we as a community are having about "WE". It is a good way of understanding the drivers of uprisal, appraisal, recrimination, and resolution when it comes to community.

A CASE OF TWO MEETINGS

In the recent past, I've been in a room with an executive who has felt compelled to ask me whether the fact that we are "allies" grants them license to use the N-word. Not what are the key areas of alignment and opportunity to foster the game in the community or best way to showcase the game. No. The query is whether they have the license to offend. Why so? I can't answer for the executive but I would imagine the reasoning is tied to commercialisation and what sells.

In a separate meeting at the backend of last year (we do take a lot of meetings), with another senior executive of a golf brand, we presented our ideas and when we finished our presentation, he said he understood our vision and that we were aligned completely. He highlighted their brand values and what their brand is about within golf. They have attributes and values they stand on and they are not looking to compel us to do or say things in order to sell product. They stood on their values and we on ours and the aspiration is for us to do business. As it should be!

Two meetings. Two different perspectives.

EXPRESS YOURSELF

I have witnessed and continue to witness situations where young people feel compelled to play to a stereotype or trope in the belief that this positions them as marketable. Ask them, "who is your favourite musician?"  they invariably answer Drake. "What’s your favourite Drake song?" draws a blank look of incredulity. All this because they believe that this is what brands and “the culture” want and expect from them.

Exploitative racial capitalism is not black culture and deters any progress we can possibly make as a society. Turbo charging loaded language in the pretence of "the culture" is regressive and counter productive. I am acutely aware that this is likely coming across as pontificating or being pious, but it is also going against my natural inclination to remain silent and in the background. 

There is a firm commitment to work to build a bigger table in golf where the idea of Black British culture is represented and articulated and we drive meaningful long-term investment in the grassroots of the game in our community. Not token gestures.