Channel Digest: Lost for words

Last week's issue of Channel Digest addressed the recent riots in the UK and what channel leaders can do to make sure their employees feel heard and supported.

It's been hard to know what to write this week.

On the CRN website, we have not covered the riots in the UK last weekend, nor the beautiful displays of solidarity across communities standing together on Wednesday.

For the channel, by and large, it's been business as usual. Keep calm and carry on.

But as an editorial team, we've listened to numerous stories of both sides of the coin – colleagues of colour and those from the immigrant community feeling unsafe, shocked and destabilised by what we've all witnessed, as well as business leaders supporting their teams.

We rarely talk about racism in this way on CRN.

Across IT, many of our colleagues are people of colour, immigrants or the children of immigrants.

This is one of the lovely effects of working in an industry that is becoming more diverse and one that has always, inherently, depended on the work and skills of a wide cohort of people.

The angle is usually diversity and inclusion.

Undoubtably, inclusion will be hugely important over the coming weeks as we grapple with the impact of this.

As colleagues and friends vent about feeling unsafe walking to work or about the effects of this past week on their families and mental health.

We can't shy away from having these conversations and we need to stand up for each other. Stepping away from work might be needed, a listening ear will certainly be welcome.

I write this as an immigrant in the UK – thirteen years this September, some more challenging than others.

When I arrived in 2011 for university, my experience was mixed but I was very lucky. I was welcomed by so many – including many, many PoC.

I'm also white, I speak English with an ambiguous accent and, back then, in 2011, our media landscape was nowhere near as polarised as it is today.

This last point, I think, is an important one.

As businesses, we work hard to ensure that we're supporting everyone when they need it.

As individuals, we may need to consider media literacy – what we publish, what we share, how we talk about each other and the issues of the day.

Do we welcome feedback?

Could we be contributing to this polarisation?

To all of you doing the work of making the channel a more diverse, more welcoming place, thank you.

Let's keep going.