Written By Asia Sahota, International Business Student. Reading time – 2:30 minutes

Racism and discrimination against mixed ethnic people is a problem which is not as widely shouted about in the fight for equality; however, it proposes a growing issue for the workforce, since its predicted that by 2050, 30% of UK population will be from mixed ethnic minorities.

The academic discourse behind discrimination has mainly focused on ethnic minorities of specific groups, however I feel that there is a huge lack of focus on minorities who come from a mixed background, like me. 

Often, I feel like those of mixed background are often discriminated from groups for not 100% belonging to a specific race. For myself I either wasn’t Western enough to be Western or I wasn’t Eastern enough to be Eastern, and for me this discrimination made me feel misunderstood which lead to me feeling a need to prove myself to others and ultimately left me feeling unworthy in a battle with mental health issues.

Right now, I feel were seeing the major struggle of being mixed-race and the unspoken racism experienced from both sides.

“I wasn’t Western enough to be Western or I wasn’t Eastern enough to be Eastern”

With the international barriers being lifted in business and the recent, at times forceful, push to be ‘diverse’ within companies increasing, I feel that mixed raced people are almost romanticised and selected for employment purely based on ethnic appearance to look good on paper, but when dealt with by management and colleagues, we’re subjected to unconscious bias or deliberately hated on for being employed by management, because companies have to fulfil this diversity quota. (Take a look at Google‘s diversity issue.) This is not something that makes us feel truly valued, if anything we feel used and singled out.

In a paper by Synergi, there is evidence to suggest that racism has directly been linked to the rise of ethnic inequality in the mental health system, and the increasing emergence of mental illnesses. 

In 2017 the UK saw an overall cost to employers for mental health £34.9 billion! (£10.6 billion lost in sickness absence, £21.2 billion lost to reduced productivity at work, or ‘presenteeism’ and £3.1 billion spent on replacing staff who leave their jobs because of their mental health.)

With this being said, I feel that I’m well within my right to say that those of mixed-race background may find it harder to be taken seriously and harder to justify or explain the mental health issues caused by discrimination. I feel this forces mixed races to work harder in the pursuit of proving their worthiness to be accepted into communities within and outside the workplace.

The ripples felt by racism are much larger than most would think; it creates stagnation in progression, a rise in mental health issues, economic slowdown and huge opportunity costs for companies to harbour the true benefits of having a well accepted – diverse workforce. If we don’t address this unconscious discrimination now then we can’t address the humongous costs created by discrimination and the resulting mental health issues in business.

To even those money hungry CEO’s, I hope this argument may give them another reason to make the relevant changes to be more responsible and understanding of the breadth of issues discrimination creates which are faced by all minorities – not just the obvious victims.