Black All Year - Role Models Real Talk

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Hi everyone, and welcome to Black All Year. I am Steph Edusei, I'm the creator and host of the Black All Year podcast, where we celebrate black culture, history and excellence every single day of the year. And I want to talk about an experience that I've had that was really brought to light a little while ago via an interview on Hits Radio in the UK.

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For those of you that don't know Angelica Bell, she has been an absolute trailblazer on British television for years. She first came to light as a presenter on CBBC, which is a children's television programme, for want of a better word, and she has since gone on to present a number of different shows. But for many, in the time that she was on TV, she was a black face when there weren't that many around.

Angelica was interviewed by Fleur East on Hits Radio, and Fleur talked a little bit about just what a role model Angelica was, and how seeing her on TV, doing what she did, had really inspired people like Fleur, and had shown them that they too could go into a career in the media as presenters, but actually just to be recognised, and they felt seen when they saw Angelica on the TV. And Angelica then talked a little bit about how she was pleased to be a role model, but a little bit shocked by it, and Fleur really praised her on the stuff that she did, but asked about how Angelica's spoken about not really being able to do something she would have wanted to do, like wearing braided hair, and not show up as her true, authentic self as a black woman. And Fleur said, you know, maybe if you had similar role models to the role model you were to us, you might have been able to do more of that.

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And that actually reduced Angelica to tears. And she said that no matter what she's accomplished, she felt like she had failed, and that she hadn't done enough. Now I'm really pleased to say that that had, or has had, a lovely consequence in that lots of young adults, people in their 20s and early 30s, have reached out to Angelica across lots of social media channels to say just the difference she has made to their lives, and just how impactful she has, and to tell her not to worry, she did what she could, and that was enough.

It was enough. And for me, that really triggered a lot. Angelica and I are four years apart in age, and so we grew up in Britain in very similar times when there weren't many black role models on TV.

Curiously, one of the key ones was a children's TV presenter in Floella Benjamin, who is still going strong today, I am very pleased to say. But there weren't that many for us, and we had to comply to an extent to survive. We couldn't succeed being our true selves.

And I've spoken before about things that I've had to do in my early work life, in the way that I dressed, in the way that I wore my hair, in the things I would speak about, to fit in. Because for me, it was important that I succeeded. I didn't want to bring down any retribution on myself because of my ethnicity.

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And it was really, really key that I continue to present a good image of what a black person and a black woman was in society. People talk about code switching, and I would do that regularly. So I would be a certain thing in front of my friends, but never again, my true authentic self, because most of my friends were white people.

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And actually, at this point, moving into white women, or as a young adult, I was married into a South Asian family. So that the amount of code switching that I had to do there to fit, to fit in and to not be seen as the different person that I actually was, was incredible. I had to do that in work.

And then I would go to my home environment where actually most of the time I was just Steph, was unbelievable. And that takes its toll on you. But when I look back on that time, and when people refer to me as a role model, which I've got to say, is always a surprise the first, second, 10th time that it happens.

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Because you don't make yourself a role model. That's not a label you can put on yourself. I mean, you can, you can call yourself a role model, but it doesn't mean you are.

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But you don't choose to be a role model. Other people choose to see you as one. So when you discover that people are choosing to see you as a role model, and then you look at your flaws and your faults and the things that you could do better, or could have done better, that can be quite, quite a heavy burden to carry.

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Now, I'm really pleased to say that I've worked through the stuff about having to be perfect, because you know what, nobody's perfect, and I'm happy to be wrong. But actually, I do regret that I wasn't more of the authentic me when I was younger. If actually there were younger, black and mixed heritage children, who may have looked at me as a role model, that there were more junior managers who may have seen me in a leadership position and gone, I want to be like Steph, because Steph was not her authentic self.

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So yeah, I really regret that. And that's been quite painful for me over times. There have been times when I could have stood up and confronted racism in the workplace.

And I didn't because I didn't feel it was safe for me to do that. And I will always regret not doing that. But I now understand why.

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And I think this is one of the key things. And one of the things that I said in my social media response to Angelica's real honesty and vulnerability is that we have to forgive ourselves. We have to forgive ourselves for not being the role model that we wish that we had.

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Because that's us talking now, in today's world, with the level of authority, success, position, voice, whatever you want to call it that we now have. That's not us talking about when we were in our 20s. And when we were just trying to make it through.

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And we were trying to build a career, or we were trying to succeed. And it's not that we were hiding who we are, because you know what, if you're black, you pretty much couldn't hide it, even if you wanted to. And we didn't.

But it was about to what extent do we feel free to express that blackness? And we didn't. We didn't feel free. We didn't feel safe.

We knew that it was looked down on. And so we kept that for where we did feel safe. And that was normally in our outside lives and with those that loved us.

So we need to forgive ourselves for that. Because that wasn't about us. We didn't do anything wrong.

We were in the wrong environment and with the wrong people. And what's really, really important is that if we hadn't done what we did then, then we wouldn't be here now. We wouldn't have made the impact and the influence that we had back then that we probably didn't even realise that we were having.

But we certainly wouldn't still be around now to make that even bigger impact and even bigger influence. And whilst it still hurts, because I won't deny that it does, because I constantly strive to be better. And I do look back at things that I've done and think, what could I have done differently? And how could I have been better there? And also because I carry that weight, as Angelica does, of not having been able to be my full authentic self.

And if I'm honest, in a lot of environments in which I operate today, I do have a lot of safety. But there are some where I would never still bring my whole authentic self. Because I know that that would be commented and frowned on.

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So whilst we didn't have that and whilst we can be sad about that, we shouldn't beat ourselves up about it. We shouldn't feel that we've got something to apologise for. We need to recognise what we did and recognise the impact that we had and forgive ourselves for not being who we are now and recognise that that was what we had to do.

I've shared the message and I know Angelica has actually seen my response because she commented on it. And that was a little fangirl moment from me. And I know that she's felt the love that has been pouring out to her since the video was released.

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And I dearly hope she's taken that to heart and that she has truly forgiven herself for surviving and doing what she did to survive and to be able to be successful and to still be around today. And I hope you do that too if you're in a similar situation. So with that, I just want to thank you for joining me on this short solo episode of Black All Year.

And it would be very wrong of not to mention that today, on the day that this podcast goes live, my book, A Little Book of Leadership Lessons, will be for sale on Amazon. And I talk about a lot of this stuff as part of some of those lessons in the book. So you can get that just by going to Amazon and looking up A Little Book of Leadership Lessons or via the link in the show notes.

Let's continue to open up the discussion. Let's continue to create safe environments and let's continue to forgive and to celebrate. If you've enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to subscribe, share and leave a review.

Stay strong and I'll speak to you soon.