Parminder Mudhar
Information & communication officer at the European Data Protection Supervisor
Brussels, Belgium
In his op-ed “In Europe, we also can’t breathe” (June 3), Yassine Boubout wrote that “speaking about race and racism remains a major taboo” in Europe and that countries “are still struggling to come to terms with legacies of slavery and colonialism.”
I am cautiously optimistic that the issues of race and white privilege highlighted by the #BlackLivesMatter protests are penetrating mainstream consciousness. They are certainly a wake-up call to governments, politicians, the public sector, business leaders, media organizations and all those who have the power to affect change.
Where does the EU fit in to all of this? The EU institutions are made up of an incredibly diverse workforce from across the 27 countries of the EU. And yet, they have also become “whiter” and less representative of Europe’s diverse population since the departure of British MEPs, as the Parliament Magazine noted in February.
Read some of the cringe-worthy examples of unconscious bias in action in the EU institutions, outlined in Ryan Heath’s article in POLITICO “Brussels is blind to diversity” (December 2017), and it’s clear why people of color need a seat at the table. There are at least 50 million people of color living in Europe, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at the EU institutions.
To redress the imbalance, the EU should enlist the help of diversity experts from outside the institutions to advise it on implementing bias training, reevaluating its recruitment procedures, and updating the European schools’ curricula to include the Continent’s colonial history, to name just a few urgent issues.
We should not underestimate the benefits that would result were Europe to make a concerted effort to tackle systemic racism and discrimination. If the EU institutions were to better reflect the communities they serve, it would send a powerful message across the world that it practices the fairness it preaches to others.
The EU needs an actionable strategy to address racism and bias in its institutions that does more than pay lip service to people of color. The potential for change is significant if there is a will to match it.