The invasion of Ukraine by Russia last week, 8 years after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, is horrendous. No people should ever have to endure this. My heart hurts for the Ukrainians and those in Ukraine whose lives will never be the same again. — What I’ve witnessed over the last few days shouldn’t have surprised me, but I’ll be honest and say that it did. …

As Wayne Couzens was sentenced to life in prison in October 2021, the devastating case of Sarah Everard’s kidnapping, rape and murder returned to the news. Our thoughts and prayers are with her family and friends as they continue to suffer this excruciating loss. Many of us with marginalised genders are also feeling pain too, in solidarity and for ourselves, knowing this could easily be one of us.

In light of the murders in Atlanta by a white man, Robert Aaron Long, of 8 Asian people, 6 of them women, and wider commentary surrounding it, I have put together an offering to those who wish to deepen their understanding of Anti-Asian Racism, specifically with relation to East Asian communities. It is no more than a starting point. I did this for a former participant to support them make sense of what happened. This is not exhaustive, however I hope it might be helpful for those who want to orient themselves with how this violence was made possible and to see how this act was not isolated but in fact part of a longer process — in order for us to strengthen our solidarities with Asian communities. While what follows focuses on America, anti-Asian racism is not confined to that geography but also has happened and is happening in Europe.

You might think this is too obvious a sentence starter to be useful. Of course there is a problem with it, I hear you exclaim — there are many, in fact! But what if the problem wasn’t just how it manifests but also its very conceptualisation? — ‘Privilege’ has been in the mainstream for some time, increasingly so in recent years, as a term that is used to describe the ‘unearned advantages’ afforded to a group of people based on their identity. Many people, including Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham University, trace it back…

Many companies are seeking to hire Diversity and Inclusion Leads as a response to what has been revealed to them through the Black Lives Matter uprisings over the last 6 weeks and their confrontation with the absence of their action. If your company is going down this route, we offer some questions that could feature within the interview process. — First off though, it’s worth saying that the very act of creating a D&I Lead where there was none does not in and of itself do anything. It is not absolution, an ointment, redemption or a remedy for times gone past. It doesn’t even mean that the future is bright…

This week something has become rather popular during these Corona times: articles identifying that countries responding well to the pandemic are led by women leaders doing womanly leadership, see for example here and here. — This is great, isn’t it?! Go women! What critiques could Fearless Futures possibly have, we hear you exclaim! Funny you should mention it, a few actually. What’s often assumed though left unsaid, when making the claim that it is these leaders’ ‘femaleness’ or ‘womanly-ness’ causing these distinct behaviours, is the…

The spread of the corona virus, people’s responses in the face of information about new ways to behave, alongside government action, offer up illuminating insights for how we can re-think how we bring about change in service of inclusion in our organisations. — ONE. Awareness is not enough. One of the common refrains that we frequently encounter as we engage in the organisations where we work is that people ‘just need to be made aware of inequality’ in order for cultures of inclusion to be made possible. The argument goes that people are in a soporific state, unknowing…

Words have meanings. And as a general rule, it’s extremely useful to ensure definitionally we are all on the same page — otherwise we can end up in chaos. As such, we wanted to share that we often get asked, “why — given that ageism is an ism — do Fearless Futures not conceive of it as an oppression, when most of the oppressions you explore also have ‘isms’ at the end?”. We answer this pertinent question below using a handy conceptual framework to assist us with this analysis.

This is from the Fearless Futures Newsletter, that goes out weekly on Wednesdays. If you’d like to receive it, please sign up here (link opens in new window). — There is significant alarm and panic about the Coronavirus that scientists have deemed to have originated in a Wuhan Market, in China, with information about its spread dominating the news cycle. Yet, already this flu season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA estimates that more than…