Proud of my Caribbean heritage

My dad was born in Montserrat and my mother was born in Antigua. As a child I was always embarrassed that my parents came from the West Indies. It wasn’t until years later when the term West Indies was upgraded to ‘The Caribbean’ that I realised that my family came from a place that most people would love to go to on holiday. Growing up on a council estate in Leicester meant that very few of my friends could afford to take this magical journey to the Caribbean, so to them it was a real novelty, even though I was actually born in Leicester, just as they were.

My brother, sister and I walked the mile and half to school every day. We were one of the few black families in our school, which ultimately meant that there was no hiding. There was racism, but I avoided the worst of it, and my ability to see the best in people meant that I could easily forgive and forget most, if not all of it.

Proud to be on a diversity and inclusion journey

I’ve worked for F&F for 16 years now and am proud to be part of the team and proud of what we have achieved. My D&I journey started by mistake, I have a tendency to share what’s on my mind, and in this instance, I unwittingly opened a pandora's box of opportunities.

I saw an article about a product, where a customer was angry about a reference to the natural hair of black people on a 'racist' T-shirt. My first thought was that it was maybe a lot of fuss over nothing, but as I read the article and reviewed the picture, it took me right back to my childhood and the years spent just wanting to fit in and be like everyone else. My hair has always been cause for conversation, instead of it just being normal hair. I admit that I grew up with a kind of resentment that not only was my hair so different from my school friends, but that none of my friends knew anything at all about black hair and to them it would always be a novelty.

After sharing the article with colleagues, I received a separate message from my manager. We discussed the article at length, and my manager agreed with me that we need to do more. Later that day I got a message from my Head of Merchandising, Adam Cook, who called me and wanted to hear any thoughts that I had around the article. I did my best to explain, although Adam instantly got it and agreed with me, but asked me to do one thing– to talk about it with my team.

I set up a meeting with my team, and we talked. My team were wonderful, very apologetic, very understanding and extremely supportive. I felt so glad that I’d instigated that uncomfortable conversation and so happy to know that they were on board.

After talking to my Director, Ali, I followed up our conversation the next day with clarification on the overarching problem:

As an immigrant race of people living in the UK and invited over during Windrush, we have all grown up being told to go back home and that we were inferior to white people and simply not good enough. To see an item of clothing that spells it out and says that the hair of every single black person is unacceptable seems to confirm those feelings.”

My next step from Ali was to join our F&F ‘Culture Club’, our internal D&I group, that does so much more than just D&I, this was where things really started to happen. With October being Black History Month and the mermaid story still fresh in people’s minds, last year I was given the chance to post on our internal colleague Instagram page. I chose a fabulous background of a picture taken from an F&F celebration years ago and each day I uploaded the content that I thought was relevant. I had fun, it was exciting, a bit daring and a chance for my creative side to show itself. The posts were well received, and I was firmly part of the F&F Culture club. As well as my next steps, Ali and I discussed the fact that we understood how this had happened and that if nothing else, we wanted something good and real to come out of this unfortunate event. Ali would eventually set up our D&I book club, with monthly meetings and a book club forum in Teams.

I’m currently part of the D&I natural work team for the wider Tesco business, and co-ambassador for the Product team with my colleague, Leon Donald. I’m also a member of the Black Voices Group, a newly formed black advisory group supported by our colleague network. I’ve done numerous presentations around D&I and proudly shared the F&F D&I journey with the wider Tesco teams. I’ve been part of the Black British Network roundtable talks, I’m a member of the BAME at Tesco network and even won the first ever F&F drag race. I’ve worked closely with the lingerie team to ensure that their inclusive nude lingerie range was fit for purpose, and I’ve helped various teams join in the journey and start their own team Instagram accounts.

Somehow, after all these years with F&F at Tesco, I’ve found a new something that I love to do. My passion for D&I has grown even stronger and I have loved every step of the journey. I’ve met so many new people along the way and learnt so much about myself, about D&I and about my colleagues - I’m so excited to see where this journey will take me, but most of all, I’m proud to be on this D&I journey at Tesco.