The importance of Black Pride and creating a truly inclusive workplace culture
A Q&A with India Ngoma, Service Support Analyst, Tokio Marine Kiln
A 10-year veteran of the insurance industry even though she’s only 25, India Ngoma speaks with assurance about how well she is accepted as a young, mixed-race, bisexual woman at her workplace. Yet still she’s nervous about coming out to her dad. And she has strong views on how companies can help their diverse employees feel more comfortable and productive.
In a slightly delayed celebration of last month’s Black Pride, we spoke to India about her experiences and insights into fostering more diversity in the workplace – and why it really matters. Read on to find out more…
Q: Why is Black Pride important and what does it mean to you personally?
A: It’s especially important for me, coming from a German-Zimbabwean background. In both cultures it’s traditionally frowned upon to be too different, regardless of whether your gay or disabled.
My German grandparents took a long while to come around to me and my siblings being mixed race children. To this day, while everyone else in my family knows I’m bisexual, I’ve never come out to my dad and I’m not sure he knows. I’m still hesitant to take that step at this point in life when I feel like I still need him and there’s any risk he might not react well.
“I still have real pride in being a black LGBTQ+ person”
I mean, I’m also disabled. And that has been partly responsible for him changing the way he views the world over time. My grandad’s views changed, and so maybe my dad’s could too on this, given time. But it’s hard.
I still have real pride in being a black LGBTQ+ person, because there’s not that many of us in the insurance industry that I know of!
Q: What other struggles did you have when coming out to friends and family?
A: I’m out to everyone except my dad, so I’m not afraid to talk about it. I came out to my sister last year, and she’s very Christian, so I was worried about how she might react. But then when I told her, she was like, “Girl, we knew this!”
She didn’t seem to have any problems at all. She was waiting for me to tell her in my own time, and she told me that it’s my life and up to me what I do. I wish most people felt that way and would just recognise that it’s none of their business.
I have to say, I’ve never seen my sexuality as something that hinders me. Perhaps that’s because to a certain degree you can hide your sexuality. Although I’ve always tried to surround myself with like-minded people.
That said, being LGBTQ+ really doesn’t seem to have any relation to my work environment. I’m open there about who I am and I don’t feel like I have to care what others think. Racially, I have experienced some issues, but only when I was about 18 or 19. Being black or being disabled may have had some hindrance, but my sexuality certainly hasn’t hindered me as much.
Outside of work in my spare time I’m a musician and author. And actually, it was in my outside music career where my sexuality has potentially been the biggest hindrance. I had a manager who refused to release a song I did with a music video celebrating trans people. I always wanted to support the trans community, but this manager, she had a big problem sending that kind of message. She didn’t like the trans community.
It was strange, because my lyrics are clearly about me being gay and I had already released music that celebrated peoples’ right to date and be with whoever they wanted. But she flat out refused to support it, so I left.
Q: What has been your experience of being out and black in the workplace?
A: I’ve been working in the industry on and off since I was 15, starting with work experience and internships. I’m 25 now, which isn’t old but that does mean I’ve been in the industry for 10 years already.
“[Insurance is] a very diverse sector. You’ve got people working here from literally all over the globe and it’s never just one type of person…”
My mum works in the same company as me and she introduced me to the industry and the company. I’ve been everywhere from the service desk to claims to underwriting. Then I started fully on the service desk when I was 18, so that’s six years officially.
I like it because it’s a very diverse sector. You’ve got people working here from literally all over the globe and it’s never just one type of person, so you can learn so much from each individual. And they accept you right off the bat. They’ve literally taught me most of what I know about IT and didn’t care about my lack of IT qualifications.
Professionally-speaking the people here have built me into the person I am today.
Q: How did they support you?
A: I did the service desk training days, and then I shadowed on everything else. One of the guys, Keith, has known me since I was about five years old because he knows my mum. So when I joined he was the person I started shadowing and he had lots of knowledge because he’d been in the industry for decades.
Then there was Bernie who I also shadowed. And between them, those two taught me literally everything I needed to know. Keith put a lot of trust in me, and for me, as soon as I have someone that believes in me 100%, then I’m the pain in the ass that you don’t see coming!
I just kept badgering until I knew everything I needed to. I learned how to be Keith 2.0, and it’s because of that trust.
And the technical guys give me a lot of support when I need them to explain thing to me in plain English. That has become one of my skills – to be the translator between the technical folks to the end users.
Q: Was it easy to come out to your work colleagues?
A: We talked about our love lives on and off sometimes. And when it came up and I mentioned I was seeing a girl they would double take a little bit and say, “A girl?” I would confirm that I like girls too. And that was kind of it. It was just kind of accepted.
Q: Do you have any thoughts on how insurers or other employers could better support diversity in their workplaces?
A: First of all, the key is to create an environment where people don’t feel judged. They feel the confidence to be themselves and it’s not an issue. To do that you need to encourage transparency and openness.
Honestly, I think for me I don’t get easily offended by things. And I think there is a risk that we build such an exterior wall around certain topics that we don’t like that it can feel impossible to talk about them.
I’ve had the odd occasion when someone might hear me talking about a girl and then try to make a joke about me being greedy. And I’m like: “Ok, why do you say that’s greedy?” And he said, “Because the Bible says…” And I just think that’s an example of someone going off of what others say and not having their own opinion. Like, without the Bible, what do you think?
I’ve found that it can help trying to get people to think as a person rather than a religious follower. And then it’s a case of asking why they can’t mind their own business. But you know, we need to be clear on the difference between a debate and an argument. Sometimes someone disagrees with you and it’s an argument. Sometimes they just have a different opinion to you. There is a risk we can get so caught up in finding pockets of offence that we don’t listen to anything someone’s saying.
“Workplaces… would benefit from encouraging openness rather than shying away from it”
We all need to be more accepting of differences of opinion, and respecting each other’s differences, and workplaces I think would benefit from encouraging openness rather than shying away from it.
But also, this is an easy point most of the time. If you’re at work, is my sexuality work related? Does it have anything to do with the business you’re going to write? Do you think that 20% of the business you’re going to write is now dirty?
Q: Do you think it’s more challenging being LGBTQ+ and also black?
A: I think it depends on where you are. Personally, I’ve never found it an issue. I’ve had more of an issue with the colour of my skin than I have my sexuality. And the combination has never been an issue. It’s always been one more than the other.
I mean, from a young age, you get the name-calling as a mixed-race child, and you just get sick of it. At school in England people used to call us Nazis because of our German heritage, even though we’re mixed race! Make sense of that if you can. I think we just learned that some people just do this reflexively and they don’t learn enough beyond what the media has told them. They don’t do their own digging.
My dad always has an issue with people assuming his ancestors were ever slaves. He’s from Zimbabwe. It wasn’t touched by the trans-Atlantic slave trade. His family never left Africa, and he has an African surname. So he really doesn’t like it when people make assumptions like that.
Q: So why is it important to have a day like Black Pride?
A: For me I never say Black Pride. I just say ‘Pride’ because I’m bi and want to get across that this isn’t just a white person’s thing, you know? Don’t separate us out – we’re here too!
We may have our own experiences, but we are still part of the same whole. We share many experiences, we share many of the same challenges, and so on and so forth. We are the same community.
I also have Disability Pride – because I have Tourette’s, ADHD, some traits of autism, and dyscalculia – which is separate again. So I have Pride, Black Pride and Disability Pride. That’s a lot of potential separation if we don’t make the effort to make common ground.
“I never say Black Pride. I just say ‘Pride’ because I’m bi and want to get across that this isn’t just a white person’s thing, you know? Don’t separate us out – we’re here too!”
From 2020 onwards I’ve been in and out of hospital with issues and multiple diagnoses, so I’m very much aware of other challenges with work besides my skin tone and sexuality. I was working three days per week in the office, but they had to be spaced out because it wasn’t possible for me to do consecutive days.
And believe me, the prejudice others might feel towards them for being black and LGBTQ+ is kind of how I feel when I have my Tourette’s ticks. I hate talking to people. It’s one of the things I just can’t do because of the prejudgement around ticks.
I’m very glad that my boss looked into my condition, did her own research and is very clued up and supportive.
Q: Do you think having a good, understanding manager is an essential for a more diverse and inclusive workplace?
A: I think it goes for all communities: Black, LGBT, and disabled. Don’t wait for someone who is going through it to educate you. I’m not your teacher. I understand talking to me about my experiences, but that shouldn’t be the full stop. There are things that I’m not comfortable in speaking about when it comes to some things, so you can’t just leave it at that.
“Don’t wait for someone who is going through it to educate you. I’m not your teacher”
I don’t need sympathy. But there’s so much that even I don’t know that you doing your own research would help with. My boss has been really good, and so if there’s a way for employers to promote more people with real empathy and drive to understand – or offer training and access to resources about these issues – then that would all be super helpful.