‘I AM HOPEFUL WE’LL BECOME A BETTER SOCIETY’ June Sarpong

June Sarpong is a broadcaster, commentator and director of creative diversity for the BBC. During her career she has experienced racism, but now she is helping to reshape the future with a book that outlines how we can all be part of the solution

on how we can all make a difference

As a teenager, June Sarpong was badly injured after being hit by a car. She couldn’t walk at first and it took five years to fully recover. The experience of going through that changed her. ‘It taught me resilience and patience,’ she says. ‘When you’re lying in a hospital bed and can’t move for a year, you become a very patient person. It changes you for ever.’

But recover she did and, as well as teaching her valuable life lessons, June says the time spent in hospital meant she avoided certain teenage pitfalls, such as experimenting with drugs. Searching for silver linings is something June tends to do. Indeed, when you talk to her for any length of time, it becomes obvious that she has a very positive take on life.

Now 43, June was born in Britain to Ghanaian parents and grew up in Walthamstow, northeast London. ‘It was a very multicultural area and difference was celebrated,’ she remembers. ‘I grew up when the area was becoming newly gentrified. You had a lot of middle class people who sent their kids to my school, but you had a lot of local families, so you had a lovely mix of both.’

Her childhood ambition was to be a TV presenter like Oprah Winfrey, whose shows she lapped up when she was in hospital: ‘I watched a lot of TV and that was when her show had just started in the UK and I thought: “Oh, my God, you can be paid to talk. I want to do that!”’

June did work experience at Kiss FM and decided to get a job there after leaving school rather than going to university. But it was as her career in media developed that racism became a real issue. ‘I saw there was definitely a difference between what was available for me and what was available for my white colleagues,’ she says, recalling one particularly ‘hurtful’ example.

‘I was at MTV and had one of the highest-rated shows on the network. They did a photoshoot for Sky magazine with all of the MTV women and I was not included. It wasn’t the magazine that hadn’t wanted me – the press department didn’t think I was “appropriate” for the shoot.’

June didn’t complain, but the viewers did. ‘What was really amazing and really lifted my spirits was how the audience started bombarding the network with phone calls asking why I was not in the photoshoot,’ she says. ‘It was a real teachable moment and what it did was spark conversations around this stuff 20 years ago that everyone else was avoiding.’

Over the years, she found it harder to ignore the sense that she was being overlooked because of her skin colour. ‘There were times when commissioning editors didn’t feel that you could have a black person on a mainstream Saturday night, shiny-floor TV show,’ she says. ‘I decided I wasn’t going to allow myself to be beholden to gatekeepers who perhaps were not open-minded enough yet to understand all the talent I brought and, therefore, I had to find other things to do as well.’

So, in 2009, June moved to the US and became involved in setting up Women: Inspiration & Enterprise, a women’s conference with Sarah Brown (wife of ex-prime Minister Gordon Brown), Arianna Huffington and Donna Karan. ‘The conference became a huge success and I started to do a lot more activism work and campaigning around gender equality,’ she says.

When she returned to the UK after eight years, she wrote Diversify, highlighting the need for more inclusion in order to create a happier and more prosperous society. The conversations that took place when promoting the book were illuminating. In particular, she heard concerns around ‘white privilege’, whereby people benefit in society because they are white.

‘I was going to organisations that didn’t have a lot of ethnic diversity and, even if they did have diversity, there certainly was not a lot of integration,’ she says. ‘The thing that kept coming up was white people asking how they could be allies [to Black people] and part of the solution. White people also wanted to understand what white privilege really was, because if everything is designed with you in mind, it is hard to think of everything being designed with you not in mind. It is very hard to even know that you are privileged because it is just the norm.’

Now, June has written a book about how white people can use their advantages to make a difference. The Power Of Privilege is in response to the outcry following the horrific killing of George Floyd in the US and the Black Lives Matter protests. ‘After George Floyd’s death, my inbox was inundated with white friends asking, “What can I do?”’ says June. ‘His death demonstrates systemic racism at its worst. I think what it has done is ensure that white people no longer have the luxury of ignorance because you can’t turn away from that. [Everyone] has had to start asking big questions.’

June says white women from privileged backgrounds are key to change: ‘They have an important role to play in the movement for greater inclusion because they have been such a pivotal force in the women’s movement.

‘They pushed through that agenda because they had some agency, some level of education and they had access to men with power to be able to petition them. At the same time, because of their gender, they understand what it feels like to be discriminated against for something they have no control over.’

So what can women do? ‘If you’re in a senior position in the workplace, make it a priority to sponsor diverse talent in your organisation,’ she says. ‘I don’t just mean mentoring, I prefer “sponsorship” because it means you’re invested in that person’s progression. Even if you don’t work, if you are someone in the community, then you also have privilege and you have the power to change things. Even if your kids don’t go to a local state school, make it your responsibility and your mission to support that school and get to know those families.’

Everyone has had to start asking big questions

June became the BBC’S first director of creative diversity in October 2019. At first she didn’t think the corporation wanted to change, but after assurances from senior figures, she was persuaded otherwise. ‘Arriving there, what I found was not a place that didn’t want to change, it didn’t know how to. When you are dealing with that, you can make a difference,’ she says.

The BBC has committed £100m of its budget over three years to improving diversity. It is about more than race, says June. ‘There are a lot of working-class stories that need to be told, there are more BAME stories that need to be told, and perhaps one of the most overlooked stories is the disabled experience,’ she adds.

There is no doubt that 2020 has been challenging because of the pandemic and the questions we’ve asked ourselves about race, but June feels that this time of self-reflection and action will, ultimately, result in a positive reset.

‘It is almost like every 40 to 60 years, society goes through a seismic shift where it resets,’ she says. ‘We had it in the 1960s with various movements from civil rights to women’s rights and later gay rights, and I think that is what we have now. It doesn’t mean everything is going to be perfect, but I believe companies and people in positions of power are now asking how they can be part of the solution, and individuals want to figure out how they can be better. I am hopeful. I think in the next 10 years, there will be a lot of upheaval. I think it will be in part tumultuous, but I do think we will come out of it a much better society.’

• The Power Of Privilege (HQ) by June Sarpong is out 1 October