Discrimination against men is important to address because of the impact it has on the rest of society. The exclusion of the ‘other’ man can often have violent and devastating consequences. This isn’t always the case, obviously, but men have a different way of dealing with fear and frustration to women, as does each person to the next. Some of this is due to socialization, but some of it is pure biology. Leading neuroscientist Dr James Fallon explained to me that our genetics can result in striking differences in our response to stress, abuse, and rejection: ‘People with “vulnerability” forms of genes are extremely impacted … while those with highly “protective” [genes] are remarkably resistant.’ This suggests that some people are genetically more likely than others to develop damaging responses to environmental stressors, such as depression, PTSD, substance abuse, and personality disorders. And, says Dr Fallon, ‘males often [have] poorer mood and personality outcomes than females’. So men are in fact more vulnerable to exclusion than women, and no man – no matter how much he may have been taught to suppress his emotions – is immune to its effect.
We’ve seen this in action throughout the UK and US in recent years. The failure of these societies to prevent the economic and social exclusion of their ‘other’ men has weakened and divided communities, and created a ticking time bomb that we must deactivate. It has caused feelings of inferiority and led to a fractured society. It has compromised social mobility and created artificial bubbles whereby the situation you are born into dictates your job and educational prospects. It has opened the doors to radical groups, and nurtured breeding grounds of extremism. In short, it has led to a lack of diversity, which then leads to a lack of empathy on both sides: cue demagogues fanning the flames of division for political ends.
For it has been the exclusion of the ‘other’ man with muscle where it still counts – at the ballot box – that has had the most profound implications. In the UK, the white working-class male vote delivered the shattering of Britain’s 40-year union with Europe; in America, it brought the election of Donald Trump, a President with zero experience in public office and some unsavoury views and conduct. Whatever your opinion on either Brexit or Trump, 2016 provided the two most extreme examples in recent history of how a marginalized group can dictate the social and economic future of society.
And of course, politics aside, the exclusion of any ‘other’ man impacts more than just him. His family will share the impact of his pain – sometimes literally, if alcohol and low self-esteem are part of the toxic mix. This scenario played out within a family has a multi-generational impact, and can cost the state millions of pounds in welfare and social services professionals, called in to address family breakdown and deprivation. Failing to diversify and include all ‘other’ men is not something we can afford economically or socially. Quite simply, it will cost a lot less – financially, but also in pain and suffering – to expand opportunities to the ‘other’ man rather than continue to exclude him.
While preparing to write this book, I wrote to three such ‘others’: prisoners in the UK with strikingly similar stories; young men – one black, one Muslim, one white working class – who all once had dreams that turned into nightmares. You will find their letters in response to mine at www.Diversify.org. I read their personal accounts of how life had taken them on a path that led to prison, a powerful line from philosopher Susan Griffin’s A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War kept running through my mind: ‘“There is a circle of humanity,” he told me, “and I can feel its warmth. But I am forever outside.”’ And this ‘circle of humanity’ excluded for them behind bars, too: The Young Report of 2014 found that: ‘Most of the prisoners, said that they experienced differential treatment as a result of their race, ethnicity or faith. Black prisoners felt that they were stereotyped as drug dealers and Muslim prisoners as terrorists.’
These three young men may not possess the tools to express themselves as eloquently as Griffin’s subject, but their words of despair and hopelessness are no less powerful. They are men who, thanks to mass social media and globalization, knew what bounties the modern world had to offer, yet felt that they and their kind were not wanted, valued, or needed. Is it any wonder they ended up where they did?
‘I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.’
Maya Angelou
A black male child growing up in America or Europe will, by the time he reaches school, already have an understanding that he is different from the majority. Whether it’s the images he sees in the media, or family members attempting to prepare him for the exclusion he’s likely to experience outside the home, he will know that the rules are not the same for him and boys that look like him. In many cases, he will be told that anything is possible, but that he has to be twice as good and work twice as hard as his white counterparts in order to succeed and be worthy of acceptance. Many will take this message on board and strive for academic excellence in a pressured education system. Others, seeing black role models in sport, music, or some other art form, will pursue a career in that field, hoping that their talent (as has been the case with stars such as Jay-Z, Usain Bolt, Floyd Mayweather, Stormzy and Tinie Tempah) will enable them to overcome discrimination and other obstacles to success.
The men in my family experienced this first-hand. My father was gifted and well educated as a child and rose to become somebody of stature in his native Ghana, but when he arrived in Britain as an immigrant in the 1980s he had to start afresh. A political coup in Ghana meant that he had lost his position and his finances. He still had his education and experience, though, which surely would be enough for him to make a new life for himself and his family? Unfortunately not. In 1980s Britain, his thick foreign accent and skin colour meant he was visibly and audibly different from what employers assumed was right for a job in banking. There was an unwritten understanding that non-white migrants from commonwealth countries could settle in the UK to do menial or low-paid jobs that indigenous people didn’t want to do. Immigrants like my father, regardless of education and career experience, were not going to be allowed to just parachute into middle-class occupations like banking.
It soon became clear to my father that Britain was not going to be the land of opportunity he had first hoped, so he decided to take his talents and my brother to America. America did provide more opportunities, and Dad was able to secure a job in banking and then eventually launch his own successful real-estate and construction company. Perhaps America, despite its poorer record on race relations, was more amenable than the UK to the idea of social mobility for an African man.
Starting again for the second time in America was not easy, but Sam Sarpong Sr thrived against insurmountable odds and built a very comfortable upper-middle-class life, and I can’t help but beam with pride when I look at the journey he has made. A few years ago I made a pilgrimage to the rural village he was raised in, and I couldn’t fully comprehend the vast leap from where my father started in life to where he now resides. I doubt I would have had the same level of grit and strength to overcome such odds.
Life wasn’t all smooth sailing for my brother, Sam Sarpong Jr, either. African in parentage, British by birth, and raised in America – as you can imagine, he didn’t fit neatly into any