The ESG Investment Community Has Failed to Properly Address Racism, Says Former MP Chukka Umunna

Companies are corporate citizens which pay taxes – this in turn helps fund policing. Nevermind the clear moral imperative to act, business leaders have duty to act when the fundamental human rights of groups in society – which make up substantial numbers of their employees and customers – are being violated, as is the case here.
However, for the plethora of CEOs’ statements to be credible and not to be seen as tokenistic, PR driven gestures, they must be backed by the right action. Predictably, the statements have been followed by scrutiny of what companies have done about race inequalities in their own backyards – for starters, when the statement comes from a CEO on an all white board with an all white executive team, it totally undermines the authority of the company concerned, as Nike has discovered. So what should businesses do? Here are some things to think about (this is not an exhaustive list)…