05/06/2020 - A Few Words on World Events This Week

It's taken a couple of days to articulate how I feel about this personally and how we at Cotic respond to what's going in the world right now. I know that sounds ridiculous coming from a 43 year old white middle class British guy, who currently only employs white people to work for and represent his brand, but I have come to realise that it's not enough to be simply not-racist. To make things better from a negative situation we need to be actively anti-racist.

With our Women Of Steel, and female brand ambassadors a couple of years ago; it wasn't enough to be not-sexist. If we wanted to change things in our sport we had to search out women to represent us, and represent the sport, to put on events, to help us normalise female participation. This work is by no means complete, but we’ve made a start. We need to do the same with ethnicity. We have been talking about how we can do this for a couple of months, but I realise this is a conversation we should have had long ago. We know we're a long way from figuring it out and that we're part of the problem.

But we're trying hard to be better, to inspire, to diversify, to be kinder.

Here are some links and articles that have helped us attune to the effects of racial bias

• https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/what-white-people-can-do-for-racial-justice-f2d18b0e0234
• https://mpora.com/multi-sport/does-the-outdoors-have-a-race-problem/
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/juliawuench/2020/06/02/first-listen-then-learn-anti-racism-resources-for-white-people/#241d598116ee
• https://www.tolerance.org/professional-development/white-antiracism-living-the-legacy
• George The Poet’s podcast - https://www.georgethepoet.com/podcast-library
• Becoming Ruby - Inclusion, bikes & hand-drawn heroes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adLkZNd-EOg
• Elliot Jacksons IGTV video - https://www.instagram.com/p/CBAfZVgJDen/

Cy Turner

Founder and Director

Cotic Bikes