We need the role models of today to step forward and inspire
30 08 2007Writing in today’s New Statesman, TMP editor Chuka Umunna, reflects on New Nation’s Power List and the need for the role models of today to step forward and inspire.
In three and a half years working for a corporate law firm in the City, I often worked ungodly hours, bleary-eyed, on big-money transactions for many of the private equity houses that have become persona non grata of late. Not once did I hear the name of Damon Buffini.
But early this year, the GMB trade union waged an extremely effective campaign against the private equity sector and made Buffini, as managing partner of the equity giant Permira, its focus. It even parked a camel outside the church Buffini attends, to “highlight the quote from the Bible about a camel going through the eye of a needle”. So successful was it that the likes of the Daily Mail came out in support - unusual bedfellows indeed.
While I share the reservations about private equity’s penchant for playing hard and fast with people’s jobs, I was genuinely delighted to discover Buffini - a man who looks like me and has a mixed-race background to similar to mine - sitting atop the private equity pile.
Here is a man who came from a council estate in Leicester, and became not only the Thierry Henry of his industry sector, but also arguably the richest man of black parentage in this country. What a shame that he has come to prominence in the context of a public row about corporate greed.
After the murder of 11-year-old Rhys Jones, there has been a plethora of interviews with former gang members who grew up in circumstances similar to Buffini’s. Predictably, many have sought a career in music as a route out of the gangs and the council estates.
Yet real power does not lie in the recording studios or the changing rooms Henry frequents; real power in Britain is exercised in the conference, board and dealing rooms of the City, in parliament, the Inns of Court and beyond. This is where black people need to be if they are to have real clout and to achieve political and economic parity.
Finally, it seems, this is beginning to happen, as the editor of New Nation, Michael Eboda, rightly says. His paper’s Power List of Britain’s 50 most influential black men and 50 most influential black women, published on 27 August (which includes just three musicians and two active sportsmen), contradicts any claims that we do not have role models to inspire our young people to take their places in the professions.
In the list, Buffini brushes shoulders with the likes of Stanley Musesengwa, chief operating officer of Tate & Lyle, and Carol Lake, managing director and co-head of marketing at J P Morgan. There are, of course, better-known individuals there, such as the skills minister David Lammy and author Zadie Smith. But it’s the unknowns that are such a joyous revelation.
So where have all these people been? First, the media have only just started to find out about these hidden stars and are now giving them serious space and airtime. Yet though the media are culpable, it is too easy to blame them for our ignorance.
Some on the list actively shun the media limelight. It is precisely because she is low-key and quietly competent (in addition to having a shrewd legal brain) that Baroness Scotland, the most powerful female, was appointed Attorney General after the debacle that was Lord Goldsmith. Likewise Buffini, the most powerful man on the list, is notoriously difficult to get to. It is telling that New Nation, having worked on the project for more than six months, does not appear to have been able to secure interviews with either its leading man or woman to accompany its impressive list.
So our problem is perhaps not a lack of role models. It is that we don’t know we have them. If we are to provide alternative positive examples for young people - not just black kids, but all those who struggle to succeed in unequal, modern Britain - we need people like Buffini and Scotland to step up to the plate and inspire.
Chuka Umunna is editor of TMP.
I have actually met (for professional reasons) the reclusive Damon Buffini on a couple of occassions, and he is a nice enough guy on a personal level. But let’s get real here. Bufinni made his fortune in Private Equity essentially by targetting companies for takeover and then asset stripping them. The result is that an awful lot of people (many of them black people) are now unemployed.
You say that Bufinni is a “positive examples for young people - not just black kids, but all those who struggle to succeed in unequal, modern Britain”
What exactly has Bufinni done to make Britain a more equal place? Surely you are not suggesting that enriching yourself at others expense defines what we mean by the term “positive role model”?
The whole problem with this piece is that it assumes a corollation between individual success and community advancement. The USA has its share of black millionaires, more than we do anyway. Some, like Oprah Winfrey are in entertainment. Others, like Condo Rice and Colin Powell, have even reached high political office.
Yet if you look at the stats on income distribution, by race and class, you can see that the entry of some black people into the ranks of the super rich, has made no appreciable difference to unemployment patterns, poor housing and education, inner-city deprivation, gun crime and all the other economic and social problems which so disproportionately affect the black population of the USA.
“Ah, yes,” we are told, “if you work hard, you too could be a Oprah or a Condi, or in Britain perhaps a Bufinni”
In the meantime, the social deprivation caused by a system which rewards the Bufinnis of this world is crushing the life chances of the 99.99% of black people, who will never join the ranks of the super rich however hard they study or work. That’s the real issue, and if you try to seperate race from class, you do a disservice to ordinary folks everywhere, black and white.
Moreover, what moral values are we teaching our childern, if we hold up the God of Money (unobtainable for most) as the ultimate in human achievement?
Let me be brutally honest here. If money and status is the emancipatory goal (rather than co-operation and community), then let’s also hold up successful drug dealers and gangsters as role models for young people. It’s a career they have a damn site more chance of succeeding in than Private Equity, and it’s arguably no more immoral in its outcomes.
Real role models are those who look out for the community, not their personal selfish interests. Spartacus did not rebel against slavery in order to become a slave owner.
Damn….I just happened to surf on to this site but I have to say that brother (or sister) Mao is Spot on. Wow, that is powerful. I agree 1,500%!
Oh it’s me again…
To be fair, alot of black people in these positions do things privately for black people. For instance, they you may not see them on TV all the time as “role models” but they quietly and anonymously give resources to help people help themselves. I just found out about this program to help inner city kids Buffini is Chairman of you can read about it here
So let’s all try to be open-minded and not too judgemental.
“Damon is also a patron of the Eastside Academy – a charity focused on young black boys in Newham, London. ”
“Damon is President of Fairbridge – a nationwide charity that works to support young people in 13 inner cities throughout the United Kingdom.”