The Other Box

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Who gets the gold medal for major slay at the Paris Olympics??? 🥇 #otherbox #olympics #olympics2024 #sports #athlete #paris2024

It’s National Coming Out Day today. The day is celebrated annually to recognise the challenges people from the LGBTQIA+ community face coming out. It’s also a day to raise awareness of the LGBTQIA+ community & civil rights movement.

On 11 October 1987, half a million people participated in the March on Washington DC for Le***an and Gay Rights. It was the second demonstration of its kind in the US capital and resulted in the founding of a number of LGBTQIA+ organisations.

LGBTQIA+ History Month is celebrated in October to coincide with National Coming Out Day. 🏳️‍🌈

We encourage families, friends, schools and workplaces to learn how to be more inclusive and embrace everyone for who they are and not other them into the margins of a heteronormative world that still predominantly values the binary. The world is already diverse, and that is why representation matters.

📷 via (if you know the artist name please share so we can credit — thank you!)

“Our time is now — our rights, our future”.

Today is International Day of the Girl 2022. We stand in solidarity with the women of Iran and all the people rising up to topple a violent, misogynist, oppressive archaic patriarchal regime.

The world is changing. It will be the girl who makes it a more inclusive, equal and equitable home for us all.

The team at Other Box has been offline this week as we experimented with focussing on ONE ☝🏽 part of our business only.

It was an intentional strategy to counteract the “what they don’t see” experiences.

Building a business that is focussed on positive impact and requires a change in lifestyle, habits and behaviours — means we also have to take time to see the positive in a world filled with 24/7 news cycle of traumatic human injustices. We have to change our lifestyle, habits and behaviours.

Inclusion for us also means focus and rest. Because it’s hard to be inclusive when you’re running on empty.

Please let us know in the comments what you’re doing to take care of yourself and if you’re an entrepreneur, creative or business owner — shout out your business below or tag a friend you want to spotlight. 💡

DIVERSITY DICTIONARY: The term ‘white-passing’ describes when a person of the global majority (Black, indigenous or person of colour) is mistaken for being white. This could be by accident, based on assumption by others, or it may be a deliberate choice – more on that below.

Skin colour, facial features, hair colour and texture, accent and many other factors contribute to whether a person is considered white-passing. A Black, indigenous or person of colour who is mixed race or of mixed heritage with a white parent, grandparents or ancestors may not identify as being white, but might be mistaken as white by strangers. Other racialised groups such as communities from the Middle East, Eastern Europe or Latin America may ‘appear’ to be white but still experience racism in many forms.

White-passing privilege is when a person of the global majority is able to access some of the benefits that white people have access to, within a white-supr*macist society. These benefits vary from ease of access to education, job opportunities, and elite sections of society, to being able to enter a shop without being followed by a security guard or drive a car without being racially profiled by the police.

In the United States, African-Americans and Black people would have passed to escape the racial violence and oppression that led to their enslavement, segregation, and brutalisation. “Being able to pass for white sometimes meant the difference between a life in captivity and a life of freedom.” (Source: )

At the same time, it’s important not to over-simplify the complexities of passing as white. White-passing privilege is not the same as white privilege. This is something explored in films such as Passing (on Netflix, based on the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen) and novels such as The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett.

White-passing privilege only exists because a white-supr*macist system puts whiteness at the centre of power, while people of the global majority, particularly in the West, are marginalised and minoritised.

DIVERSITY DICTIONARY: Reverse racism is the idea that white people are being racially oppressed, based on the perception that black, indigenous and people of colour (also known as people of the global majority - PGM) have not only gained equal rights, but that the balance has tipped the other way and that the formerly dominant group is not only being discriminated against, but being systemically oppressed.

White people may face other forms of systemic oppression such as ableism, misogyny, classism, heterosexism or transphobia, but it’s important to say: reverse racism is a myth.

It’s a myth usually perpetuated by white people who benefit from the white supremacist system, yet feel defensive when they are made aware of their privilege, or personally attacked when they see people of the global majority gaining access to rights and opportunities that white people have by default.

For example, someone might claim “That’s reverse racism!” as a response to community platforms that centre and are exclusive to people from Black communities. Or workplace recruitment initiatives that seek to upskill people from racially marginalised backgrounds who have faced systemic barriers and lack of access to certain elitist industries and roles.

In most (if not all) cases, the phrase is experienced as a microaggression, and sits in the same realm as the phrase ‘I don’t see colour’. Both these phrases erase the realities of systemic oppression that are experienced every day by people of the global majority who exist within a white supremacist society.

There’s a saying that goes ‘Equal rights for others does not mean does not mean less rights for you. It's not pie’. In other words, just because historically marginalised people are getting better access to opportunities, resources and representation, it doesn’t mean white people are getting less.

Social equity benefits everyone. It means everyone is elevated.

📣 New video up on TOBtube! Leyya is carrying on the conversation about microaggressions.

They are everywhere and can often seem too small to make a “big deal” about. But there’s nothing micro about them. In this video you’ll learn:

🔔 4 ways to speak up against microaggressions
🔔 How to do so from a place of knowledge and empathy

We also have a very special YouTube offer of £45 on our latest course Diversity Dictionary. It’s regularly priced at £119 so go and get it. You’ll find it in the description of the video. And while you’re there, like, comment and subscribe!

4 ways to speak up against microaggressions Microaggressions are everywhere, and they can often seem too small to make a “big deal” about. But there’s nothing micro about them. Here are four ways you c...

Let’s talk about tanning 🧴

There are a couple more weeks of summer left in the UK. The sun’s been out in full force and people are going abroad for their holidays for the first time in years too. It’s prime time for the “I’m darker than you now” conversations between family members and friends. This seemingly lighthearted comment holds extra weight for many people.

Our mission is to Make Space for Difference, and one of the most impactful ways to do that is through our language.

In this video, Leyya shares a one-minute win on how to glow inside and out by communicating inclusively all summer long ✨

Inclusive Language: Let’s Talk Tans 😎 #shorts Our co-founder Leyya shares a quick-win on why we need to avoid comparing tans after our summer holidays - as tempting as it may be 🌞 WITH TH...