We white folks eat each other when it comes to racism…
I heard this recently when I was at an anti-racist programme co-facilitated by Carlin Quinn and Resmaa Menakem. As a qualitative ‘race’ researcher myself, I have thought of little else since.
I noticed the grace, care and empathy with which Black and global majority people held each other’s pain and trauma when talking about experiences of racism and noticed how difficult this was for whites in cross racial dialogue, but also how challenging it is for whites to talk about racism with other whites. White, of course, doesn’t exist, but what whiteness and Blackness mean in our society and how people invest in whiteness and its intersections, really does hold meaning.
My whiteness gets me in places, gets me jobs, gets me ahead. Who are we kidding not to acknowledge it?
I have met and seen enough leaders from the global majority, far more highly skilled, gifted and qualified than me, not succeed, be told to take lower skilled jobs in change management processes or be given bizarre responsibilities to lead outside of their specialism, to know that it is my whiteness that has eased me, and many others, into senior leadership positions. As a leader, whiteness, and the culture created by it, is in the mix and is affecting how decisions are made and by whom, every day.
Ignatiev and Garvey (1996) suggest challenging white supremacy means whites must cease investment in whiteness, to stop feeding it as a status; whiteness relies on adherence to white group membership – for whites to play along and pretend not to notice. If white leaders begin the heavy lifting required to change organisational culture and see anti-racism as part of their leadership practice, we can begin to make organisations more equitable. It will take everyone to notice and interrupt global systems. To even get to the point of noticing and understanding, whites need to do a lot of reflection and thinking because we have centred our own gaze for centuries.
My PhD research led me to explore racism and its impact on leaders racialised as white. I studied how whites avoid verbalising and dismiss racism. My participants followed fixed patterns of colour-blindness and avoidance, white saviourism and assimilation in their roles. Through interview processes, role enactment and policy interpretation, white supremacy is nurtured in our psyche and rooted in processes. Without senior leaders noticing it and deploying equity safeguards interrupting a white lens, white supremacy not only remains, but is embedded by another generation of senior leaders.
Challenging white supremacy means white folks must divest from whiteness
Harro (2000) suggests being anti-racist requires us to interrupt our cycles of socialisation; one way of doing so is to verbalise what is happening. White Silence, described by Layla Saad (2020), is a brilliant avoidance tactic. This type of colour-evasion (Leonardo, 2009) has served whites for centuries and is used as a means of avoiding responsibility for talking about white body supremacy, race and privilege (DiAngelo, 2018). Colonial dynamics position white folks as being responsible for not noticing racism, deliberately looking away. It has taken violent murders of Black men and women, positioned, unavoidably, in lockdown, to stimulate this generation of white people to see, really notice, the violence and brutality of people like them, other whites, and not dismiss racism as rare acts of extremism.
So how do we avoid ‘eating each other’ when talking about racism and our own supremacy? We start with creating spaces in which white people can have their lens challenged. White leaders must explore their own racism and develop professional curiosity about how white comfort affects leadership and decision making. It means including antiracism in leadership programmes, as part of budgetary, resourcing and strategy decisions.
Working transparently and openly strategizing to prevent racism demands an acceptance, on behalf of leaders racialised as white, that racism and the legacies of colonialism are permanent features (Bell, 1980) of the societies we have created in the global north and they are playing a role in organisations. The question is: how equipped are you as a leader to protect and safeguard your clients, your employees and your impact from racism? There are a million ways to deepen your knowledge and understand the impact of racism in your organisation. To me this is not a choice, it is leadership.
DiAngelo, R. (2018) White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Beacon Press.
Harro, B. (2000). The cycle of socialization. Readings for diversity and social justice, 2, 45-51.
Ignatiev, N., & Garvey, J. (Eds.). (1996). Race Traitor (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315022116.
Leonardo, Z. (2009). Race, Whiteness, and Education (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203880371.
The anti-racist programme is called Foundations for Somatic Abolitionism led by Carlin Quinn and Resmaa Menakem
Saad, L. (2020). Me and white supremacy: how to recognise your privilege, combat racism and change the world. Quercus