Race Reflections AT WORK launched on Monday March 1st 2021.
Race Reflections’ AT WORK brings the same engaging, stimulating, and supportive content in audible form. AT WORK as the name suggests, focuses on Inequality, Injustice, and Oppression AT WORK and is solution-focused.
You can find Race Reflections AT WORK wherever you get your podcasts.
If you would like to find out more about Race Reflections’ AT WORK, or propose topics or dilemmas for the podcast please use the form below.
AT WORK EPISODE 99: TAYLOR SWIFT’S ENGAGEMENT RING
It’s nearly the end of 2025 so with Christmas and New Years Eve coming up soon what better moment than to think about things that glitter, and what goes in to making them?
In today’s episode Simone does a deep-dive into Taylor Swift’s engagement ring and it’s connection to mining and colonialism. Although it’s not really about the ring but about what it and “American royalty” represent within white supremacy during these times of genocide(s).
They consider some of the workers involved in the creation of this ring and the histories and contexts that formed this August 2025 media moment.
Articles referred to:
The diamond for Taylor Swift’s ring may be from India, claims Instagram user! : https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/fashion/luxury/cover-story/the-diamond-for-taylor-swifts-ring-may-be-from-india-claims-instagram-user/articleshow/123541549.cms
Blood Diamonds: The Kimberley Process and Their History: https://ourosjewels.co.uk/blogs/education/blood-diamonds-kimberley-process
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AT WORK EPISODE 98: DIFFERENTIAL TREATMENT OF BLACK PEOPLE IN THE WORKPLACE
In today’s episode Guilaine responds to an email sent to her about the differential treatment of people of colour in the workplace, and why Black people are treated more harshly. This question was a response to a thread she made about the idealisation of Black people, and so this episode is also a follow up to the last episode where she spoke on that topic.
She begins with an aside considering hierarchies of Racism under White Supremacy, particularly in relation to the UK, France and the USA.
She then goes through examples of differential treatment across racial lines and shares some thoughts on the reasons why these patterns are engrained within white supremacist society.
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AT WORK EPISODE 97: IDEALISATION OF BLACK PEOPLE AT WORK
In today’s episode Guilaine reflects on how, seemingly paradoxically, when Black people (and other marginalised groups) are idealised in the workplace it can put them at risk, and result in their denigration and/or devaluation.
She begins by looking an an example, a Black doctor mentioned in Black Skin, White Masks by Franz Fanon: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/313127/black-skin-white-masks-by-fanon-frantz/9780241396667
She expands on this concept to detail the ways that this doctor might be exceptionalised and idealised due to being a competent and skilled person from a group that is not seen to have those qualities. And how this sets them up to fail when any mistake is made on their part resulting in a pendulum swing where they are often seen as betraying the person or institution that was idealising them.
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AT WORK EPISODE 96: REFLECTIONS ON RACE REFLECTIONS FOUNDATION COURSE IN GROUP ANALYSIS AND SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO PREPARE FOR AN APPLICATION
In today’s episode Guilaine reflects on what she has learnt from the first year of this course and offers some advice for how people might prepare for the course, particularly for people who are new to analytic thinking and practice.
She hadn’t necessarily anticipated that such a broad range of people that would be attracted to applying, which enriches the conversation and the group for all parties, but also brings some challenges. So some preparation for applicants who come from outside of mental health and psychotherapy may be helpful.
She considers that even though the course being primarily online helps make it accessible there are a few elements involved in it being online that can be challenging and she reflects on those areas and how to overcome these challenges.
People who are coming to group analytic thinking and practice for the first time are not necessarily familiar with the role that the unconscious plays within that, and so some preparation around could be helpful. Similarly reflecting on reflectivity and the self will be required. And preparation for the way that group analysis by design is unstructured.
If you are interested in being a part of the next cohort of this course that will be beginning in January this episode should be useful for you. Also if you have issues do feel free to reach out to Guilaine about them. And if you want to be a part of it do apply as soon as you can as places are limited and will be allocated in order of application.
Contact Guilaine at contact@racereflections.co.uk
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AT WORK EPISODE 95: HOW BLACK DOULAS EXPERIENCE DISCRIMINATION AT WORK
In today’s episode Simone continues on their reflections around Black Maternal Health Week which took place in April earlier this year, organised by the Black Mamas Matter Alliance: https://blackmamasmatter.org/
The first episode covering this topic can be found here: How Black women and others experience discrimination at work while pregnant https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/episodes/17304518
Simone considers this years theme Healing Legacies: strengthening Black maternal health through collective action and advocacy. They begin by reminding us of the range of people who experience pregnancies, and define and explore the spectrum of gender identities.
They then talk about the role of doulas in supporting pregnant people during their birth process and postpartum.
They then take the article: Doulas, Racism, and Whiteness: How Birth Support Workers Process Advocacy towards Women of Color by Juan L. Salinas, Manisha Salinas and Megan Kahn as a jumping off point: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/12/1/19
They talk about the findings of this paper and combine that with their own lived experience and knowledge of other research and advocacy to go through the specific issues faced by both Black doulas and Black birthing people.
They finish by looking at another article: Addressing Systemic Racism in Birth Doula Services to Reduce Health Inequities in the United States by Marieke S Van Eijk, Grace A Guenther, Paula M Kett, Andrew D Jopson, Bianca K Frogner and Susan M Skillman https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8896213/
And recommending Episode 182 of the podcast Evidence Based Birth: Black-led Queer and Trans Birth Work with Mystique Hargrove, Kortney Lapeyrolerie, and Nadine Ashby https://evidencebasedbirth.com/black-led-queer-and-trans-birth-work-with-mystique-hargrove-kortney-lapeyrolerie-and-nadine-ashby/
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AT WORK EPISODE 94: OPPORTUNITIES FOR SUPPORT WITHIN RACE REFLECTIONS FOUNDATION COURSE IN GROUP ANALYSIS THAT CENTRES RACIAL TRAUMA
In today’s episode Guilaine responds to some queries and questions about accessing our foundation course in Group Analysis centring racial trauma.
She begins by outlining what the course consists of and celebrating its certification by the Institute of Group Analysis. Then she talks about the ways this course is designed to be accessible and goes over the different pathways offered for you to follow if you require financial or structural support.
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AT WORK EPISODE 93: HOW DO YOU MANAGE THE TENSION BETWEEN BEING A PUBLIC FIGURE WITH THE EXPECTATION THAT ANALYTIC THEORISTS SHOULD BE DISTANT AND NOT SELF DISCLOSE?
In today’s episode Guilaine responds to a query that came up when she recently received an honorary doctorate related to her contribution to analytic and psychodynamic theory and psychodynamic and analytic practice, specifically in relation to marginalised groups and race.
She reflects on how she feels about this doctorate in terms of her personal journey within academia, how this doctorate is (so far) her most significant career achievement, and that it has a similar narrative arc to her experience of writing her first book Living While Black: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442992/living-while-black-by-kinouani-guilaine/9781529109436
She teases out the ideas around this question, considering social media, transparency, reflexivity, intersectionality, disclosure, accessibility, connection, cartesian dualism, trauma, splitting, joy, beauty, pleasure, resistance and sharing work when it is still half formed.
She refers to this previous episode of the podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/episodes/15059341
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AT WORK EPISODE 92: LINGUISTIC DISTORTION CREATED BY RACISM
n today’s episode Guilaine reflects on how the perception of language and linguistics can become dislocated through a primitive colonial imaginary to the point where people do not hear language as it is.
She presents a hypothesis around the ways that the literal sound of racialised people talking can become distorted and dislocated in the ears of white people listening. She draws on two anecdotes as examples, both consisting of French speakers being heard as speaking non-French languages, one in an online video from a few years ago of two Black French people, and one a personal story of racial violence that she and her mother experienced. In addition she considers some passages by Frantz Fanon in his book Black Skin, White Masks: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/313127/black-skin-white-masks-by-fanon-frantz/9780241396667
She asks what happens to the white psyche when exposed to stimuli related to Blackness and African-ness absorbed through the white imaginary. And considers the way this phenomenon distorts reality impacting how The Other is perceived. She compares it to the racial hostility that happens when someone is speaking in a rational, clear and precise way but the interlocutor cannot understand. She calls this racial contempt where people of colour’s words are seen as “mumbojumbo”.
She posits that this distortion functions differently from epistemic credibility and violence, it acts more as an intellectual block, playing out as a distortion, an almost physical experience, where people are literally not heard, or what is heard is not heard as is, but as imagined.
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AT WORK EPISODE 91: IMPACT FACED BY WORKERS OF COLOUR DUE TO THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION BANNING DEI INITIATIVES IN THE UNITED STATES
In today’s episode Simone reflects on how even though DEI initiatives end to fall short of meaningfully achieving their aims, operating as lip service for corporations, banning them only creates more harm.
They talk about how the US courts have been utilised by the Trump administration and the way this impacts workplaces and schools. And how eliminating diversity initiatives in healthcare has some serious implications for racial health equity.
They look at this article: Elimination of Federal Diversity Initiatives: Implications for Racial Health Equity by Latoya Hill, Samantha Artiga, Akash Pillai, and Alisha Rao https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/issue-brief/elimination-of-federal-diversity-initiatives-implications-for-racial-health-equity/
Then they consider how this impacts both staff and service users within healthcare. They consider how banning DEI work disproportionately impacts people of colour who tend to deliver these services, and also seriously sets back scholarship around these areas. Linking these issues to White Supremacy, capitalism and the legal enshrinement of false binary ideas around gender and sex. They finish by looking at some of the efforts to fightback against the Trump administration in these areas.
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AT WORK EPISODE 90: UNINVITED QUESTIONS AND QUERIES AROUND PEOPLE’S RACIAL LINEAGE
In today’s episode Guilaine reflects on some questions and queries that people of colour, particularly Black people experience, in relation to their “racial” lineage and heritage. How these function as racist micro-aggressions and in particular the relationship between what is being asked, the histories of colonialism, and the power structures of White Supremacy.
She focuses on one of the most familiar micro-aggressive questions, “Where are you really from?” and it’s more subtle forms, and then explores queries about the specifics of Black people’s family history regarding whether they are “mixed”, through the lens of colonial violence and rape in within the African continent and the islands of the Caribbean.
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AT WORK EPISODE 89: THE SIMPLISTIC BINARY JUSTIFICATION IN CASES OF RACE DISCRIMINATION
In today’s episode Guilaine reflects on the binary polarisation of justification when it comes to accounting for workplace dynamics, particularly in cases of discrimination. Situations where for example an employee of colour makes a complaint and it is dismissed, in their belief due to the colour of their skin, but their employer claims the dismissal is due to the employees conduct, behaviour or ability to do the job. The two forms of justification tend to be pitted against each other.
She then lays out how this binary dichotomy created around these issues has a heavy risk of a false negative, which is an ethical risk in terms of failing to see discrimination when discrimination has occurred but is also arguably a general risk for the health of the institution involved.
She explores three reasons that this binary is false or simplistic:
- Discrimination is much more likely to happen when the institution finds a problem with an employee of colour
- Poor performance, whether it is present or not, is likely to be explained based on race due to fundamental attribution error/group attribution error.
- Poor performance and discrimination are not independent, they co-relate
She finishes up by recommending that we throw out this binary framework in regards to race, but also potentially to many other areas of life and forms of discrimination.
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AT WORK EPISODE 88: COVERT RACISM
In today’s episode Guilaine reflects on how covert racism functions, in particular within the cultural context of the UK.
She begins by defining covert racism as a form of racialised bias/discrimination that is not explicitly, overtly and obviously manifested. This results in the people experiencing it being faced with issues of deniability, ambiguity and a near impossibility for redress, becoming mired in questions of what is counted as specific evidence of motivation for the racism.
This topic was inspired by the work she is doing for her new book about whiteness in the workplace. She expands on experiences she documented in her book Living While Black and on reflections she had with her book White Minds.
She then poses the question of how we get to a place of mutual understanding and of recognition of covert racism. She considers the ways to prove convert racism and locates three forms of proof:
- Historical resonance
- Empirical data
- Lived experience
She concludes that by thinking about systems, statistics and probabilities it is possible to prove covert racism if there is a real desire to do so, and wonders if the ways we have to try to achieve justice are an obstacle in terms of finding and using this proof.
Living While Black: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442992/living-while-black-by-kinouani-guilaine/9781529109436
White Minds: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/white-minds
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AT WORK EPISODE 87: HOW BLACK WOMEN AND OTHERS EXPERIENCE DISCRIMINATION AT WORK WHILE PREGNANT
How Black women and others experience discrimination at work while pregnant In today’s episode Simone reflects on how Black women and others experience discrimination at work while pregnant, linked in to Black Maternal Health Week that took place in April earlier this year, organised by the Black Mamas Matter Alliance: https://blackmamasmatter.org/
They consider the range of people who experience pregnancies, and define and explore the spectrum of gender identities, and discuss the relationship of biology and gender.
They use the article Black Birthing Persons Matter—All of Them by Zahada (Kiersten) Gillette-Pierce: https://info.primarycare.hms.harvard.edu/perspectives/articles/black-birthing-persons-matter as a jumping off point as well as drawing on their own research around reproductive journeys of transgender and non binary people.
Then they look at “‘Oh gosh, why go?’ cause they are going to look at me and not hire”: intersectional experiences of black women navigating employment during pregnancy and parenting by Mehra et al: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36627577/
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AT WORK EPISODE 86: A FEW THOUGHTS ON THE SITUATION IN BURKINA FASO
In today’s episode Guilaine reflects on a the situation in Burkino Faso and what we can learn from that in relation to the workplace. How we can see the ways that whiteness, colonialism, and coloniality are playing out and glean insights into the working of those systems of domination. Fundamentally she urges us to pay attention to how what happens within the macro (ie the geopolitical level) has impacts and implications on the meso (ie the institutional functioning within workplaces) and the micro (ie our own psychological functioning and the way that we relate to one another.)
Some previous podcasts that this episode is in communication with:
Tensions between Black employees: https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1623760/episodes/15451884-tensions-between-black-employees
Character Assassination: https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1623760/episodes/16003086-character-assassination
Personal Position Statement on Palestine: https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1623760/episodes/16170006-personal-position-statement-on-palestine
Reflections on a trip to the Congo: https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1623760/episodes/14947769-reflections-on-a-trip-to-the-congo
Extraction: https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1623760/episodes/15301647-extraction
Musings on the complex politics around race, Africa and the Miss Universe competition: https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1623760/episodes/16261736-musings-on-the-complex-politics-around-race-africa-and-the-miss-universe-competition
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AT WORK EPISODE 85: WHY DOES THE SCAPEGOAT BECOME PICKED AS THE SCAPEGOAT?
In today’s episode Guilaine reflects on a question she has received in multiple settings about how scapegoating operates, and why specific people might be targeted as scapegoats. This query is very prominent in the work she does and is a major part of her current doctoral thesis. She expands around the thinking previously shared on the podcast about both scapegoating, and the location of disturbance, covering basic definitions, existing psychological theories and her own more group analysis focused thoughts.
She covers the ideas around repetition compulsion that locate the reasons people are scapegoated generally within their inner lives and backgrounds, but also calls this out as potentially toxic victim blaming, asking us to consider the structural and systemic factors at play. She doesn’t have a final answer, and perhaps no final definitive answers exist for situations so influenced by many lenses and contexts. But she offers many angles and potential theories along with some advice on how to approach scapegoating within groups.
Location of Disturbance and Scapegoating: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/episodes/8127268
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AT WORK EPISODE 84: THE MERGING OF INSTITUTIONS WITH DEI POLICY AND PROCEDURES
In today’s episode Guilaine reflects on when Diversity, Equality and Inclusion policies, procedures, rules and regulations, become blockers to achieving, or advancing, diversity, equality and inclusion within the workplace. Or as she prefers to see define it blockers to combating inequality, injustice and oppression getting in the way of achieving liberation.
She shares her observations around how these instruments designed for social progress eventually become corrupted by the status quo serving only to maintain the apparatus of oppression or domination. She thinks about how these mechanics function.
She isolates three specific ways that DEI policies and procedures operate:
- Social performance
- Helping to ensure (at least in the mind of the institution) legislative compliance
- Preempting defence and anticipating what charges may be made against the institution
She also considers how written statements of intention and aspiration can be blurred into being seen as statements of fact, and how this can obscure our understanding of actions taken, and position institutions as over-identified/indistinguishable with these positions.
She finishes by considering what can be learnt from this and ways to mitigate these effects.
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AT WORK EPISODE 83: STUDENTS OF COLOUR AND THEIR INVISIBLE LABOUR IN HIGHER EDUCATION
In today’s episode Simone reflects on the invisible and unpaid labour that students of colour do within higher education.
They use the article The Invisible Labor of BIPOC Students by Stephanie Tavares: https://www.ncan.org/news/560484/The-Invisible-Labor-of-BIPOC-Students.htm as a jumping off point, drawing on their lived experience within higher education.
They talk about how activists are often coopted into doing DEI work for universities and how this work is invisible, unpaid, watered down and hindered. And how collage administrations exploit their students around these areas and the impacts this can have on BIPOC students.
They then talk about changes that could be made to improve these conditions but also how there is so much resistance to these changes.
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AT WORK EPISODE 82: MORE MONEY
Today’s episode is a follow up to this previous episode: Money, money, money: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/episodes/13872328
Guilaine begins by reflecting on how her specific collection of intersections interact with her relationship to money/worth, considering what it means to be a Black woman from the inner-city and how that collection of identities chimes more with her experience than the term working class. She thinks about how race, migration and class interact with and sometimes obscure each other, particularly when anti-Blackness is added to the mix. And also the very specific experiences, cultures and conditions that are experienced by generations living in the impoverished areas of cities.
Then she discusses a recent change she noticed in how she was approaching setting her rates as a speaker and thinker around racial trauma, and how she is going about resetting herself, changing the energy she puts out and reestablishing her boundaries.
She then muses on the reasons why people in similar situations might undervalue themselves. Then she speaks to organisations and coprorations about how they need to interrogate their approaches to payment and race, particularly because money is always hot territory around race because of the history that exists there.
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AT WORK EPISODE 81: HOW BLACK WORKERS EXPERIENCE HIGHER EDUCATION ENVIRONMENTS
In today’s episode Simone reflects on how racism operates in higher education environments. They begin by thinking about their lived experiences within education both as a student and as a professor. They consider how “gifted and talented” programs are a tool of white supremacy and the obstacles for Black people in terms of attending higher education. Reflecting on the stark contrast between the demographics of the students and the predominantly Black and brown janitorial, maintenance and service workers who keep the institutions running.
They then look at the article Black Workers and the University by Lilah Burke https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/10/27/black-workers-universities-often-are-left-out-conversations-about-race-and-higher
They finish off by looking at activism and union actions that have worked to confront and change conditions for Black workers within the academy.
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AT WORK EPISODE 80: THE BLACK MIRROR PHENOMENON
In today’s episode Guilaine begins by reflecting on how people who are racialised as Black who are introverts are treated at work, her thoughts on this are still cooking but she has been noticing more and more testimony and stories from Black people about these experiences.
She begins by thinking about the ways she herself is an introvert. Then she asks some questions:
Have you noticed that Black people who are introverted tend to be maligned and face particular racialised challenges in the workplace?
Have you noticed that when Black people get into disputes or conflicts in the workplace it is important for them to provide reassurance to the rest of the team and make it clear that they are okay? She calls this an expectation of Emotional Transparency.
Have you ever noticed that Black people who keep themselves to themselves in the workplace are expected to reveal themselves and be readable/accessible to others?
She names and frames all of the above as The Black Mirror Phenomenon. And then muses about how it is formed, how it operates how it connects to theories around colonialities and blackness and projection, and the risks that it creates in terms of group dynamics and the outcomes these dynamics have on racialised individuals
She ends by considering some potential solutions and strategies to navigate this phenomena.
Authenticity in the workplace: https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1623760/episodes/10665249-authenticity
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AT WORK EPISODE 79: TOKENISM AT WORK
In today’s episode Simone reflects on the tokenism of corporations and other workplaces in the ways they treat Black people and people of colour. They begin by thinking about some scenes in season 2 of the TV series Severance which represent this dynamic and which have resonating with many viewers of colour. Then they consider the current situation in the USA where the Trump administration is seeking to destroy “DEI”, the emptiness of DEI programs in general, and the failure of corporate culture to both do adequate DEI work, and to respond to these current cultural and political attacks.
They then look at this article: The tokenism trap: 7 ways it can hurt your workplace https://recruitcrm.io/blogs/tokenism-in-recruitment/
They go through its recommendations but also heavily critique it, pointing out the problems in the way it frames and thinks about DEI, and the ways that it is representative of corporate and structural issues within White Supremacy. For example the framing of DEI as something that you do to make your corporation more profitable rather than something you do because it’s the right thing to do. When doing this they also draw on their own work being hired to do mediation within corporations and also their lived experience.
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AT WORK EPISODE 78: INTUITION
In today’s episode Guilaine reflects on intuition. What it means to include or to exclude the guts, the body, knowing with the body, knowing outside of “rational paradigms” or whatever we choose to call these forms of understanding.
She defines the areas that intuition can cover and the different ways that people can think about these phenomena, and draws on her own lived experience as someone who is not an expert on intuitive thought academically but is quite an intuitive person and takes intuition seriously, and who comes from a family and culture that takes intuition seriously.
She considers the ways that those with initiation can be encouraged by White Supremacy and other systems of oppression to not trust this form of knowledge. She thinks about different ways of knowing and considers how neurodivergence is impacted by society not taking intuition seriously. And she asks what does it mean in the context of the workplace to include “the guts”? Should we, should we not? What are we losing when we don’t? And can intuition be a lens that helps the unsaid be said in the context of racialised violence and oppression?
This episode touches on things she covered within Living While Black: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442992/living-while-black-by-kinouani-guilaine/9781529109436
And chimes with her thinking around Epistemic Homelessness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoKBLPbkB5I
Epistemic homelessness: ‘feeling like a stranger in a familiar land https://mediadiversified.org/2017/11/24/epistemic-homelessness-feeling-like-a-stranger-in-a-familiar-land/
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AT WORK EPISODE 77: PREGNANCY AND RACISM AR WORK
In today’s episode Simone reflects on pregnancy and racism at work, taking an intersectional lens, considering the experience of people who are pregnant and people who birth which includes more people than just cisgender women. So they begin with some definitions and discussion of these lenses and categories.
This episode is a companion to the episode on motherhood and/or parenthood and racism at work: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/episodes/16083900
They look at this piece of scholarship: “‘Oh gosh, why go?’ cause they are going to look at me and not hire”: intersectional experiences of black women navigating employment during pregnancy and parenting https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36627577/
From the journal BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth: https://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/
And discuss it’s findings and related reflections they have based on lived experience and wider study.
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AT WORK EPISODE 76: MUSINGS ON THE COMPLEX POLITICS AROUND RACE, AFRICA AND THE MISS UNIVERSE COMPETITION
In today’s episode Guilaine reflects on the treatment of Chidimma Adetshina in relation to the Miss Universe competition, specifically her treatment within South Africa in relation to her perceived nationality that resulted in her becoming Miss Universe Nigeria, before coming second in the over-all competition.
She muses on the case, beauty, the race and migration related politics of France and South Africa, displacement, scapegoating, so called Black-on-Black violence, self hatred, envy, and what all that might mean for group dynamics in the workplace.
At various points she refers to things that she covered within Living While Black: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442992/living-while-black-by-kinouani-guilaine/9781529109436
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AT WORK EPISODE 75: AGEISM AND RACISM AT WORK
In today’s episode Simone reflects on the ageism and how it intersects with other systems of oppression inside and outside of the workplace. They draw on their experience working with clients, their personal experience and some studies and articles around the topic.
They begin with their definition of ageism as a system of inequality that impacts people who are either on the young or old sides of the age spectrum. They think about how people often think of older, elderly and ageing people when thinking about ageism but often don’t include younger people who are also vulnerable and discriminated against and in the case of children and babies do not have rights or their own or autonomy.
They then bring in intersectionality to thinking about ageism and stress how age is very tied to gender and race and the ways these systems of oppression work. And they think about how ageism in the workplace is connected very strongly to ageism in personal life, and connected issues around a lack of autonomy. Issues that old and young people face have a lot of similarities, but because society glorifies youth many people don’t consider the ways in which children lack rights and autonomy, and the ways young people are a vulnerable population.
They then look at the article Ageism and age discrimination by Sheldon Reid https://www.helpguide.org/aging/healthy-aging/ageism-and-age-discrimination
They have strong critique of the article: young people are not included and are told they have it easy, and it claims that ageism is considered more acceptable by society than other forms of discrimination. But they appreciate the articles categories of ageism:
Interpersonal: Which has a lot of relevance to the workplace, particularly when the ageism intersects with disability and neurodivergence. There are many ways to be dismissed from, or dismissed at, your job due to your age. Age can also factor into if you can get another job and so trap you in a work situation.
Self directed ageism: Internalised attitudes and beliefs, often overlapping deeply with attitudes to gender and sexuality and bodies
Institutional ageism: Social norms, practices, systems and rules are different for people who are older, and somehow this goes along with countries trying to raise retirement age. As we look at systems of oppression and institutions we also need to strongly consider class and race and gender.
They then consider a 2020 survey which found that 80% of older workers witnessed or experienced ageism, and stated that older women of colour face age, race and sex discrimination in their personal lives as well as face institutionalised disadvantages at work, in their housing, and in their healthcare.
Thinking about health they consider all the ways ageism exacerbates the effects of ageing in general, and the forms of ageism that are prevalent within healthcare and health research.
Then finish by looking at the article Age, Race And Gender Create A Triple Threat For Workplace Bias by Sheila Callaham: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sheilacallaham/2022/10/31/age-race-and-gender-create-a-triple-threat-of-workplace-bias/ which offers some ways to approach pushing back against ageism and the other systems it intersects with within workplaces.
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AT WORK EPISODE 74: PERSONAL POSITION STATEMENT ON PALESTINE
In today’s episode Guilaine shares a personal statement that encapsulates her personal position, politics and solidarity around the genocide happening in Palestine, and then reflects and expands on that.
Her base position is that she stands in solidarity with Palestine from the wounded margin of Black liberation, but that she will not, and should not take the lead in this struggle. Particularly when there are current struggles against genocide and war in South Sudan and the DRC that are less public, and given the histories of colonial violence and anti-blackness for the Black African Diaspora.
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AT WORK EPISODE 73: MOTHERHOOD AND/OR PARENTHOOD AND RACISM AT WORK
In today’s episode Simone reflects on the experiences of people who go through pregnancy and birth whilst navigating and trying to balance that with employment.
They begin by with a note about why they are using more inclusive terms to cover this subject and some definitions of cisgender, transgender and intersectionality. And suggest we keep all of this in mind during the episode as most of the research talked about does not apply this kind of inclusivity.
They then discuss, with reference to a 2013 report from the Harvard Business School, the ways that race and work status affect judgement of mothers, acknowledging that mothers get a lot of personal judgment within society despite facing a lot of structural forms of inequality. They suggest that mothers should generally be understood as multiply marginalised people.
They talk about the “Motherhood penalty” relating this to their own lived experience. They cover some of the stereotypes that impact this judgment of mothers and how this relates to their treatment in the workplace. Mothers are judged as less competent and less committed than other applicants and employees and so are less likely to be hired or promoted. This relates to stereotypes from the gender binary such as women being nurturing and domestic.
They consider that the majority of studies of motherhood discrimination focus on how white mothers are treated in the workplace but obviously race plays a huge role in how Black mothers and other mothers of colour are treated. There are studies that suggest that Black mothers who don’t work experience more prejudice than those who do work based on racist stereotypes of irresponsibility, whereas with white mums it is often seen as better and more responsible if they don’t work. For example a study suggested that white families are more likely to receive loans if the mothers stay at home with the children, whereas Black and Latino families are more likely to be granted loans if the mother works outside the home. Then they think more about the race-based double standards between working and stay-at-home mums, and how divisions around who are “better” mothers, and if mothers should work, play into patriarchy and white supremacy.
They then look at a more recent Time magazine piece about how the pay gap for working mums is a race issue and disproportionately impacts women of colour particularly Black women. This isn’t about women’s choices but about structural possibilities and foreclosures, and in particular a lack of institutional policies supporting them.
They conclude with the idea that for things to change there needs to be structural and cultural changes implemented within workplaces with an understanding of how these policies impact communities differently. For example paid family leave, men taking leave too, affordable childcare, flexible time, paid sick leave, and much more!
References:
Gender and Work: Challenging Conventional Wisdom https://www.hbs.edu/race-gender-equity/symposium/Pages/2013-symposium.aspx
Prescriptions and Punishments for Working Moms: How Race and Work Status Affect Judgments of Mothers by Amy Cuddy and Elizabeth Baily Wolf https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=50970
Mama, PhD: Women Write about Motherhood and Academic Life https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mama-PhD-Women-Motherhood-Academic/dp/0813543185
Why the Pay Gap for Working Moms Is a Race Issue Too by Jennifer Siebel Newsom https://time.com/5848269/moms-equal-pay-day/
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AT WORK EPISODE 72: CHARACTER ASSASSINATION
In today’s episode following two queries on social media for her to do so, Guilaine reflects on the Police officer being found not guilty for the fatal shooting of Chris Kaba.
First she thinks about the reasons she was hesitant to talk about this subject, she hasn’t read or studied the case in an in-depth way as she finds anti-Black police brutality particularly activating/triggering because of experiences witnessing it growing up. She can talk about the theory around it but to actually view and witness it is very difficult for her. From here she considers how our histories and our formative years influence our politics and the positions we adopt in relation to equality and oppression and how her childhood gave her an introduction to injustice and structural violence.
She reflects briefly on the trial and wonders about its validity and if the Police acted with proportionality but as she is not a firearms expert she cannot fully comment on this. However she has expertise on how institutions function when they have to defend against charges of institutional racism, so connecting the case to the workplace, she focuses on character assassination. And also points out that we are thinking about these issues in terms of morality and ethics rather than legality, because what is legal is not always what is moral or ethical.
She looks at how the press has reported on Chris’ character. She thinks about how Black men are disproportionately assessed as posing a greater risk than other people, which we can see from various studies and data including ones looking at the Police force and mental health services.
Looking towards the workplace she discusses how people tend to utilise the most usable applicable tropes to reduce cognitive dissonance. In this case it was the trope of dangerousness. In employment when people want to justify exclusion usually if they are a woman they will be seen as difficult and if they are a man they will be seen as dangerous. She ends posing some questions to consider around these areas when thinking about the workplace, this legal case, and about society in general.
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AT WORK EPISODE 71: AUTISM AND RACISM AT WORK
n today’s episode Simone reflects on autism, neurodivergence and racism in relation to work.
They begin by talking about how and why they decided to cover this topic, reflecting on how they are autistic and work supporting autistic people, and how autistic and neurodivergent people are often unable to remain in employment or are unceremoniously fired. How these stories are systemic but are often carried as individual shame.
They remind us that neurodivergent is an umbrella term, autism is part of this umbrella but that the terms shouldn’t be used interchangeably. Then they explore a TikTok account by Professor Sol that summarises a variety of studies regarding autistic people: https://www.tiktok.com/@better_sol
They consider the statistics that only 16% of autistic people are employed. And that autistic employees face the biggest pay gap and are the most under employed group whilst being the most overqualified group of all disabled groups. Then they reflect on how in addition to this people who are not cisgender white men are often misdiagnosed/undiagnosed as not autistic because of the way that white autistic men are the stereotype associated with autism in the media and in general. They discuss how for multiply marginalised people self diagnosis and self advocacy is incredibly important and valid. And how the criteria developed and employed around autism is fed by white supremacy and white “western” ideas, and how self diagnosis is a way of reclaiming experience.
Then they think about how racism, classism, sexism and other systems of oppression exacerbate autistic people’s difficulties in workplaces and with employment. How this contributes to autistic burnout and autistic shutdown and seriously effects people’s health. They look at the study “Intersectional Stigma for Autistic People at Work: A Compound Adverse Impact Effect on Labor Force Participation and Experiences of Belonging https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36777372/
One of the things highlighted in this study is how little research exists about autistic people at work because the majority of autistic people don’t work. They think about what “work” means within our current cultural moment and whether “work” works for any of us. The study found that white autistic people living in the global north are more likely to have jobs and to have jobs that are accommodating for autistic people, And that women, non binary and transgender people feel less included at work and that feeling that someone cares is more important than accommodations.
They conclude by talking about accommodations that can be made but also that there are larger systemic adjustments that need to be made, and that employers and workplaces need to be attuned to intersections of oppression, to be attuned to how autistic people are not to be cured, fixed or exploited. But that this is a tough conversation for autistic people to have because the stigma means that many people don’t feel safe to be openly autistic in their workplaces.
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AT WORK EPISODE 70: MUSINGS ON THE DUALITY AND COMPLEXITY OF WHITE LIBERALS
In today’s episode Guilaine reflects on White Liberals, and on her past inclination to take people straightforwardly based on the words they write and the face they present to the world. She considers how experiencing the duality and complexity of people presenting as anti-racist publicly who in their personal interactions reveal themselves to be anti-black, has led to her trying to be more cautious about her tendency to trust people.
She thinks about her lived experience, widens it out to consider how people can understand and even agree with the theory but fail consciously or unconsciously to enact the practice. And she also ties this duality to her own experiences visiting the Congo.
She concludes by considering how this duality and complexity impacts the workplace and encourages people, particularly in relation to tribunals, to remember and consider this when addressing issues around race where for example a white person accused of race discrimination may be presenting as polite, reasonable and an outstanding member of the community.
The episode “Reflections on a trip to the Congo” is referenced in this podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/episodes/14947769
If you would like to send us a question, query or dilemma that we could reflect on and respond to on the show please email atwork@racereflctions.co.uk or contact@racereflections.co.uk
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AT WORK EPISODE 69: COVID PANDEMIC, RACISM AND ABLEISM IN THE WORKPLACE
In today’s episode Simone reflects on the COVID 19 pandemic and how it intersects with racism and ableism. They begin by thinking about the Olympics in relation to a lack of COVID mitigations and how we need to have conversations about COVID and racism in relation to workplace inequality. How so many things are connected; with racism, xenophobia, classism and white supremacy at the root of it all.
They then consider the way that the first year of the pandemic played out in 2020, drawing on both their lived experience and the studies and data that we now have. Thinking about who could shelter and who could not, and especially how people of colour experienced what has been described as the duel pandemic.
They then look at the article “COVID and Racism Cause Nurses of Color to Face “Dual Pandemic” by Kitta MacPherson: https://www.rutgers.edu/news/covid-and-racism-cause-nurses-color-face-dual-pandemic which sites the study “Effects of Race, Workplace Racism, and COVID Worry on the Emotional Well-Being of Hospital-Based Nurses: A Dual Pandemic” from Charlotte Thomas-Hawkins, Peijia Zha, Linda Flynn & Sakura Ando: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08964289.2021.1977605
They consider the pandemic happening in the context of the murder of George Floyd making it a very specific experience for Black people, and the anti-Asian racism that was exacerbated by the way the virus was being discussed making it a very specific experience for East-Asian people. And those racisms being seen in relation to communities of colour experiencing the highest rates of cases, deaths and hospitalisations, and nearly half of all health care workers with infections being among workers of colour, with nurses being the hardest hit.
Reflecting on anti-Asian racism they look at the article “Research: How Anti-Asian Racism Has Manifested at Work in the Pandemic” by Jennifer Kim and Zhida Shang: https://hbr.org/2023/03/research-how-anti-asian-racism-has-manifested-at-work-in-the-pandemic
Then they reflect on workplaces currently within the ongoing pandemic: how this impacts disabled and at risk people, how employers and governments are failing to recognise this, how there are ways we could immediately make workplaces safer that are not being implemented. They consider the way the loses we have due to this are not just from death and disability, but also from workers and students quitting their workplaces and educational establishments, and the knowledge and experience we lose when this happens.
The episode ends by considering the way COVID has both harmed disabled people disproportionately and created more disabled people, and so going forward we need to include disabled people and attempt to mitigate dangers in our workplaces, and look after and support people if they do get sick.
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AT WORK EPISODE 68: SHOULD PEOPLE OF COLOUR ONLY RECEIVE THERAPY FROM PEOPLE OF COLOUR?
In today’s episode Guilaine continues her reflections on relationships between Black people, continuing on from her thoughts in this episode: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/15451884
She addresses a question she has been answering for a long time and that keeps coming back: Should people of colour only receive therapy from therapists/analysts/psychologists/mental health professionals of colour.
She focuses on psychotherapy which is a very specific field of work, but asks a question that may be of interest or use to people of colour from all workplaces.
Three reasons why black therapists may wound their Black clients:
- It is not enough to match people on their race alone
- Just because someone has black skin doesn’t mean they have done the professional work when it comes to training around racial trauma. (And a lot of training is designed and delivered by white people so this is also a structural issue.)
- Just because someone has black skin doesn’t mean they have done the personal work around their relationship to whiteness, their heritage, their ancestry, intergenerational wounds, colonialism, etc…
Two more things to consider:
- There are other skills that therapists may have that are not specifically related to racial trauma that will help people experiencing racial trauma such as anxiety management and other core skills.
- It’s understandable why Black people might prefer Black therapists, primarily for reasons of safety and trauma
Her conclusion is that everybody would benefit from having skills for working with people experiencing racial trauma, and all training institutions and providers should offer training in racial trauma that is thorough, and supports people to work with people who are experiencing racial trauma and race based injury regardless of their racialisation. And that often racism gets in the way of working therapeutically with people of colour.
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AT WORK EPISODE 67: ANTI-FAT BIAS, FATPHOBIA AND RACISM AT WORK
In today’s episode Simone reflects on the relationships between racism, sexism (and other systems of oppression) and anti-fat bias. They begin by thinking about how the curves of people’s bodies are seen and understood through a very racist lens, and how pregnant people are seen as if their bodies belong to the public. Situating all of this within histories of White Supremacy and how these prejudices become bureaucratic elements of policy and are enforced systemically.
The rest of the episode is in conversation with the article “Weight based discrimination in the workplace is real. Here’s why talking about it matters.” by Jordan Ziese: https://www.ywboston.org/weight-based-discrimination-in-the-workplace-is-real-heres-why-talking-about-it-matters/
They go over the various work, movements and resources that have existed around combating anti-fat bias and some of the big issues within this such as the pernicious influence of the debunked measurement system BMI, and studies that show that fat people are paid less and discriminated against in other ways within the workplace.
The episode ends with recommendations for employers in terms of how they deal with anti-fat bias in the workplace.
Here are some resources mentioned:
Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings https://nyupress.org/9781479886753/fearing-the-black-body/
Belly Of The Beast: The Politics Of Anti-Fatness As Anti-Blackness by Da’Shaun L. Harrison: https://www.pagesofhackney.co.uk/webshop/product/belly-of-the-beast-dashaun-harrison/
Maintenance Phase podcast: https://www.maintenancephase.com/
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AT WORK EPISODE 66: TENSIONS BETWEEN BLACK EMPLOYEES
In today’s episode, Guilaine reflects on a question that has come up in her personal conversations with siblings, how do you navigate tensions between Black people in the workplace that might be described as being related to internalised anti-blackness/negrophobia.
She thinks around the theory that surrounds these concepts, and considers how many of the concepts we have explored on the podcast as being primarily perpetrated by non-black people and can also be enacted by people racialised as Black. She considers the reasons why this topic can be controversial and why it is often not addressed or named.
She then discusses some observations from her experience within group analysis during the high level of racial tension that came with the murder of George Floyd. In addition to all the other theories and explanations for these tensions, she encourages us to think with complexity and multiplicity about the function these tensions have within groups and institutions, how these conflicts serve power hierarchies, and that conflict can be a gladiatorial entertainment and distraction. Also, conflict can be a displaced version of tensions with the people at the top of the organisation that cannot be targeted safely, and that those people in positions of power are always implicated when there is tension within their teams.
This episode touches on many issues previously covered in podcast episodes such as these:
Black Authority in the Workplace: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/8252930
Envy: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/8728416
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AT WORK EPISODE 65: OVERQUALIFIED?
In today’s episode, Guilaine responds to, and reflects on, a dilemma from a listener who is a Black woman dealing with the way that workplaces tend to view her as overqualified, is having difficulty navigating these dynamics, has ended up moving from job to job, and increasingly feels the need to hide her knowledge and experience.
AT WORK EPISODE 64: EXTRACTION
In today’s episode, Guilaine reflects on extraction, the process of which touches on ancestral vulnerability, blackness, colonial dialectics and coloniality in the workplace and generally racialised dynamics, and echoes her recent trip to the Congo.
She offers an aside on how plagiarism as an accusation can be weaponised and racialised against people of colour, particularly women of colour and Black women in particular; and how they can be on one hand fined quite heavily by institutions and by society at large, and on the other hand they tend to be the most vulnerable when it comes to those kinds of accusations.
But she then focuses on examples of extraction she has experienced recently, looking at some of the reasons she has altered her use of social media and the phenomena of high earners approaching Race Reflections to be considered for the low-income courses we have offered for our recent certificate. And she considers the response of some people to her sharing an article “Racial trauma as bodily archive: The Griot & The Nzonzi” freely to the wider community for 48 hours, but after that making it membership only. She was asked not just to make it permanently accessible for free but was also asked to send people files of the article for their use for free.
She then thinks about extraction in the workplace and considers some ways to navigate and mitigate these issues.
This podcast brings together many strands from other podcasts for example:
Reflections on a trip to the Congo
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AT WORK EPISODE 63: INTRODUCTION TO THE CERTIFICATE IN WORKING WITH RACIAL TRAUMA AND RACE BASED INJURIES USING THE FOUNDATION OF GROUP ANALYSIS
In today’s episode, Guilaine reflects on the upcoming new course: the certificate in working with racial trauma and race-based injuries using the foundation of group analysis. In particular, she focuses some attention on the large group that is going to be focused on Whiteness at Work.
She starts by describing the focus of the course. It is the first in-depth course on racial trauma in the UK, unlike the other courses, it is a year-long rather than a few days. It’s an online, group-based course that looks at racial trauma critically, and holistically mainly using the foundation of group analysis, psychoanalysis, psychology, and neuroscience, but also seeking to attempt to interrogate the thinking and colonial logic that lie within these disciplines. It’s a course for everyone but particularly people who are placed in positions to help, support, and manage people who are racialised as black and brown who are experiencing race-based issues, and who may be dealing with race-based distress and/or racial trauma.
Then she gives some background on why she is running the course. It’s the outcome of professional and traditional doctoral studies, years of research around racial trauma as well as thinking about where we are in the world socio-politically in terms of global insecurity and racial re-traumatisation, all of which resulted in Guilaine being called from an African ontological and cosmological perspective to create this course.
She then discusses the content of the course in general and focuses on the large group that looks at whiteness at work. The group on whiteness is a core component of the certificate. By whiteness, we mean the operationalisation of the structure of White Supremacy, the stratification of life based on racialisation. The aim of the group is to create a space to come together as a community to think about whiteness and share and speak about what they experience. It will meet monthly online and will focus on the dynamics at play and how to resist them.
She concludes by considering that the bulk of harm she has seen in her clinical work has been acquired within the workplace and how this means it is essential for people within the workplace to understand these patterns. She is offering the experience of being in a large group to people wanting to pursue group analysis as a therapeutic discipline but more than that a large group is likely to repeat and recreate some of the dynamics at play out within institutions and society. So it’s very useful and insightful for exploring these issues in a more contained and better-held environment.
Interested in the course? More information can be found here: https://racereflections.co.uk/certificate-in-working-with-racial-trauma-and-race-based-injuries-using-the-foundation-of-group-analysis-fee-page/
and an opportunity to reserve a place can be found here: https://racereflections.co.uk/events/open-day-certificate-in-working-with-racial-trauma-and-race-based-injuries-using-the-foundation-of-group-analysis/
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 62: SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY CHANGE
In today’s episode, Guilaine reflects on her relationship with social media. The way she has used social media in the past and the transition she is making on how she uses it going forward, and the reasons she is changing how she uses Twitter (or X).
She gives some context about what social media has meant for both her and for Race Reflections. She thinks about how Race Reflections began as a blogging venture that was heavily influenced and developed by her writing being shared on social media. It allowed for a direct way to engage with communities and with the wider public and to improve her craft. This led to opportunities that resulted in peer-reviewed publications, book contracts, conference invites and more consultancy work. There is no way that Race Reflections would be what it is today without social media. It gives or at least gave a space where radical thinking and marginalised groups could connect and find community, audiences and collaborators.
Then she considers how over the years her experience of social media has changed, and challenges around others using her intellectual property without consent or plagiarising her content have become more common, she wonders if people see content shared on social media is to be less respected, particularly when shared by a Black woman. And at this point, the balance between the advantages and disadvantages of using social media in this way has changed. This is related in part to people’s attitude to online content, partly due to the social and political climate we are currently within and also due to the change of leadership within this particular platform.
She thinks about the different strands of herself and her thinking that she used to share on her personal account, her Race Reflections focused work, her commentary on news, politics and social events, and her personal experiences moving through the world as a Black woman. She argues for the value of showing your whole self and being open about your process of trying to learn about and make sense of the world. For people to connect to your ideas, particularly when those ideas are challenging, you need to allow your readers to connect to you. If you want people to be open and vulnerable and transparent and compassionate you need to embody this in your work and practice. This is the liberatory case for this approach. But this needs to be balanced against avoiding self-sacrifice, to guard against necropolitics, the politics of the masters and of colonialism that expect you to be extracted from and for your life to not be valued. And she thinks about this in this present context of multiple genocides and patriarchal whitelash. So this change of approach is not just related to protecting her work but also to prioritising safety.
She ends by talking about the vulnerabilities that people carry and that she carries and that thinking about this during her recent trip to the Congo helped to clarify all of this and to see that to embody her politics, she needs to also protect herself and respect her vulnerabilities and find new ways to be safe and sustainable.
Previous Episode: Social Media https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/11029464
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 61: REFLECTIONS ON A TRIP TO THE CONGO
In today’s episode, Guilaine reflects on her recent trip to the Congo. This topic was asked for when she polled people on twitter/x to find out what they wanted her to speak on for this episode.
She begins with some context, first for her and then for the country and region in general. Covering how she was born in Bastille and grew up in inner city Paris and is of Congolese descent, specifically descending from Congo-Brazzaville. She then gives a brief overview of the history of colonialism, slavery, war and genocide experienced by Congo-Brazzaville and The Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Then she talks about her experience there, being confronted by this paradox of death and life, beauty and horror, poverty and people thriving, learning more about the colonial atrocities that were committed and at the same time being exposed to the pure beauty of the landscapes. She explores the complexity of these powerful dualities and contradictions, the paradox of life and death almost intertwined and dancing, the invitation to ask how do we hold these dualities at the same time, remembering the pain of the past but imagining alternative futures, the abundance and wealth of nature contrasted with the poverty of neocolonialism. It invites you to be deeply reflective about the possibility of life.
She finishes by thinking about her writing and research around trauma and transference and how when talking to people on her travels and looking into cosmologies and autologies of the region she realised that a lot of what she had been writing corresponded with the thinking and cosmologies of this land. And so brings her back to her question of “what we know without knowing?” And to issues of ancestral communication and memory and how echoes form between generations, particularly within the African diaspora, particularly when it comes to issues of thinking about African consciousness in the context of Black suffering, and thinking about all of this within the Kikongo frame, Kikongo being the language, people and culture of the Congo.
For more of Guilaine’s reflections on this trip see this article: Remembering the Congo https://racereflections.co.uk/remembering-the-congo/
Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 60: CONSENT
In today’s episode, Guilaine reflects on consent in relation to her research on whiteness, her lived experience, and the implications of this issue within the workplace
She begins with a basic definition of consent, then she details some experiences related to going out dancing that she recently experienced, and links them to the wider issues that her research explores. Part of the theme that has come up again and again in her data is patients talking about experience of whiteness in the clinic where therapists appear to be breaching boundaries, oversharing, dismissing experiences of racism, using gaslighting tactics, and engaging in the politics of denialism. She links all this to her concept of epistemic homelessness and names these behaviours as acts of occupying the epistemic space of the other.
She considers how trauma is generally centered on some kind of breach of boundary and how whiteness can be seen as colonial violence performed through spacial embodiment, that breaches of consent are the colonial enactment of whiteness, and that white supremacy is founded on breaching the boundaries, borders, and sovereignty of the other – bodily, territorial, psychic – and so in the everyday quotidian enactment of white violence we are going to see some repetition and reproduction of those wider politics.
She then concludes by thinking about the workplace and how the coloniality of interpersonal relationships, especially cross-racial interpersonal relationships, is enacted in relation to the consent of employees of colour.
Some links:
Epistemic homelessness:
https://mediadiversified.org/2017/11/24/epistemic-homelessness-feeling-like-a-stranger-in-a-familiar-land/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoKBLPbkB5I
Envy: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/8728416
Location of disturbance: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/8127268
White Minds: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/white-minds
Living While Black: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442992/living-while-black-by-kinouani-guilaine/9781529109436
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 59: FEEDBACK!
In today’s episode, Guilaine reflects around a listener’s query asking “How do we get managers to understand how biased they are when it comes to the feedback that they give to employees of colour.”
After briefly questioning the terminology of bias and unconscious bias, she looks at the evidence from organisational psychology considering how empirical evidence shows that marginalised employees tend to receive poorer quality feedback. Even though the research isn’t always intersectional, what exists demonstrates the intersectional effect that takes place when the axis of oppression and identity collide. This feedback tends to be of lower quality: less precise, more global, less frequent, and there tends to be a lot of anxiety around the exercise of providing feedback
She considers aversive racism where employers withhold negative feedback to avoid accusations of racism, but in act of withholding feedback deprive employees the opportunity to correct and improve themselves and sometimes unable to pass their probation periods or acquire skills and experience that would offer the opportunity for progression within their work. Basically in this dynamic, employees of colour and other marginalised groups are set to fail.
She reflects on how a high percentage of disputes that end up in employment tribunals are related to evaluation or discipline, and that the provision of effective feedback is central and essential to fair and just treatment in the workplace.
She spends some time talking about what employers racialised as white need to work on in regards to their anxiety and phobia around Blackness, considering what Fanon has said on these issues and the wider context of racist violence and exclusion, reflecting on how these conflicts are a liability for institutions when they are found lacking, and more frequently for black and brown individuals when they are not.
She then gives some thought to what can be done to correct these issues.
That whilst it’s worth making sure to avoid it becoming a self-fulfilling situation, most of the time, people’s instincts based on their lived experience are astute and accurate. We need to correct the misconception that people are misinterpreting the situations. Marginalised people in general interpret things on balance correctly. So instead we need to take seriously these feelings and instincts and come up with strategies to mitigate and navigate these situations. Ultimately though it is really for employers and people racialised as white to address their issues around giving feedback because it isn’t something employees of colour can change alone.
Further listening:
Aversive Racism: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/8346383
Thinking about feeling, feeling about thinking: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/14041582
Further reading:
White Minds: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/white-minds
Living While Black: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442992/living-while-black-by-kinouani-guilaine/9781529109436
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 58: WHITELASH
In today’s episode, Guilaine reflects on the phenomenon and social dynamic of what has been called whitelash, a combination of white/whiteness and backlash.
The term was coined by African-American journalist Van Jones to describe the backlash of White America coming together to reject what had been seen as a liberalisation of the USA under Obama. And in a more general sense, it describes the sense of grievance, the sense of anger, the sense of frustration that originates from people racialised as White, that comes from an often misconstrued and misconceived sense of displacement and social change which is a reaction to a perception that social advancements are being made in terms of equality. This is a concept and area that is expanded on in Guilaine’s second book White Minds.
After defining and exploring the concept, she then considers it within the terms of group analytic thinking, theory and practice, and looks at the relationship between the socio-political and the ways that institutions, organisations and individuals relate and interact, focusing on the workplace.
She considers the whitelash that we are currently experiencing almost 4 years after the murder of George Floyd galvanised institutions to make commitments and how those words and sometimes actions are now being pushed back against very strongly. And how this whitelash is also being felt across many intersections and identities.
She then shares some observations from her experience of delivering work-related DEI training and looks at the effect of whitelash on Race Reflections as both an organisation and as a business.
White Minds is available to buy here: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/white-minds
Van Jones on whitelash: https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/11/9/13572182/van-jones-cnn-trump-election-2016
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 57: SURVIVING WHITENESS AT WORK
In today’s episode, Guilaine continues to look forward to Race Reflections path in 2024 and beyond. She announces a future book that will be coming from Race Reflections, our first book as an organisation.
That book is Surviving Whiteness at Work: reflections on defiance, resistance and transformation
It will aim to describe the working of Whiteness in the workplace through the lived experience of our team and community members, and how they have found helpful ways to grow, survive, and thrive despite working in an environment that might have been hostile, toxic, marginalising and discriminatory. It will look at theory and autoethnographic experience and will be solution-focused.
In this episode, she discusses and reflects on that book and gives a flavour of the thinking and topics it may cover.
For more on this exciting new project see here: https://racereflections.co.uk/title-surviving-whiteness-at-work-reflections-on-defiance-resistance-and-transformation/
If you are a member of the Race Reflections community we are looking for contributions: https://racereflections.co.uk/call-for-contributions-whiteness-at-work/
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 56: RACE REFLECTIONS IN 2024
In today’s episode, Guilaine looks forward to Race Reflections path in 2024.
She starts by wishing everyone a Happy New Year, followed by a brief reflection on global violence, specifically in Gaza and Congo, a topic she will return to in more detail in a future podcast later this year.
Then she outlines what is planned and being developed for Race Reflections over the next 12 months:
- As Guilaine’s training is as a specialist clinician, she wants to use this skillset more and will be setting up a group analytic clinic within Race Reflections establishing 2 to 3 regular groups this year.
- Race Reflections will establish a physical office so we can put down roots, form an in-person community, and disrupt the reproduction of displacement that can happen within purely online spaces and groups. The office will be based in Milton Keynes (30 mins from London, 45 mins from Birmingham and Coventry).
- Because of these first two developments, there will be an even greater focus on in-person training.
- Race Reflections will be launching a video channel this year.
- Within the next 6 weeks, we will announce a new programme for courses and training and in terms of the organisation, we are looking into development around management both for existing team members and potentially in terms of recruitment.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 55: APPEARANCE
In today’s episode, Race Reflections’ Associate Disruptor Simone reflects on workplace issues surrounding people’s appearance, how appearance is policed, and how that relates to respectability politics and white supremacy.
They first discuss on how appearing Palestinian or showing solidarity with Palestine during the current genocide intersects with how people’s appearances are policed in general, specifically looking at this issue from a US perspective.
Then they consider how dress codes in schools set up dress codes in the workplace, reflecting on how multiple marginalised people are the most affected by these dress codes and the ways that dress codes serve dominant cultures, patriarchy and white supremacy.
They then discuss an essay by Aysa Gray called The Bias of ‘Professionalism’ Standards (https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_bias_of_professionalism_standards) which argues that the standards of professionalism are really just the standards of western white supremacy. They then challenge us to ask ourselves how we might be reinforcing white supremacy, xenophobia and other forms of systemic inequality and consider the role of hiring metrics in all this.
Simone ends with a series of questions from that essay by Gray that aim to help de-centre the standards of whiteness within the workplace.
Simone’s website: https://www.simonekolysh.com/
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 54: THINKING ABOUT FEELING, FEELING AB0UT THINKING
In today’s episode, Guilaine takes us on a freeform reflection and roundup of her thinking and feeling in 2023.
From the publication of her second book White Minds to the writing and collating of her third book Creative Disruption she shares her position as someone who doesn’t identify as an academic due to the violence she has experienced as a Black woman in academia and psychology (something she explores in both these books.)
She then gives us an introduction to Creative Disruption beginning with its genesis at a conference that looked at creative disruption. The chapter she has written for that book also began at that conference in a talk she gave on Congolese music. Here she also makes links with Afrobeats (which she describes as the hybrid child of the African diaspora). She then expands on the reasons for highlighting and emphasising creativity and on the importance of thinking about feelings, and feeling about thinking. Thinking with the body or feeling with the mind. How these ‘things’ are split by Western society but are not split within us. For this, she refers to Audre Lorde’s text Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.
Then she asks some questions to you, the listeners: Do we do enough to engage with the creative in the work we do at Race Reflections? Are we playing into the splitting of the rational self and the erotic self, this splitting of the feeling self and the thinking self?
She then talks about her latest piece (‘The world does not need more intelligent men’) which looks at the concept of intelligence and asks what intelligence is or might be. She explored these questions in relationship to the personal and the political overlapping and often being the same thing.
She ends with another invitation or provocation to the audience:
How do we find ways to reconnect body and mind, rationality and corporality, heart and head, as an organisation so that our dismantling, disruptive, anti-racist and anti-oppressive work continues to allow us to grow and be connected with the world and each other?
Audre Lorde: Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power https://www.centraleurasia.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/audre_lorde_cool-beans.pdf
‘The world does not need more intelligent men’ https://racereflections.co.uk/the-world-does-not-need-more-intelligent-men/
Guilaine’s first book Living While Black is available to buy here: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442992/living-while-black-by-kinouani-guilaine/9781529109436
Her new book White Minds is available to buy here: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/white-minds
Her third book co-edited with Hannah Reeves and Claudia Di Gianfrancesco is called Creative Disruption: https://creativedisruptioncouk.wordpress.com/about/
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 53: MONEY, MONEY, MONEY
In today’s episode, Guilaine expands on her thinking around money which she has previously covered a little on the podcast and on the Race Reflections website. She specifically reflects on the relationship between money and attachment, considering internalised scarcity, social class and social deprivation, framing her thoughts around her own background and lived experience. This episode was inspired by the work she was doing for the Freud Museum Conference about the relationship between psychotherapy and money.
She begins by going over attachment theory as it exists from initial work done by Bowlby which relates to maternal or parental attachment. She offers some critique and complications around these theories but generally doesn’t dispute the ideas and evidence around this topic. She does however suggest that whilst a lot of time is given to maternal attachment theory, not enough has been done around how material circumstances influence attachment, and that maternal and material are seldom considered together.
She has done some work in this area when writing Living While Black, specifically considering attachment to and with place. We attach to spaces as well as to bodies, and any way bodies and spaces are related to each other. And looking at places means looking at the influence of geopolitical factors such as borders and money. She then covers her own relationship with money and with scarcity thinking, looking at how growing up poor can create adaptive behaviours/internalised issues around things like experiencing injustice, a lack of familiarity with wealth, and difficulties navigating spaces without cultural capital. She asks us to imagine a graph that cross-references material and maternal/parental attachments and how that kind of thinking can help us understand our own relationship to attachment and how we relate to money.
She ends by linking all this back to the workplace.
The article she mentions is on the Race Reflections website for members (and if you are not a member you are welcome to join): Poverty, deprivation and internalised scarcity
Her book Living While Black where she explores some of what she talks about today is available to buy here: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442992/living-while-black-by-kinouani-guilaine/9781529109436
Her new book White Minds has just been published and is available to buy here: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/white-minds
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 52: LOCATING ANXIETY & STAYING SAFE
This episode of Race Reflections at Work is about managing anxiety with the help of holistic/ alternative approaches while at work/ in employment, as well as some suggestions
TW: Admin, Comms and Engagement Lead Dionne talks about the triggers of anxiety while navigating spaces around her – often being the only minority.
Resources to read:
https://www.rtor.org/2019/02/21/mental-health-and-chiropractic-care/
https://thehouseclinics.co.uk/learning-hub/stress-and-anxiety-how-chiropractic-can-help-you
https://www.onechiropractic.co.uk/blogs/simple-tips-to-manage-stress-in-the-moment
Where to find alternative support in the UK:
https://www.lsbu.ac.uk/stories/lsbu-chiropractic-clinic
https://blamuk.org/zuri-therapy-racial-wellness/
Dionne Anderson: http://dionneandersoncreative.com/
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 51: PROXIMAL AMBIVALENCE
She then defines proximal ambivalence as a term that derives the ways that groups with proximity to power/Whiteness can have mixed feelings when it comes to justice, liberation and dismantling White Supremacy. This is because White Supremacy is a caste system or pyramid and everyone within its structures and strata can reproduce and enact racialised violence towards groups lower down the complex hierarchies. All groups including people racialised as white exist within these racialised hierarchies which is what creates these proximal dynamics.
She then considers how these dynamics look within the workplace.
Guilaine fully explores this subject in her upcoming book White Minds that you can pre-order here: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/white-minds
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 50: ABLEISM AND SANEISM IN THE WORKPLACE
In today’s episode, Race Reflections’ Associate Disruptor Simone reflects on the issues and experiences around disability, mental health and neurodivergence in the workplace.
They begin by defining the terms/identities/concepts ableism, disablism, saneism, visible/invisible disability, mental illness, neurodivergence and intersectionality. Then they consider how many of these terms overlap and are often umbrella terms for each other, and that they depend on the people/institutions that are defining them who hold the power to define what is typical and what is done to those who aren’t typical.
Neurodivergence, disability and mental illness are common human experiences and should not be pathologised. They are also tied into white norms and to other forms of, and systems of, marginalisation, normalisation and oppression.
Then they consider how neurodiverse, disabled and mentally ill people often have no access to “legitimate” work, highlighting how prior to the workforce these groups have often experienced oppression and alienation at home, in school and in higher education, a model that continues into adult life. How they can be seen and framed as troubled/troublesome and how that becomes criminalisation and pathologisation. Not having access to “legitimate” work also means barriers to accessing housing, food and healthcare.
Workplaces are set up around specific assumptions around work, productivity and success. These assumptions are within society and ourselves as much as they are within workplaces. By making them, we miss other ways of being and viewing these things. Inclusive workplaces have a positive impact for all employees as they put the focus on the needs and different approaches of everyone.
Simone ends by talking about the practical ways that workplaces can redesign themselves to be truly (and not just legally) inclusive places that accommodate multiple ways of working and crucially recruit a wider range of workers with different strengths and needs.
Simone’s website: https://www.simonekolysh.com/
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 49: NEUROSIS, RACISM AND ENVY
In today’s episode, Guilaine reflects on the relationship between racism, neurosis and envy. She begins by going over an earlier article she wrote which expanded on Fanon’s theories around these areas and considers neurosis in classic anaylytic theory defining it as phenomena/processes that occur when we can’t confront something in the world, or in ourselves, or in others, because it provokes too much anxiety. So that anxiety expresses itself in some other ways, usually unconsciously. She then expands this to think about racialised or White envy. She considers the distinction between jealosy (the wish to possess) and envy (the wish to annihilate)
She then talks about how she has come to these conclusions through lived experience and group analysis and psychotherapy. With a side note that often in clinical settings the gaze is turned inwards so the question becomes “What do you do to trigger envy?” rather than understanding that the white subject is born or socialised into their envy. Instead the question could be: “How do you make yourself more resilient?” or “How do you look after yourself?” And the answer to that is often to connect to your power which means connecting to the very things you are being envied for, not minimising it.
She then focuses in on what racialised or white envy looks like in the workplace, sharing experiences and anacdotes and breaking it down into:
- Dismissing/sabortaging Black authority
- Not congratulating/giving praise for achievements
- Envy creating canibalistic/bizarre behaviours
She then expands to think of envy from the wider perspective of it being a cornerstone of white supremacy, partly because racism is about fantasy and disavowed feelings.
She finishes by reflecting on ways that people of colour can navigate envy in the workplace which include:
- Acceptance
- Naming it
- Finding spaces where people are going to listen and think the envy through with you
- Reclaiming for yourself what you are envied for
And ends with encouraging all workplaces to think and talk about envy.
As Guilaine mentions there is a lot about envy in her upcoming book White Minds that you can pre-order here: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/white-minds
The open access article she begins by talking about can be read on the race reflections website here: https://racereflections.co.uk/neuroses-of-whiteness-white-envy-and-racial-violence/
And Guilaine has covered envy on the podcast before here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/8728416-envy
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 48: WHITENESS AS NARCISSISM
In today’s episode, Race Reflections’ Membership Engagement Coordinator Janedra Sykes talks about Whiteness and White Supremacy Culture as narcissism in (and outside) the workplace.
She starts by reflecting on her personal experience in relation to this topic, how she came to consider racism through a public health lens and how her work on this takes Black women as her primary audience and aims to give them toolkits to use to navigate this terrain. She outlines Christina Sharpe’s concept of anti-blackness as the climate in which we all live. Then she looks at the ways in which using narcissism as a lens for dealing with whiteness in the workplace has been helpful for her within this work.
She then explores some case studies, looking at how Black organisations and individuals are treated by White organisations.
Then she runs through some people and places to find tools from Doctor Ramani she takes documenting your work, understanding a narcissist won’t give you anything back, forming healthy relationships inside and outside of your organisation (if you can) and recognising patterns of narcissism. From Dr Nathalie Martinek, she takes ways to help hack narcissism in the workplace and the ways in which these dynamics are racialised. And then she expands on all this with her own thoughts and experiences.
She ends by outlining how White Supremacy as narcissism is not a new concept with it having been already touched on by Dr Karl Bell in the 1970’s and even by W.E.B. Du Bois, and she ends with summing up how exploring racism in the workplace through the lens of narcissism can help by de-personalising it, distancing it as well as that the act of naming something both takes some of it’s power away and gives you some power back.
Christina Sharpe: The Weather https://thenewinquiry.com/the-weather/
Doctor Ramani’s YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/DoctorRamani
Nathalie Martinek: Hacking Narcissism https://nathaliemartinekphd.substack.com/
Janedra Sykes: http://arboretagroup.com/staff/janedra-sykes/
Narcissistic Racism: Revisiting Carl Bell by J. Luke Wood: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-psychology-of-racial-equity/202305/narcissistic-racism-revisiting-carl-bell
Race Reflections AT WORK was recently named as one of the Feedspot Top 15 Inequality Podcasts on the web! https://blog.feedspot.com/inequality_podcasts/
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 47: WHITE MINDS
In today’s episode, Guilaine reflects on the new book she is writing: White Minds
Pre-order: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/white-minds
She considers the process of writing her second book, gives an overview of the book’s focus and thinks about what she has learned about being a writer and author.
She talks about how her writing style is difficult to define because it mixes theories and ideas with personal anecdotes and auto-ethnography. And how, whilst she has tried to keep both books accessible because that’s an important part of the job of education and the project of anti-racism, White Minds is a little bit more challenging as a text.
She considers her new book in relation to her first book and discusses its content which may be seen as controversial because it focuses on the pathology of whiteness from the perspective of the white subject rather than the racialised other. It looks at how White Supremacy harms all of us and shifts the analytic gaze to make whiteness the subject. How white people function in society, how that reproduces white supremacy and then how white supremacy reproduces white minds. This focus is an act of transgression, defiance and resistance by interrogating the people at the perpetrating end of racialised oppression and domination. Looking at the psychosocial pathology of whiteness on the white subject.
And she ends by sharing some thoughts on what she has learnt as a writer.
Living While Black: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442992/living-while-black-by-kinouani-guilaine/9781529109436
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 46: TRANS AND NON-BINARY AT WORK
In today’s episode, Race Reflections’ Associate Disruptor Simone reflects on the issues and experiences around being trans and/or non-binary within the workplace.
They begin by defining the terms/identities/concepts of transgender, non-binary, cisgender and intersectionality. Then they look at how even before trans and non-binary people reach the workplace they have often experienced discrimination at home, school and further education, and how we all exist within systems that force conformity around gender and sexual norms.
Then they consider “illegitimate” work, highlighting how sex work is perceived and how it is often one of the few forms of work available to marginalised people. They also talk about “walking while trans” a phrase that describes trans women being assumed to be sex workers and then harassed and discriminated against because of the stigma around sex work.
Then they look at “legitimate” work and workplaces, exploring issues around bathroom accessibility, misgendering, inappropriate questions about bodies and transition, and not being hired because of identities. They consider some things employers can do to make workplaces more trans and non-binary inclusive, including allowing transgender and non-binary people to self identify, offering intersectional allyship, creating ally programs, measuring managerial performance, designating a confidential ombudsman and pronoun guidelines. They discuss creating zero tolerance policies around LGBTQ+ discrimination with clear and safe ways to report it and providing meaningful diversity and inclusion training.
They end by reflecting on how trans and non-binary people exist with accumulated discrimination experiences that combine home, education and work experiences and how this significantly contributes to factors that mean that trans and non-binary people quit work in addition to other ways that they are excluded from workplaces.
Stonewall: Getting started with trans inclusion in your workplace: https://www.stonewall.org.uk/workplace-trans-inclusion-hub/getting-started-trans-inclusion-your-workplace
Stonewall: Workplace trans inclusion hub: https://www.stonewall.org.uk/workplace-trans-inclusion-hub
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 45: THE TALK
In today’s episode, Race Reflections’ Admin, Comms and Engagement Leading Boss Dionne inspired by a panel at Priya Joi’s book launch, talks about The Talk.
She reflects on the differences between brown and Black people’s relationship with talking to their children about racism and how that influences and impacts how they enter into and experience the workplace. She begins with sharing her personal experiences, considers how an American-centric approach to these issues can overlook the nuances of how young people/children are exposed to racism in infancy and how that shapes who they become in the workplace.
She then thinks about the people and ideas that influence how she is currently thinking about The Talk in relationship to the workplace, particularly the work of copywriter and podcaster Eman Ismail.
She ends by thinking around ideas of success and ways that this idea can be decoupled from income to become something both more personal and expansive.
Priya Joy: Motherland – What I’ve Learnt About Parenthood, Race and Identity: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451133/motherland-by-joi-priya/9780241574317
Eman Ismail: Mistakes That Made Me: https://emancopyco.com/podcast/
Dionne Anderson: http://dionneandersoncreative.com/
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 44: THE INTERSECTION OF TRAUMA
In today’s episode, Guilaine reflects on a question that was posed to her recently:
“When it comes to racial trauma, don’t we bring some baggage that may make us more vulnerable than others, and if so should we address that baggage?”
Building on the work she has done around the intersection of trauma in her book Living While Black and other works by her and others in terms of empirical studies and wider theory, and then applying that to the workplace.
Living While Black: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442992/living-while-black-by-kinouani-guilaine/9781529109436
She considers how racial trauma, social trauma or oppression-related trauma taking place in the workplace intersects with early life experiences and trauma, or as it’s often framed: adverse childhood experiences.
After thinking around the complex factors that surround and underpin these issues she thinks about the ways that we can increase our self-awareness and insight, and understand that even if we have had difficult experiences, we can build our capacity to remain intact in the face of racism. But that there will always be an impact regardless of the work we do personally.
She councils employers and colleagues not to speculate about people’s personal histories and instead to start from a point of compassion and to assume that there’s nearly always a reason for the way people respond.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 43: ANTI-RACIST AND ANTI-OPPRESSIVE WORK IN GROUPS AND IN COMMUNITY
In today’s episode, Race Reflections’ Assistant Disruptor Lucia offers some reflections on how group work and community work can help or support people in developing their anti-racist approach to work. She looks at the advantages, drawbacks and limitations of working in groups. She begins with a definition and with her personal experience of being a client and a therapist and finding the most effective healing happening within group therapy. She sees group work as a space that allows people to be human and vulnerable whilst connecting to others’ humanity. But also cautions that building community/groups where everyone feels engaged and as safe as possible is a challenging endeavor involving emotional labour and care, but that when it’s done effectively it can help combat isolation, helplessness and hopelessness that individuals might feel within the systems that surround them.
Considering obstacles and drawbacks to this approach, she brings up expected responsibility for education and emotional labour being projected onto the more marginalised members of the group, dynamics of entitlement, space taking and access to others’ feelings and experiences within the more privileged members of the group, and how group dynamics and enactments as microcosms of society can lead to people being retraumatised. She concludes by offering some suggested solutions for facilitators of this work to help mitigate these problems that include; naming the problems, challenging these dynamics, holding boundaries, and breaking the group down into affinity groups to process some of the work.
Lucia’s website: https://www.luciasarmientoverano.com/
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AT WORK EPISODE 42: PAIN
In today’s episode, Guilaine reflects on Black and brown people’s relationship with pain, particularly Black women’s relationship with pain and distress. And from this also the relationship between pain and associated issues such as accessing health services and self compassion.
She begins with a personal disclosure that one of her younger sisters recently nearly died and considers how pain played into this. She then uses this as a case study and jumping off point to move away from an individualised analysis to a consideration of systems, structures and power.
She thinks about internalised toxic discourses, narratives and expectations that exist around the idea of the strong Black woman, thinking about ideas like strength, self-reliance and relying on others. And wonders whether Black people (and to a lesser extent brown people) allow themselves to seek help, support, rest, or attend to their suffering when required. How does this impact late diagnosis of conditions such as cancer, and feelings of self compassion? And outside of the self how does this systemic lack of acknowledgement and recognition of Black women’s pain influence these dynamics.
She then links all this to the workplace considering two elements:
1. How pain/distress of a white person in conflict with a black or brown person is seen, centered, and acknowledged and how this is linked to the colonial construction that black people are immune to pain. How Black distress or vulnerability is seen as inauthentic, not real or even contrived, and how that connects to Whiteness and white fragility.
2. How Black people internalise these elements which may also make Black people (particularly Black women) present in a way that hinders people reading them as being in pain/distress.
She concludes with some questions for employers and employees to consider when approaching conflict and distress in the workplace.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 41: REFLECTING ON 2022
In today’s episode Guilaine, reflects and thinks back on the things that have stood out for her during 2022. What is she left with, what have been the biggest stories, the biggest moments and the biggest lessons?
She considers how the world cup final has brought up a lot for her and others around homelessness, homeness, displacement and migration. She engages with this from an autobiographical, auto-ethnographical position and discussed her lived experience here. What does it mean to be black and French in relation to this theatre of sport?
Here TEDX talk on epistemic homelessness is of relevance to this topic: https://youtu.be/MoKBLPbkB5I
She also links these themes to the ‘controversies” around the 2022 French film Tirailleurs (English name: Father & Soldier) and the interventions and comments its star Omar Sy has made around racism. Then she relates these ideas to the workplace. Related to this she briefly thinks around the noise surrounding Meghan and Harry and the British Royal Family and how it has held up a mirror for the ways that Black women are treated within British culture, particularly in workplaces and institutions.
This episode on Location of Disturbance and Scapegoating covered issues around Meghan Markle and the racism she faces: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/8127268
She then thinks about how the “return to normal” in relation to the “end” of the pandemic has thrown a spotlight on important work issues around exclusion and disability. And she ends by thinking about how things have gone for Race Reflections in 2022.
Happy New Year from the Race Reflections Team!
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 40: CLASS AND CLASSISM FROM A PSYCHOSOCIAL PERSPECTIVE
In today’s episode, Race Reflections’ Assistant Disruptor Lucia returns to reflect on class and classism. She shares her thoughts around these concepts and what they may represent within our current systems of oppression. She covers reasons why it’s difficult to clearly define class or different class groups and then gives a definition of classism as the belief that a person’s social or economic station in society determines their value in that society which creates prejudice or discrimination based on social class. Then she considers the relational aspects of classism and how class can come to be an embodied experience and thinks about how that influences people’s experiences within the job market, and how middle-class or upper-class identity or belonging can be seen as a process of othering and exclusion. She finishes her thinking looking at classism in conjunction with whiteness and how that plays out in relation to white adjacency.
Lucia’s website: https://www.luciasarmientoverano.com/
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 39: CAN BLACK EMPLOYEES EVER BE AUTHENTIC IN THE WORKPLACE?
In today’s episode, Guilaine responds to a listener’s question: Can Black employees ever be authentic in the workplace? She answers the question with some other questions and reflects on the issues surrounding them.
The first is: Is authenticity a desirable aim to achieve for Black people and organisations? She comes to the conclusion that there is a strong case as a general rule for the importance of workplace authenticity in improving culture, morale, well-being, organisational turnover and even leadership.
But it isn’t simple as her second question suggests: Is it realistic, both for organisations and for black employees, that a workplace can increase it’s level of authenticity? She reflects that some changes can be achieved with sustained effort but that a blanket expectation of authenticity doesn’t take into account differences in terms of experiences, cultures and beliefs. She considers the barriers such as the British/English cultural aversion to authenticity, and how whilst leaders may be the guardians of organisational culture they are often leading from the “snowy white peak” of white middleclass masculinity which doesn’t tend to embrace authenticity.
She concludes with advice for employers on ways they can encourage authenticity and support the people that this (counter) cultural change will potentially challenge and isolate.
Some other Race Reflections AT WORK podcasts that touch on these issues:
Authenticity: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/10665249
The only person of colour in the workplace: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/10172908
Imposter Syndrome: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/11323973
Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.
To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 38: REACHING A MILESTONE
In today’s episode, Guilaine reflects on reaching a milestone within the PHD she is currently undertaking. She gives the lowdown on what she’s been working on, discusses some of the challenges she has encountered and what she has learnt so far, and she discusses where she stands in relation to the research and some of the implications for her and for Race Reflections.
Her study looks at whiteness, at time and space, at memory, with focus on developing a group analytical frame for addressing whiteness and racialised violence in Psychotherapy, and an exploration of the overlap between group analysis and African philosophies challenging “Western” linear temporalities. It looks at how whiteness as a factor or force for trauma becomes reproduced, reenacted and reiterated within the clinical encounter, and the implications this offers on how whiteness comes to be within institutions, organisations and teams relationally, procedurally and structurally.
A podcast about the start of her PHD process: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/episodes/9373225
PHD study page: https://racereflections.co.uk/whiteness-in-psychotherapy/
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 37: CHALLENGES AND ACCOUNTABILITY DURING ANTI-OPPRESSIVE CHANGE PROCESSES
In today’s episode, Race Reflections’ Assistant Disruptor Lucia offers some thoughts and potential approaches on how to navigate organisational or community change processes that come out of anti-oppressive or anti-racist work. These reflections are inspired by regular responses and questions posed by participants during the delivery of Race Reflections training. She considers practical ways to apply theory to practice, thinks about anti-oppressive work as counter-cultural and suggests expecting both internal and external challenges during this work such as: awareness of emotional processes and power dynamics, boundaries, building tolerance, building community, emotional regulation, and separating mistakes and behaviors from intention. She looks at accountability culture as a more useful model than existing blame and punishment cultures and contextualises all of this within the many obstacles created by White Supremacy and Whiteness, specifically the unhelpful social structures of individualism, perfectionism and moral purity.
Lucia’s website: https://www.luciasarmientoverano.com/
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 36: IMPOSTER SYNDROME
In today’s episode, Race Reflections’ Academic Lead/Scholar Scout Mel Green takes us through her personal relationship with imposter syndrome and it’s effects on black women. She thinks about concepts like over-productivity, burnout, breakdown, authenticity, assimilation and what Bell Hooks calls the “mind/body split”. She uses her experience as a case study and reflects on the tactics and realisations she has found to help her deal with these experiences.
She links her experience to this study: Experiences With Imposter Syndrome and Authenticity at Research-Intensive Schools of Social Work: https://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/advancesinsocialwork/article/view/24124
Mel Green’s website: https://www.melalygreen.com/
Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 35: PODCASTING AND POWER PART 2
In today’s episode, we return to exploring the relationship between podcasting and power, this time looking at how “Prestige” podcasting has replicated and interacted with existing power systems. We look at some of the worst cases of podcasts being made with a colonialist mindset, and then look at The Trojan Horse Affair and how that avoided the traps of previous prestige podcast journalism and how it was mostly dismissed by the wider media landscape.
This episode is hosted by Race Reflection’s Audio Wizard/Witch, Dave Pickering: http://davepickeringstoryteller.co.uk/
LINKS:
The Complicated Ethics Of ‘Serial,’ The Most Popular Podcast Of All Time: https://archive.thinkprogress.org/the-complicated-ethics-of-serial-the-most-popular-podcast-of-all-time-6f84043de9a9
White Reporter Privilege: https://www.theawl.com/2014/11/white-reporter-privilege/
The Science of Racism: Radiolab’s Treatment of Hmong Experience: https://hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2012/10/22/science-racism-radiolabs-treatment-hmong-experience
How ‘S-Town’ Fails Black Listeners https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/how-s-town-fails-black-listeners-112210/
S-Town is a stunning podcast. It probably shouldn’t have been made. https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/3/30/15084224/s-town-review-controversial-podcast-privacy
The Trojan Horse Affair: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/podcasts/trojan-horse-affair.html
Trojan Horse: A failure of British journalism and that includes the Observer https://mediadiversified.org/2022/02/20/trojan-horse-a-failure-of-british-journalism-and-that-includes-the-observer/
Trojan Horse On Trial https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/02/trojan-horse-podcast-islamophobia-birmingham-michael-gove-sonia-sodha
Trojan Horse affair: Why new podcast evokes both enthusiasm and rage https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/uk-islam-trojan-horse-affair-new-podcast-enthusiasm-rage-why
The Trojan Horse Affair vs. the British Press https://www.vulture.com/2022/03/trojan-horse-affair-podcast-british-response-interview.html
The Real Trojan Horse Affair https://mediadiversified.org/2022/03/08/the-real-trojan-affair/
Human Resources: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/human-resources/id1565249472
Have You Heard George’s Podcast? https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/have-you-heard-georges-podcast/id1436036246
Reclaimed and Rewritten: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reclaimed-rewritten/id1598946087
Coiled: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/coiled/id1585408648
Busy Being Black: https://www.busybeingblack.com/
Say Your Mind: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/say-your-mind/id1324118843
Intersectionality Matters! https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/intersectionality-matters/id1441348908
Masala Podcast: https://www.soulsutras.co.uk/about-masala-podcast/
Surviving Society: https://survivingsocietypodcast.com/
Down to a sunless sea: memories of my dad: https://podfollow.com/sunlesspod/view
To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 34: SOCIAL MEDIA
In today’s episode, Guilaine is back to talk about social media, particularly twitter, and the ways this platform has helped both Guilaine personally and Race Reflections as an organisation. She goes over how she came to use social media as a professional platform, considers the advantages, opportunities and gifts that using this platform have created for her and for RR, and reflects on where she stands in terms of some of the controversies and criticisms that exist around twitter and social media in general in relation to mental health professionals and to scholarship in general.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 33: EMPATHY IN THE WORKPLACE
In today’s episode, Race Reflections’ Lead Associate Disruptor Dr Furaha Asani talks about empathy, and lack of empathy, in the workplace. She thinks about definitions of empathy and sympathy and how empathy can function as an action. As a case study, she reflects on a personal experience of not receiving empathy and support at work within a racialised context. She considers how gaslighting and self-gaslighting can operate within these kinds of dynamics. And when thinking about solutions, she notes that self-advocacy has it’s limits, suggests that employers work out standard operating protocols to minimise harm, and lists some ways that everyone can work towards actively creating workplaces that foster empathy.
Some links to things mentioned in the conversation:
The Importance of Empathy in the Workplace, Center For Creative Leadership: https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/empathy-in-the-workplace-a-tool-for-effective-leadership/
Empathy for others’ suffering and its mediators in mental health professionals, Santamaría-García, et al https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06775-y
Misogynoir in the Workplace: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/10443664
The Invisible Gaze of White Women: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/9739129
Envy: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/8728416
Envy, Power and the Fear of the Self: https://racereflections.co.uk/envy-power-and-the-fear-of-the-self/
When Black Women Go From Office Pet to Office Threat, Erika Stallings https://zora.medium.com/when-black-women-go-from-office-pet-to-office-threat-83bde710332e
What Is Gaslighting? Meaning, Examples And Support, Marissa Conrad https://www.forbes.com/health/mind/what-is-gaslighting/
5 Signs You’re Gaslighting Yourself, Nicole Bedford https://aninjusticemag.com/5-signs-youre-gaslighting-yourself-2bca12b62e9b
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 32: WHITENESS IN PSYCHOTHERAPY
In today’s episode, therapist and Race Reflections’ Assistant Disruptor Lucia talks about whiteness in psychotherapy. This episode is for everyone but particularly for people either working within the therapeutic traditions, or people who are current or future service users. Drawing on the existing Race Reflections training resources she looks at the ways that whiteness and violence have framed therapy during it’s history and presently. Issues with therapists not being sufficiently trained around working with differences, and considers tips and approaches that can be taken by potential clients when looking for a therapist that will be able to deal with systemic experiences of racism or marginalization. She covers therapy as a history of pathologizing difference, it’s bias towards catering to the majority group, how legacies of slavery and other forms of violence and exploitation are still present within therapy now, and existing frameworks that can be used and adapted to navigate all of this.
Some links to things mentioned in the conversation:
Whiteness In Psychotherapy: https://academy.racereflections.co.uk/courses/whiteness-in-psychotherapy
Janet Helms: https://www.bc.edu/bc-web/schools/lynch-school/faculty-research/faculty-directory/janet-helms.html
Lucia’s website: https://www.luciasarmientoverano.com/
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 31:RACIAL BIAS AND BLACKNESS IN TEACHING AND HIGHER EDUCATION
In today’s episode, Race Reflections podcast producer Dave talks to the newest member Mel Green about her experiences and scholarship around racial bias in teaching and higher education. She covers her time working in pupil referral units, primary schools, online teaching and higher education and the systemic and personal challenges that has sometimes been involved. She shares tips and strategies for navigating, mitigating and combating these dynamics.
Some links to things mentioned in the conversation:
Mel Green’s website: https://www.melalygreen.com/
Open University: https://www.open.ac.uk/
Leading Routes: https://leadingroutes.org/
Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks: https://www.routledge.com/Teaching-to-Transgress-Education-as-the-Practice-of-Freedom/hooks/p/book/9780415908085
Standpoint Theory/Sandra Harding: https://www.routledge.com/The-Feminist-Standpoint-Theory-Reader-Intellectual-and-Political-Controversies/Harding/p/book/9780415945011
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 30:AUTHENTICITY
In today’s episode, in response to a question from a listener, Guilaine reflects on authenticity in the workplace. She considers the issue in relation to a recent study that showed that black employees were more resistant to returning to the workplace post-lockdown. She thinks about how the burden for “fitting in” is often placed on those who carry the difference, and how institutional racism and assimilative pressure impacts on the ability of racialised people to feel authentic and “real” at work, and how these factors contribute to people not being safe or supported to be a part of a team.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 29: REFLECTING ON TWO YEARS OF RUNNING A SOCIAL ENTERPRISE
In today’s episode, Guilaine reflects on and celebrates the first two years of running Race Reflections as a social enterprise. She maps out the history of how Race Reflections grew from a blog to an organisation and business, and considers the personal and structural challenges, thinks about what she has learned and what she has found difficult about the process.
Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.
To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 28: FIRST RACE REFLECTIONS RELAUNCH OF 2022
In today’s episode, Guilaine is back (with another cameo from her kitten Jazzie) to talk about the first Race Reflections relaunch of 2022. She talks about the challenges, achievements and changes that Race Reflections has had as part of its journey during its first 18 months as a social enterprise, and introduces the return of Race Reflections Academy, our new Radical Scholarship Fund, our relaunched membership options, our refreshed website, and our upcoming academic outreach work.
Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.
To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 27: MISOGYNOIR IN THE WORKPLACE
In today’s episode, we explore misogynoir in the workplace and the power and positionality of the Black woman in the corporate world. Misogynoir, a term coined by Moya Bailey in 2010, identifies the intersection of Black women and “the persistence of sexist and racist biases in both media and politics, and the unique blend of both that black women experience.” Engagement and Comms lead, Dionne discusses her understanding of the issues in the corporate world, whilst reflecting on some common coping strategies, her own experiences, and the likelihood of more Black women using digital platforms as a way to ensure their voices are heard if they are not in the activist or influencer sphere.
This episode is hosted by Race Reflection’s Admin, Comms and Engagement Leading Lady, Dionne Anderson: https://linktr.ee/dionneandersoncreative
Links:
Asuman, M. K. A. (2021). Book Review: Misogynoir Transformed, Black Women’s Digital Resistance by Moya Bailey. Journal of Communication Inquiry.
Weathering Is One More Thing That’s Killing Black People – SELF
What HR managers need to know about misogynoir – People Management
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 26: PODCASTING AND POWER
In today’s episode, we explore the relationship between podcasting and power, both the ways that podcasting has replicated and interacted with existing power systems, and ways that it offers a radical space for marginalised voices to create freely without gatekeepers. We think about how The Podcast Industry has developed into just another industry/workplace incorporating the issues inherent in those industries and workplaces. We look at the past and present history of podcasting and ask you to consider adding your voice to its future.
This episode is hosted by Race Reflection’s Audio Wizard/Witch, Dave Pickering: http://davepickeringstoryteller.co.uk/
LINKS:
India.Arie on Joe Rogan/Spotify: https://www.nme.com/news/music/india-arie-says-she-left-spotify-because-of-its-treatment-of-artists-not-joe-rogan-3162696
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/india-arie-spotify-joe-rogan-interview-1299169/
Why I’ve Decided to Take My Podcast Off Spotify by Roxane Gay: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/opinion/culture/joe-rogan-spotify-roxane-gay.html
The Test Kitchen: https://www.vulture.com/article/gimlet-reply-all-controversy-spotify-test-kitchen.html
Hidden in Plain Sight by CC Paschal: http://www.thechiquitachannel.com/criticism/2021/3/7/hidden-in-plain-sight
Glass Walls by James T Green: https://www.jamestgreen.com/thoughts/115
Another Round and The Nod: https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/30/21308074/the-nod-spotify-rss-feed-another-round-buzzfeed-podcast-ownership
https://hotpodnews.com/the-case-of-another-rounds-archives/
Palace Shaw – Why I’m saying goodbye to PRX by Palace Shaw: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13j3H7BidesRD4zgz2aoZuwDcdocV7NpzNs3YqA5Rcg8/mobilebasic?urp=gmail_link
“In response to Kerri Hoffman’s Letter”: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Uu1nOsqLsnZDXNJe04lJt3TQpt6-tvFhZnF4aQ_dwHc/edit
Podcasters Are Reclaiming Storytelling in Africa: https://www.vice.com/en/article/akdbbj/podcasters-are-reclaiming-storytelling-in-africa-and-becoming-celebrities-v28n1
Rise and Shine: https://www.riseandshineaudio.com
Multitrack Fellowship: https://www.multitrack.uk/
Equality in Audio Pact: https://www.equalityinaudiopact.co.uk/
How the Equality in Audio Pact came together by Renay Richardson: https://hotpodnews.com/how-the-equality-in-audio-pact-came-together-by-renay-richardson/
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 25: BLACK, BRITISH, IN BUSINESS AND PROUD
Release date: Monday 21st March
In today’s episode, we are joined by Black Business Network founder Shari Leigh to talk about the Black British In Business and Proud report. She talks about the issues, actions and solutions suggested by the survey of more than 800 Black people in Britain.
Black Business Network: https://www.blackbusinessnetwork.online/
BBIBP Report: https://www.blackbusinessnetwork.online/bbibpreport
Black Investor 360 Conference and Exhibition: https://www.blackinvestor360.com/
This episode is hosted by Race Reflection’s Admin, Comms and Engagement Leading Lady, Dionne Anderson: https://linktr.ee/livingmotherhoodcreatively
Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.
To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 24: THE ONLY PERSON OF COLOUR IN THE WORKPLACE
In today’s episode, Guilaine responds to a listener’s query about strategies for navigating situations where you are the only person of colour or marginalised person within the space. She reflects on her own experiences of this dynamic and considers issues such as representation, isolation, assimilation, scapegoating, hyper-visibility, invisibility, tokenisation and internalised racism. And she suggests some approaches for individuals and organisations to mitigate these harms including finding, creating and supporting networks, communities and mentorship.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 23: THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT FEELINGS
In today’s episode, Guilaine reflects on the particular dynamic where a person with power reacts to accusations of structural harm by saying that they feel unsafe. She considers how affection and feelings are conditioned and shaped by social context, histories and structures, and how feelings can play a role in protecting and enforcing social (dis)order and the status quo. She encourages us to consider how words and discourses can harm people and to think critically about our feelings.
I often have to remind people I train that unsafeness and uncomfortableness are not one and the same. In the same way harm and offence and not one and the same. Folks who have lived protected lives have a tendency to ‘mistake’ discomfort for lack of safety FOR THEMSELVES…
— Guilaine Kinouani (@KGuilaine) February 17, 2022
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 22: THE ART OF RELAXATION
In today’s episode, Guilaine reflects on the importance of relaxation for racialised and marginalised people, particularly when experiencing discrimination or oppression within the workplace. She considers the physical effects of oppression and stress and offers some approaches that may help to transform this embodied data; visualisation, mindfulness, breathing. She reflects on ways to use physiology, as a tool of resistance and a tool to mitigate the impact of white supremacy and other systems of oppression.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 21: ASSIMILATION IN THE WORKPLACE
In today’s episode, Guilaine reflects on how people, especially Black and brown people, face pressure to assimilate within the workplace. She considers what assimilation or “the politics of assimilation” means, how this works in practice, what implications this has for marginalised employees, and strategies for resisting assimilation.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 20: THE INVISIBLE GAZE OF WHITE WOMEN
In our last episode of 2021, Guilaine reflects on her recent article The Invisible Gaze of White Women (now only available to Race Reflections members) and considers how the insights she explored in this article can be applied to the workplace. She combines theories around misogynoir, rape culture, and the white gaze, to theorize systemic sexual harassment created in part by the white female gaze.
Link to the article for members.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 19: WHITENESS IN THE WORKPLACE
In today’s episode, Lucia – the Assistant Disruptor at Race Reflections – reflects on how Whiteness as a set of cultural practices affects our work environments by setting norms and expectations for everyone. Starting with a definition of Whiteness and its characteristics, we then examine how it enacts exclusionary practices in organisations.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 18: WRITING AND POWER
In today’s episode, we reflect on writing in relation to the workplace and in relation to power. Who gets to document, author, and narrate their lived experience? What can writing give you in relation to self care, transgression and home-ness?
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 17: SIDE HUSTLING AS A NAVIGATIONAL STRATEGY FOR BLACK AND BROWN EMPLOYEES: PART 2
In today’s episode, Dionne – the Admin, Comms and Engagement Lead at Race Reflections – continues the conversation on side hustles and entrepreneurship, following Guilaine’s introduction on Episode 12. Dionne reflects on her own personal and professional journey in business and introduces five suggestions for those side hustling, or taking the leap towards building their business as a full-time venture.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 16: THE START OF A NEW CHAPTER
In today’s episode, Guilaine reflects on her personal and professional news that she is starting a PHD. She considers why she has chosen to pursue this path given her difficult journey within psychology, and thinks about this process as an act of resistance and about the roles this can play in disrupting whiteness and structures of power. She also discusses the focus and process of her studies and the wider experiences of people of colour and other marginalised people within academia.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 15: WRITING WHILE BLACK with Jendella Benson and Annabelle Steele
In today’s episode, we are joined by head of editorial at Black Ballad (and author of Hope & Glory) Jendella Benson, and teacher (and author of Being Amani) Annabelle Steele to talk about how they navigate the workplace and the publishing space as Black women. The conversation reflects on Black representation, Black motherhood, authorship, self care and Black literature.
Jendella Benson: http://www.jendella.co.uk/
Black Ballad: https://blackballad.co.uk/
Hope & Glory: https://www.waterstones.com/book/hope-and-glory/jendella-benson/9781398702295
Twitter and Instagram: @Jendella
Annabelle Steele: https://www.beingasteele.com/
Being Amani: https://www.hashtagpress.co.uk/product-page/being-amani
Twitter and Instagram: @beingasteele
This episode is hosted by Race Reflection’s Admin, Comms and Engagement Leading Lady, Dionne Anderson: https://linktr.ee/livingmotherhoodcreatively
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 14: THE SOCIOPOLITICAL CONTEXT OF THE WORKPLACE
In today’s episode, we look at how the workplace relates to the sociopolitical context it exists within. We critique existing individualistic thinking that presents workplaces as exceptions to sociopolitical violence, sociopolitical processes and sociopolitical events, and instead consider the workplace as a microcosm of societies.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 13: INTRODUCTION TO BEYOND BIAS
In today’s episode, in response to a listener’s request, we give an introduction to one of our most requested interventions – our training course, Beyond Bias. We cover a little bit about it’s content and some of its learning objectives, and give some context for why Guilaine designed the course, and the journey that the training takes you on.
Beyond Bias for organisations: https://racereflections.co.uk/events/beyond-bias-training-for-organisations/
The next Beyond Bias training course will take place on September 24th 2021, 10h00-16h00: https://racereflections.co.uk/register/beyond-bias-training/
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 12: SIDE HUSTLING AS A NAVIGATIONAL STRATEGY FOR BLACK AND BROWN EMPLOYEES
In this podcast, we discuss side hustling when black or brown or otherwise marginalised and therefore likely to encounter inequality, injustice and oppression at work. We think about why side hustling matters and why it can act as a buffer to adverse work experiences.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 11: THE BLACK ADVOCATE
In today’s episode, we think about the dynamics at play in someone finding themselves in the role of being “The Black Advocate” (or any other position of advocating for marginalised groups) in the workplace.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 10: CONDITIONAL HUMANITY, GRATITUDE AND BLACK OBJECTHOOD
In this episode, we think about the treatment of the Black players in the England team after the Euro 2020 final. We think about the parallels between all of this and the struggles people navigate in more conventional workplaces. We consider the conditional humanity afforded to Black people and people of colour, the colonial notion of gratitude and how Black people are objectified.
The twitter thread this episode was based around:
Morning! Been thinking abt the racist abuse of the black footballers who missed their penalty. Getting more & more annoyed over how the issue is being reported. I am here to tell you this…please stop lying to yourself if you believe this is a football specific phenomenon.
— Guilaine Kinouani (@KGuilaine) July 13, 2021
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 9: TOXIC WHITE FEMININITY
In today’s episode, we take the recent Tiktok trend of “white women fake crying” as a jumping-off point to consider a slightly different take on intersectionality in relation to white womanhood. We consider the reasons why black people and people of colour find these videos disturbing or triggering, and explore “toxic femininity” which we define as when white fragility meets the constructions of white femininity.
More on the TikTok trend: https://www.nylon.com/life/white-women-crying-on-cue-tiktok-trend
Living While Black: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Racial Trauma is out.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 8: ENVY
In today’s episode, we think about how the so called “deadly sin’ of envy can play out in the workplace in relation to racial dynamics and inequality. We consider the distinction between envy and jealousy and the underlying motivations behind these feelings and what they look like within the contexts of whiteness and work.
Living While Black: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Racial Trauma is out.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 7: SURVIVING THE WORKPLACE WHILE BLACK
In today’s episode, we consider surviving the workplace while black. We reflect on the workplace conditions of previous and current generations of black people, particularly black women. We think about three strands that are navigated when working while black:
1. Inequalities and structural racism which impacts physical and mental health.
2. Experiences of discrimination, interpersonal racism and bullying which intersect with structural issues.
3. The internal and external pressures put on black people by themselves, their family and community, to work twice as hard to overcome these oppressive systems.
Living While Black: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Racial Trauma is out.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 6: LIVING WHILE BLACK
Today, we do something a little bit different because Living While Black: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Racial Trauma is due to come out very soon! So this episode is dedicated to thinking together about the book, considering the relevance of LWB to the workplace and sharing an exclusive extract from the book’s introduction. You can preorder living while black here.
To learn more about the book go here.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 5: TRANSFERENCE IN THE WORKPLACE
In today’s episode, we consider the influence of the past on the present by exploring the concept of transference, what it means and how it might manifest in the workplace. This episode is all about making present-past links to better make sense of conflicts, tensions and race-based difficulties at work.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 4: AVERSIVE RACISM
In Episode 4, we consider aversive racism. Specifically, how the fear of being called racist, the fear of confronting racism and the avoidance of difficult race-related conversations by white managers, can lead to exclusionary interpersonal dynamics and cultures of marginalisation within institutions which can have significant adverse consequences on the welfare, morale and/or workplace experience of colour.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
The twitter thread this episode was based around:
Anyway as I take a break, I have been thinking about something, I wanted to share a few reflections on a race dynamic I am starting to understand better in a short thread. The tension/discomfort/disturbance that comes abt in teams or interpersonally around racial ‘differences’.
— Guilaine Kinouani (@KGuilaine) April 13, 2021
AT WORK EPISODE 3: BLACK AUTHORITY IN THE WORKPLACE
There are many challenges black leaders must contend with, that is for certain… In this episode we consider why black authority in the workplace continues to attract resistance, hostility and sometimes sabotage and reflect on some of the challenges of black leadership within white institutions. To do this, we make links to historical configurations, colonial relations and the expectation of black servitude.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
AT WORK EPISODE 2: LOCATION OF DISTURBANCE AND SCAPEGOATING
In this episode we ask ourselves why institutions often go against those who allege racism. We consider some of the group processes at play using as illustration the treatment of Meghan Markle and responses from that interview. Location of disturbance and scapegoating are presented as frames to formulate victimisation and retaliation within institutions.
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
Transcript:
As you know we work on questions, challenges, dilemmas and issues that are related to racial trauma in the workplace and offer reflections and possible solutions.
Like many Black women, I found the treatment of Megan Markle distressing and triggering. Women of colour have been vocal in naming what has been going on and let’s be clear it’s not because we’re royalist or monarchy stans but because we recognise patterns of misogynoir (racialised sexism) and racism.
I am no monarchy commentator and I don’t follow the couple closely but I know that Meghan agreed to do a ‘tell all’ interview with Oprah which many speculated would name her experience of racism within the Royal family.
As soon as this was announced Buckingham Palace shared amongst other alleged wrongdoings that it would be investigating multiple allegations of bullying made against Mehgan. I think timing is material, particularly material as we know what can happen when a person of colour dares to speak of racism… Indeed it’s rarely the case that they are greeted with flowers and chocolates.
So what is going on? Or what can we learn about organisational functioning from this debacle?
This is of course a very broad question and there are various ways to tackle it but what I want to do is to give you new perspectives hopefully some new concepts that you can use to better understand what happened within institutions and within groups when a person of colour in particular, attempts to speak about their experience of racism in the workplace.
So you’ve heard the story, you perhaps even had the experience of naming racism. You name racism and all of a sudden something seems to happen, perhaps you become the enemy, perhaps you become ignored, perhaps your loyalty to the organisation is questioned. But in any event the endgame is that you are in some ways excluded, smear campaigns are not uncommon, you go from target from persecutor.
So what is it that makes workplaces and social structures claim overtly that we are all for inclusion diversity and equality but turn violent when their claim to inclusion and diversity are challenged?
The concept I want to speak about is what group analysis refers to as the location of disturbance and the second one which is somewhat related is scapegoating.
Location of disturbance
The concept of psychological disturbance in group analysis is a way to view a tension, a conflict or dysfunction in a group. The location of disturbance is a way of understanding how an individual can become a recipient of unconscious group projections, which reflect a wider group dynamic or problem, we could say a blind spot for that wider group. What is being said here, is that no disturbance can ever be confined to or attributable to a single person or entity. Rather, that a distressed or disturbed individual or the person who carries the disturbance is thought of as the site, the symptom of a problem belonging to a larger unit.
Group analytic thinking sees disturbance as group phenomena, as a self-protective mechanism for the group to preserve its ignorance or innocence vis á vis its own wishes which can then projected onto an individual scapegoat. And so here we can see the overlap between location of disturbance and scapegoating.
What is scapegoating?
Scapegoating is a group dynamic that means that it is something which is reproduced by groups where usually an individual is unfairly singled out for blame for something for which they are not responsible or at least not wholly responsible for.
Why does it happen?
There are various theories to make sense of the dynamic of scapegoating. At the core of the need to scapegoat is an inability to address some disturbance or some difficulty because it is too anxiety-provoking, too overwhelming or for whatever reason cannot be faced.
Some of the factors linked to organisational scapegoating include;
-a blame culture: where we tend to look for someone to blame/locate faults
-a highly hierarchical culture: where power is distributed vertically, where place and rank in the organisation determines your treatment
-institutions with stark inequality in relation to ‘representation’
-highly stressed contexts, this may be because of change, particularly poorly managed stressed
In every case of scapegoating, there is displacement and misdirection of the problem towards a safer and usually more vulnerable rather. Hence why there is a strong correlation between organisation toxicity, scapegoating and lack of inclusivity.
So what can be done?
I am amongst those who believe that scapegoating is inevitable but you’ll be glad to know there are things we can do to stop if in its course and mitigate its impact. Here are a few things we can all do:
1. Learn about scapegoating, what it is, what it looks like except that it is almost an inevitable group dynamic
2. When you see it, when you recognise it, name it for what it is
3. Encourage collective ownership of problems
4. Redirect hostility, anger and anguish or causes of stress of grievances of anxiety to where they belong. Most of the time this will be to do with structural issues rather than individual factors. Often power is involved.
That is all on organisational scapegoating for now I hope you have found this short episode helpful, again feel free to get in touch with your questions.
This has been Guilaine from Race Reflections, please take care.
AT WORK EPISODE 1: RACIAL TRAUMA AT WORK
What is racial trauma? How does it manifest in the workplace? In this episode, we consider the distress that racism can cause in the workplace and explore the experience of Harvinder, a research assistant whose well-being becomes so adversely affected by his experience of discrimination and victimisation, he is forced to resign. We ask ourselves why it matters that those in position of power in organisations understand racial trauma and what organisations can do mitigate the adverse impact of racism at work.
Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.
To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk
Transcript:
Hello, this is Guilaine from Race Reflections,
I’m really excited to welcome you into the first episode of our new podcast at work, the podcast is all about tackling issues of inequality injustice and oppression at work
It is going to be a fortnightly placed to reflect on the issues you face and so going forward we’ll use an open format which means that moving we will welcome your questions your challenges and dilemmas related to inequality, injustice and oppression.
If you would like to put to us issues to consider, then get in touch and we’ll feature them in the podcast.
How at work develops over time is up to you and to your feedback but will remain open to take the direction you find the most helpful.
Before we get started a little bit about us and a little bit about me. Race Reflections is a fast-growing social enterprise dedicated to tackling inequality, injustice and oppression in society and we do this through various activities including organisational consultancy, Training, community engagement content creation.
As for me, I am a psychologist by background with grounding in sociology in cultural studies, psychoanalysis and group analysis so those are the perspectives I will bring when considering organisational functioning at work.
Today is our first ever episode so it is a little bit scary but it is also very exciting at the same time also as it is celebratory in more than one way.
As some of you may know I have just finished writing living while black my first book and so it is a very special time; it’s been quite a tough journey to get to this point.
Living While Black address issues the psychological impact of racism and racial trauma in this deity lived experience primarily black people, it provides tools and strategies to facilitate self-care within white supremacy.
And so it seems to be fitting today to think about racial trauma in the workplace, an issue not often reflected upon when it comes to considering the experience of people of colour in the workplace and also when it comes to thinking about organisational functioning and dynamics. So let us take the rest of the podcast to think a little bit about what racial trauma might be.
Before we think about what racial trauma might be, lets think about trauma first. Now there are no universally agreed definition of trauma, but generally when clinician are talking about trauma they are talking about both events and responses to events that are experienced as frightening and as overwhelming,
And which negatively affect our sense of safety and sense of security in the world. So I guess we could say and which have long lasting effect on how we relate to ourselves have you relate to others and how we relate to the world
To consider racial trauma, it’s important to remember there no universally agreed definition either. But we could extend that definition trauma to say that racial trauma. Both racism related distressing events or our our responses to these events that are experienced as frightening and as overwhelming, and which negatively affect our sense of safety and our sense of security in the world.
There are more specific definitions that exist so for example Dr Robert Carter who is African-American psychologist has created a framework which makes visible the harm of racism and that framework is called race-based traumatic stress injury according to this framework racial trauma is essentially the pain that a person may feel after encounters with racism, according to carter how we experience these encounters is going to be dependent on us as individual on the context, on the history. So whether an event is going to be experienced as traumatic or as stressful is a matter of intersection between individual factors and contextual factors and history.
I wonder whether it’s going to be helpful to think about this definition to in relation to someone so I’m going to tell you about someone that I have worked with, of course I have altered some biographical information in the interest of maintaining confidentiality and anonymity. The person I want to tell you about, I called Harvinder.
Harvinder is a British Asian male in his mid 20s and who worked as a research assistant for about two years. He was fiercely ambitious having beloved most of his life that his work ethics and competence would be no bar progressing in his career and being treated fairly.
Harvinder found himself within a context of organisational restructuring and he accepted a transfer to an all white team within which he quickly started to notice that he was treated differently. He was denied time off when it is suited him, he was unlike others micromanaged, he was given more administrative assignment. Because of his treatment Harvinder made a number of race discrimination complaints none of which were upheld but as a result his supervisor retaliated.
He was labelled as a troublemaker, deprived of support and excluded from social events, because he needed the job. Harvinder endured the mistreatment for several months and he started to have nightmares about work, he experienced panic attacks on his way to work and they became so severe that he could no longer face returning to work. Harvinder was eventually signed off with depression for about 18 weeks this period was extended and then eventually he resigned.
Now what in Harvinder’s story can help us better understand what racial trauma is and what it might look like in the workplace?
We could say that racial trauma is the lived experience of distress which occur as a result of racism, the real or threaten emotional or physical pain that experiencing racism might cause, it is the result of micro, meso macro, processes & configurations.It can manifest in various ways including via feelings of shame, of self-blame, of isolation. It is operational at individual and collective levels, it is central to group identity and dynamics – although the story of Harvinder does not cover this, it can be transmitted intergenerationally.
Racial trauma is a significant issue when it comes to the well-being of employees of colour for example it’s not unusual for people who and are underrepresented in their place of employment to feel that they bear the burden of countering negative stereotypes, to feel that they have to work 3-4 times harder to succeed or to feel that they have to put on a persona, to leave their authentic self to be acceptable and safe.
More often than not when a person of colour manages to access a white organisation even though HR and management may go out of their way to increase racism diversity… the expectation or normalised practice culturally is that they dress themselves In whiteness so that in the end everyone comes to think the sane way, dress the same way, speak the same way in a way that simply reproduced whiteness and therefore culturally exclude those it wants to recruit but or forces assimilating into norms that reproduces social & historical micro messages about micro inferiority, otherness and trespassing which can take their toll on the wellbeing of employees of colour.
That is why it’s so important to think beyond interpersonal issues and consider cultural and structural issues as well to promote the well-being of staff of colour.
So what can people in positions of authority do, what can organisations or social structures do to mitigate the impact of racism and therefore limit the probability that their employees will be experiencing race-based distress or trauma?
As we have said at the beginning of the podcast at work it’s really all about trying to figure out some possible solutions so I want to leave you with things that you may want to consider if you are in a position of power within your organisation that is not to say that these are the interventions that are possible and of course right now I focus on organisational level interventions, there are individual interventions for people who are at the receiving end of racism and things we can do, to look after our mental health and well-being. Consider registering for our racial trauma courses or buy living while black which has a chapter on working while black and is packed with self-care tools.
So back to organisational interventions. 4 things…
Firstly, I really want you to start to listen and to trust people who have lived experience of racism. They have the expertise when it comes to recognising racism. Basic but as we have seen in the case of Harvinder here. Most race discrimination complaints are dismissed. There are complex dynamics we have no time to cover today but if that’s something that interests you please get in touch and tell us and we will be happy to reflect on them in the podcast.
Number two, it is vital that you accept racism as the norm and that you take a critical stance to your activities and to your services this will avoid the kind of scapegoating that we have seen with Harvinder as he attempted to name what the organisation was not prepared to contemplate the problem or the disturbance became located in him which is a frequent dynamic within groups.
Number 3 be honest about you, the limitations: where you are located in society, place and your perspective. What you can see and what you cannot see.
I know there’s a lot of pushback in relation to unconscious bias and I think that most of the criticisms are important and valid but what we do not want to do is for micro-level phenomena to be completely discarded when he comes to understanding how inequality in the workplace is reproduced.
Any comprehensive antiracism program comprehensive or racial equality program is going to include the reproduction of racism at the microlevel, at meso level and at macro level. so it’s important not to continually reflect and to develop a learning culture in tension to difference.
Finally 4, as we have seen through the story of Harvinder, isolation and lack of social support are contextual risk factors for racial trauma. Do your staff have access to race-based support? Spaces or networks to connect to others who may have similar experience of the workplace?
Well, that is probably enough for a first introduction into racial trauma at work, If you want to know more please get in touch. Don’t forget to put to us your query, questions, challenges.
Thank you for listening, this has been Guilaine from Race Reflections. Until next time take good care
AT WORK TEASER
Here’s a teaser for Race Reflections AT WORK!
Our first episode will be released on Monday 1st March.
The feed is now live on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.
To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk