Co-Editors: Guilaine Kinouani and Furaha Asani. To read and submit to the call for contributions, click here:

Acknowledgements: Warm thanks to Dionne Anderson for her input and comments on the Domestic Workplaces section of the proposal.

Table of Contents

Synopsis

Introduction

Racialisised sites of tensions and oppression

*Whiteness and Space

*The Pet to Threat Phenomenon

*Envy, Extraction, and Appropriation

*Human Resources as Human Overseers

*Research Work and the Work of Whiteness

*Domestic Workplaces

Rationale for this Book

Aims and Objectives of this Book

Potential Sites for Defiance, Resistance, and Transformation

Market and Audience

About Race Reflections

About the co-editors

Reference List

Synopsis

This proposal makes the case for an anthology titled, Surviving Whiteness at Work: Reflections on Defiance, Resistance, and Transformation. While there have been books, essays, and multimedia resources which recount lived experiences of whiteness in the workplace, our interest is centred on the actions taken by workers of Colour and indeed people racialised as white, to resist whiteness. That is to say, the ways they navigate racialised challenges to thrive, grow and transform themselves and their workplaces. We call for up to 20 contributions from Race Reflections members, and commit to provide editorial assistance and guidance, as required, along the publication journey to support those less familiar with formal academic writing to get involved. Although we are dependent on the contributions we will receive, we anticipate that the manuscript will comprise of an introduction, chapters which may be grouped according to emergent themes, editorial reflections on the issues raised by the authors and a conclusion-manifesto.

Introduction

Towards the end of 2023, an article published by Linos, Mobasseri, and Rousille provided data to back what all professional Black women already know. This published work, titled Asymmetric Peer Effects at Work: The Effect of White Coworkers on Black Women’s Careers, studied a diverse group of over 9000 new hires at a US-based professional services firm. Among other startling findings, the team reported that “Black women are the only race-gender group whose turnover and promotion are negatively impacted by the racial composition of their coworkers.” The report also stated that an increase in the share of white co-workers was “associated” with an increase in the turnover of Black women; and further, that Black women initially assigned to whiter teams were more likely to be labelled as “low performers” and were also reporting more training hours and fewer billable hours. The implications of all these findings already elicit a myriad of overlapping questions around the working atmosphere and dynamics at play in this particular working context:

*Did working colleagues (not) pick up on the trend of disproportionate turnover in their Black women colleagues?

*To what extent were work dynamics affecting the psyche and morale of these Black women workers, and what long-term trauma has been instigated as a result?

*Was the workplace in question able to recognise their systemic misogynoir and racism?

*Is ‘recognition’ of problematic working dynamics enough, in the absence of action and repair?

*What is the solution, beyond simply recruiting more Black women to face the same institutional violence as their predecessors?

*Is it safe to say that this case study is a representation of the wider working sector- even across the pond in the UK and other countries in the West?

*Is adequate attention being paid to the role of whiteness in the workplace, which produces these kinds of outcomes?

*A reasonable starting point to reflect on these questions is to evaluate how whiteness manifests within the structures and interstitial spaces in workplaces, such that these dynamics at work are merely the end result or an expected extrapolation of the status quo: whiteness (and its impact on gender) at work.

One key feature of whiteness is its propensity to imagine itself as the epicentre of all space it occupies. By centring itself, it mobilises protection and normalisation at work. We are interested in illuminating these processes in working pipelines, but more so in identifying modes, practices, and case studies of defiance, resistance, and transformation that make workplaces safe(r) and conducive for anyone classed as other.

In our bid to present these stories of resistance, we will first begin by contextualising how we define whiteness and also what exactly we mean by ‘at work’.

Background

Whiteness and Work; definitions and scope

As in White Minds (Kinouani, 2023), we will use whiteness to refer to the quotidian operationalisation of the system of white supremacy. White supremacy therefore as both constitutive of the epistemology of the West and as an invisible regime of power that secures hegemony through discourse and which has material effects in everyday life’ (Moreton-Robinson, 2004, p 76).

Whiteness we posit, in other words encompasses all the way the structure of white supremacy (or white racism) becomes embedded, normalised and inscribed within modes of feeling, thinking, being in and on the world to maintain the illusion of white superiority.

Whiteness thus we see too, as a ‘powerful fiction’ which is enforced by power and (white) violence, to determine the social allocation of privileges, resources and protection from or legitimisation of harm (Kivel, 1988). Importantly, like the overwhelming majority of race scholars, we believe that race as a social category lacks biological basis. Moreno and colleagues remind us of this reality and additionally, describe the expansion and contraction of whiteness over time, such that certain groups have been “granted whiteness”.

“…beyond referring to ethnicity or skin colour, whiteness is a complex multidimensional system designed to structure and hierarchize the social thus, the psychological and the relational [and]… is reproduced at all levels of human functioning”(Kinouani, 2019). “Whiteness is about exclusion, not inclusion. We see this especially in the workplace” (Moreno, Quinn-Sánchez, and Shaul, 2020).

Despite this, the role of whiteness as a structure, mode of operation and organising, needs a lot more attention. We further believe quite crucially that its influence on workspace structures and dynamics remain particularly under-examined. We are especially interested in the operationalisation of whiteness through, patterns, habits, ways of being which produce and reproduce social relations at work and shape the work experiences of people racialised as other.

However, people of colour are not passive recipients or victims of this system of domination. Thus, as part of these interrogations, it is critical that we explore modes and opportunities for defiance, resistance, and transformation, identify the various work-based locations where the manifestation of whiteness is correlated with the marginalization of anybody classified as the other and crucially the ways whiteness is disrupted.

Defining ‘at work’

Two main readings are possible in the phraseology ‘at work’. Firstly, at work can be interpreted to mean the location of the workings of whiteness. This would entail capturing how whiteness impacts the workplace. That is to say how it affects work access, experiences and outcomes, whether through working environments, culture and/or institutional processes.

A second and slightly different interpretation of at work may focus on the very processes of the phenomena and consequently functioning of whiteness. While this reading is close to the first one, here it is precisely the mechanisms by which whiteness itself operates which would be under scrutiny (and it is very succinctly captured as a concept within a phrase popularised by DeRay McKesson, “watch whiteness work”). For this project we are primarily concerned with the latter, fully understanding these are not mutually exclusive but complimentary readings.

In summary, it can be taken that for the project, we mainly mean ‘at work’ as in illuminating the working of whiteness in workplace situations as well as experiences related to other contexts of development, creation, and production such as: higher education, creative industries, and parenting.

We are therefore interested in interrogating the various ways whiteness expresses itself within various spheres of work and as a result take a broad understanding of the workplace or the world of work. In addition, to the systemic and mundane parts of life without which ‘work’ would be obsolete are not excluded from our considerations, since what happens in the workplace shapes what happens in other domains such as in the domestic arena, and similarly our relationships outside of work do fundamentally shape our experiences in the workplace. This is closely aligned with a multi-dimensional (group analytic) understanding of human phenomena which is central to Race Reflections’ own contributions to justice work.

As a result, our observations and analyses will go beyond merely assessing the workplace and also include the worker as they show up as their whole self; in other words, we are deeply invested in providing a wider context about how imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (hooks, 2004) predestines and predisposes the worker- of any race and social status, to face and/or embody whiteness at work and in the lead up to and aftermath of work. Interactions and locations described range from the interpersonal- which are unquantifiable in a western hegemonic sense, but which we defend as valid phenomena- to events and outcomes that present in more quantitative forms.

Sites of tensions and oppression

The workplace and related settings where we work- including university or domestic sites- are the environments where we spend a significant part of our lives; striving to overcome challenges, grow and hopefully, reach some level of meaning and satisfaction. These sites are also spaces in which racial trauma, harm, and oppression are enacted and reproduced with significant consequences upon an individual’s mental health and wellbeing, further impacting their opportunities and career progression.

Whiteness and space

Everybody occupies at least two, if not three metaphysical spaces in any given time: their own personal space entangling the physical, psychological, and spiritual; and second space of perception where they are registered by other sentient beings, these spaces intersect in different ways, creating a third domain. In that third space however, the humanity of the other may be stripped away (Fanon, 1952; Césaire, 1955). This can occur through the othering gaze which can be introjected, internalised, and acted upon by these bodies of colour (Fanon, 1952; Asani and Kinouani, 2021). These racialised tensions have the potential to manifest as constant internal navigations and externalised hypervigilance, hyperawareness, and even over-compensation and neo-assimilation (Asani and Kinouani, 2021). For others, the geospatial domain is always compromised, and understood as a site for potential harm.

Haja Marie Kanu’s 2019 essay, ‘Have you noticed white people never move out of your way?’ The politics of the pavement, describes one manifestation of this geospatial inequity. Kanu recounts a straightforward question from a sibling, “have you ever noticed that white people never move out of your way on the street?” Kanu then draws on Hannah Drake’s 2018 call for defiance: Do Not Move Off The Sidewalk Challenge: Holding Your Space in A White World. Kanu shares several anecdotes about navigating space on public transport, and within a club, and being expected to give up her space, her seat, and even her body to be hit repeatedly by a white woman’s bag, all for the comfort of white people- in one case with a Black man being complicit in these unjust expectations. The cases persist even when the public transport space isn’t full. Kanu laments, “Who knew when people said they “don’t see colour” they meant they didn’t see us at all?”.

Similarly, Kinouani (2016, 2019; 2021; Asani and Kinouani, 2021) and others before her who have written on the phenomenology of whiteness (such as Ahmed, 2007), has long inscribed whiteness within the geospatial, for example by positing that racialised violence is always composed of a spatial component, that oppression is an embodied encounter with and for the other, so that resistance to the same must include reclaiming space, moving the body differently in space, and dismantling that internalised sense of displacement, or of being out of place in one’s own body and of unbelonging. Hence, we expect that our examination of the manifestations of whiteness in the workplace will include a concurrent analysis of space, and of the micro-struggles between bodies in the geospatial domain as we expect that such challenges are bound to apply to the workplace. Yet these intersubjective phenomena have received little attention in the organisational context.

The pet to threat phenomenon

Every workplace is bound to have tensions, and perhaps even factions or cliques. These tensions take on different tones depending on power dynamics. One notable example of the manifestation of whiteness at work is the ‘pet to threat’ peculiarity (Thomas et al, 2013). This describes how Women of Colour are treated in the workplace, at first being supported by their mostly white male mentors and managers, up until they are perceived as a threat. As these women increase their expertise, competence, and confidence, attitudes of these early supporters change and can range from indifferent to hostile, and support for the ‘pet’ wanes. The pet’s “increased agency is perceived to threaten the status quo in a culture typically dominated by white males” (Donahue, et al, 2021). According to Reese (2022), “Black women are initially seen as likeable novices, but when they tap into power and equity, it threatens the dominant group. This perception causes harm that can look like lack of advancement and hurtful microaggressions”.

A number of case studies outline how this phenomenon deeply affects the career trajectories of Women of Colour (Stallings, 2020; Hyde, 2020; BYP Network, 2023). It is also important to note and name the role envy plays in this power play (Kinouani, 2018; Kinouani, 2023). Envy can go on to inspire bullying, factionalism, and even the targeted jeopardising of jobs or at least wellbeing at work.

Envy, extraction and appropriation

Another way in which this specific racialised neurosis shows up is through the theft or misappropriation of ideas, or the inappropriate taking up of space and opportunities. Contemporary literature and social media are littered with case studies of how white colleagues have furthered their careers using the ideas of their minoritised co-workers; many of these ideas having been proprietary information shared in what were understood to be spaces open and safe for the sharing of work. As authors ourselves, and co-editors of this book, we hold several case studies in different work settings where we have been victims of the same. We class these occurrences as ‘interpersonal’ and structural because we believe the harm done is not just in the theft of the idea or space, but in the invisibilisation it causes thereafter and its the normalisation of the same within all institutions.

It is also notable that in a western context, even after the global scale “listening and learning” that should by now have galvanized the urgent dismantling of white supremacy, research positions and associated funding for research about Global Majority peoples’ and cultures are still going to white people many times to the detriment of People of Colour. The themes of theft, hoarding and intellectual appropriation strongly echo extractive and exploitative colonial practices. As a result, such actions in the workplace reproduce coloniality and may have intergenerational trauma consequences.

Human Resources as human overseers

The function of Human Resources, we say need to be urgently critically examined. We know from our lived experience that this institution acts as protection of the organisation thus of the status-quo. One of the more famous workplace infographics shared in any ‘equality, diversity, and inclusion’ meeting in an HR context is The “Problem” Woman of Colour in Non Profit Organizations published by The Centre for Community Organizations (2018). This infographic depicts a typical Woman of Colour’s journey through an organisation, as she first encounters a ‘honeymoon’ period with the white leadership. At first she feels welcome, even though oftentimes she is a tokenized hire; problems begin and persist when she faces the reality of the organisation’s issues and points these out; she pushes for organisational accountability whilst facing microaggressions- one could even say these phases align with the ‘pet to threat’ phenomenon; the Woman of Colour worker might even face targeted attacks and gaslighting, till she exits the organisation. This infographic has gone viral on social media numerous times since it was published.

The literature tells us that HR structures are not the average worker’s friend (Smith, 2020; York, 2021); more so when that worker is a racialised person (Gray, 2019). But even before this, in the lead-up to attaining employment, Harvard Business School (2017) say that minority workers who “whiten” their CVs get more interviews. Bloomberg (2021) also tells us that job applicants with “Black names” are still less likely to get interviews, also pointing out that this has been an unchanging phenomenon for nearly two decades. The HR pipeline from landing jobs (DiTomaso, 2014) to experiences during appraisals and training support (Ramgoolam, 2019); from overall career path (Blanton, 2022) to pay (Office of National Statistics, 2022) are all skewed to favour whiteness. HR itself is most likely to be white (Jordan, 2021); specifically, a white woman (Stych, 2019). One could even say that white women have ‘won’ Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (Rae, 2023).

Research work and the work of whiteness

An adjacent work site for the manifestation of whiteness is research. Here we locate research spaces not only in institutions, but within communities of practice as well. The ways in which white hegemony oppresses and gatekeeps research outside and within registered research spaces shows up in a number of ways: there exists a hierarchy in how knowledge production is viewed, valued, and referenced; there also exists a highly exclusive route to funding so that research funders almost always need funding applications to be led by institution-based academics. And in some cases, even when funds are directly targeted for research in PoC communities, outcomes of funding decisions demonstrate explicit anti-Blackness (Adelaine, et al, 2020).

Taking a step back, the UK has a broken pipeline in how Black students receive postgraduate funding (Leading Routes, 2019), a significant degree awarding gap between white students and so-called ‘BAME’ students (Universities UK, 2022), and career progression that favours whiteness to the extent that there is a disproportionately low number of Black women professors within universities (Rollock, 2019; Zelzer, 2023).

The misogynoir and bullying within university spaces can be fatal. Lincoln University-based Dr Antoinette Bonnie Candia-Bailey, who had herself written about the hardships Black women face in academia (Candia-Bailey, 2016), died by suicide in early 2024; leaving behind a letter in which she stated that she had been “intentionally harassed and bullied” (Adams, 2024) by the university’s president- Dr John Moseley, a white man (Kassahun, 2024). In short, a Black woman working in a Historically Black University (HBCU) lost her life and left a testimonial that recounted her oppression by the white man president of said HBCU.

Domestic workplaces

Finally, home as domestic workplaces as we have previously stated, are equally relevant to our undertaking. We propose that it is necessary to include home sites where both familial and non-familial workers conduct their family labour. We have long known for example that women disproportionately carry the burden of childcare whether they are in employment or not leading them to live double working lives. Because of this consideration, we are interested in interrogating how whiteness shows up in domestic settings for both remunerated work- which is carried out by domestic workers- and unremunerated work; carried out by family members, visitors, housemates, and any other kind of tenant. We will also class child rearing (Anderson, 2021) and other caring responsibilities under this theme.

We recognise the sensitive nature of analysing whiteness within domestic spaces as it pertains to a familial environments. We strongly believe that these analyses are necessary to enable us, and readers, to get a more accurate picture of the continuity of whiteness from and between the domestic space to the ‘outside’ workplace.

Domestic work, either unpaid labour in one’s home, or paid labour in the home of another, is not unique to Black women, but it has a particular resonance for them. There is a widely documented history of the intersection between gender and race oppression that sees a disproportionate number of the African diaspora forced or falling into precarious domestic roles with significantly more burden (financial, resource, time) and lack of access to any significant advancement compared to white counterparts.

For years we have inhabited white spaces to ensure that the domicile of white people was cleaned, and their kin cared for. We were there to serve as domestic labour: wet nurses, house slaves, or a receptacle for the depraved experiments of master and mistress of the house.

It would be an erroneous omission not to include domestic work as a site of white disturbance particularly when it is the very space, we learnt to serve and stay alive by memorising the habits and desires of the master. No sooner had we been “liberated”, we were met with another task – a greater need to mask and assimilate to not face scrutiny in the neighbourhoods we now inhabited, right alongside whiteness.

The manifestations of how whiteness presents itself in the domestic space, are influenced by our external exposure to it. We would argue that the white utopian idea of the home, the portrayal of familial normalcy and the measure of societal “success” perpetuated by western media as the ideal since at least the early 20s and the inauguration of Madison Avenue contribute to cumulative traumatic experiences, subsequently intergenerational, historical trauma too (Hankerson et. al, 2022)

Domestic work in the family home is an area with extensive research, but the exacting implications for the workplace have not been covered extensively. For the purpose of this book, the issues of domestic labour are particularly pertinent to identify in relation to their intersection with trauma given that people of colour and indeed black people may be exposed to further trauma in the workplace. This is particularly so, for those who are undervalued economically.

Ervin et al. (2022) state: “Although there is no universally recognised term or definition for unpaid labour (also referred to as unpaid work, unpaid care work, domestic labour or work, or household labour or work), unpaid labour is typically conceptualised as and broadly inclusive of all responsibilities and tasks done to maintain a household and its family members without any explicit monetary compensation.” We posit the cumulation of trauma, whose presence is intergenerational not only affects dynamics in home dwellings, but that it likely creates physical and mental manifestations which evidences whiteness’ presence in both domains but also, presents opportunities to heal at work and at home.

Rationale for the Book

Experiences at work thus need to be considered to help us understand and deconstruct the mechanisms by which oppressive harm happens, especially in the context of whiteness being centred as supreme.

Further, what its impact is and how people and groups can resist it- maybe even going so far as to enable transformation. By sharing intimate reflections on personal experiences, this book might help us make meaning of the wounds incurred in these environments and highlight the potential for healing that exists in acts of self-care and resistance. We expect that the themes that we have identified in the literature will be mirrored in the contributions we receive, however we are not limited ourselves to these issues.

This book will carry up to 20 testimonials and generous sharing (between 2500 – 5000 per chapter) of Race Reflections community members, who have been on a journey of anti-racist and anti-oppressive exploration and growth, in the hopes that it supports people who are navigating the challenges of whiteness at work.

Finally, at work’ is the name of Race Reflections’ fortnightly podcast which is dedicated to reflecting on everyday manifestations of inequality, injustice and oppression in the workplace. In addition, Race Reflections podcast exists to reflect on these expressions of whiteness which have been widely theorised outside of work but not have not necessarily been widely applied to workplace settings, centring lived experiences and practical solutions. The book will follow similar ethos. Hence the book will also echo the existence of that space and in turn the space will echo the existence of the manuscript.

Aims of this Book

Our aims are to describe the working of whiteness through the intimate experiences of our contributors. We are not only interested in the accounts of how whiteness causes harm in work contexts. We want to examine, resistance and healing strategies employees of colour put in place to survive and thrive within white hostile, excluding and othering work context. Ultimately, we seek to support anti-racist action in individuals, in groups, organisations, and communities by being able to help identify what works, what helps, what supports healing, growth and transformation when it comes to racialised injustice and violence at work.

To read and submit to the call to contributions, click here:

We will welcome unpublished contributions and are open to suggestions with regard to format. However, all contributions will need to be publishable on printed paper.

Our preference will be for texts that are reflective, intimate and personal and which fall into one of the following categories:

*Traditional essays

*Critical literature reviews

*Literary or creative contributions (provided they include a commentary on the work submitted)

Potential Sites for Defiance, Resistance, and Transformation

We will not presume to know every potential theme that contributors might want to cover, but as a starting point we offer the following prompts for inspiration or interrogation:

*Spaces of Care in workplaces

*Unionising, mobilising and organisation

*Reclaiming the narrative; “reclaiming my time”-Maxine Waters (2017)

*Accountability pipelines

*Solidarity and alliances formations

*Reflections on organisational transformation.

*Conscientisation and consciousness raising.

*Personal growth narratives around confidence, imposterism or self-esteem

*Reflections on taking space, speaking out or reclaiming one’s voice

*Self-care and/or practice of Joy, pleasure and beauty as resistance

*Reflections on experiences of legal/industrial action both ‘successful’ and ‘unsuccessful’

*Reflections on experiences of the usage of complaint mechanisms both ‘successful’ and ‘unsuccessful’

*Establishing home, homeness and belonging in the workplace

*Protecting the domestic arena from toxic workplace dynamics

*Protecting work from toxic domestic dynamics

*Resisting the intersection of both domestic and workplace trauma

Our preference would be for chapters that are centred on lived experiences. We hope as an editorial board, to be able to add to each chapter some concluding reflections on key lessons to be taken forward for organisations so as to retain the same format of Race Reflections at work podcast.

Market and Audience

There have been a few recent general audience books covering racism and whiteness in both the UK and U.S context. In this section we present texts which we see as closely related to the current protect.

Afua Hirsch’s Brit(ish) On Race, Identity and Belonging (2018) is a semi-autobiographical text which describes the struggle of establishing an identity and a sense of home as a woman of mixed ancestry, amidst everyday experiences of racism. In it she unpacks the ‘colour-blind’ ideology, the subtle everyday manifestations of racism and the cultural avoidance of conversations on racism.

In Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race, Eddo-Lodge (2017) also tackles the various manifestations of everyday racism in the UK, the experiential or lived reality disconnect that exists between white people and people of colour, through black feminist epistemological lenses. Not only does she set the political history of race relation in Britain which she links to British imperialism, she provides rich personal anecdotes to contextualise the impact and experiences of racism as a Black British woman.

in Natives: Race and class in the ruins of empire, Akala (2019), writes a powerful political analysis of race and class in Britain (and in part, in the US) through biographical stories and historical events about identity belonging and otherness. Those stories which present common experiences of navigating white supremacy for black and ‘mixed-race’ people, encompass interactions with the police, the education system and his white family. The book leaves once more the reader in no doubt as to the relationship between current race relations and the empire, it is expressly considered throughout the book and specifically in chapters examining the memory of the empire in the British memory and the historical role of Scotland in Jamaica.

Hirsch (2018), Akala (2019) and Eddo-Lodge (2017)’s texts offer complimentary and contextual reading to our volume. None of these books however focuses on the workplace. Although they also go into examining the workings of white supremacy on the day-to-day experiences of people of colour, they do not focus on work. It is however encouraging that they did well as trade manuscripts on the subject of race and racialisation.

On the scholarly front, recently published and more directly related to our examination of the workings of whiteness is White Minds: Everyday Performance, Violence, and Resistance Kinouani (2023). This book interrogates race dynamics, race inequality, and racial violence by examining the psychological and psychic factors responsible for manifesting whiteness and how these intersect with macros structures. This book will be foundational to our current project, providing us with the conceptual tools for a multidimensional understanding of ‘whiteness’ and for grounding our work not just in the structural but in the psychological, relational and historical domain too.

Whiteness at work (2020) Michael A. Moreno, Kathryn Quinn-Sánchez, and Michele Shaul, 2020. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne; is anthology made up of 10 chapters depicting how whiteness manifests in American workplaces. The approach taken within this book is a phenomenological one whereby the authors share their lived encounters with whiteness in the workplace. This book has provided us with a useful reference point for work conducted in the U.S; our book will however go beyond describing how whiteness manifests at work, in the traditional sense and more importantly, provide some testimonials of, and provocations towards, defiance, resistance, and transformation.

Decentering Whiteness in the Workplace: A Guide for Equity and Inclusion (2023) Janice Gassam Asare. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Oakland, focuses on talking openly and honestly about whiteness, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness in corporate America. This is a guidebook focused on creating anti-racist workplaces. This single-authored book also provides a useful reference point for our work, however, this text is also U.S.-based, largely empirical in its approach as opposed to our work which will centre the lived and learned experiences of, we anticipate, 20 individuals.

Racism at work: The Danger of Indifference (2018) Binna Kandola. Pearn Kandola Publishing describes how present-day workplaces still suffer from racism, albeit subtle and nuanced and not always overt and obvious. Importantly, perpetrators and bystanders don’t even notice it, but it is always detected by those on the receiving end. The book also includes an exploration into the effects of race bias and actions organisations can take to implement equality. This is an important offering which is U.K.-centred, although unlike ours, this book is primarily a psychological exploration of racism rather than whiteness which has not benefitted from depth insights and interdisciplinary perspectives.

The Anti-Racist Organization: Dismantling Systemic Racism in the Workplace (2022) Shereen Daniels. John Wiley & Sons, Limited, draws on the author’s personal and client-facing experience to deliver recommendations in the form of tangible actions business leaders can take to transform their workplaces into equitable and anti-racist spaces. Drawing from her lived experience as an anti-racist is in part consistent with our methodology but here too it is a single voice that is relied on, and one that is US-based. And again, it is anti-racism which is the subject matter rather than whiteness.

As can clearly be seen there is a growing appetite for manuscripts that examine racism both in trade and in academic books. The literature dedicated to racism in the workplace is smaller but developing. Our proposition will make an important contribution to whiteness rather than to the broader topic of racism and is dedicated to the state of play in the U.K. rather than in the U.S. where issues are less well understood when it comes to whiteness.

Further, by focusing on various fields of work and on the voices and lived experiences of various social actors, it will bring a unique perspective to the fields of justice and wellness at work which will be strengthened by our solution-focused approach to the issues identified. It is this combination, our expertise and reputation, together with our unwavering commitment to resistance and defiance which makes our proposition a liberatory offering. Our work aims to go beyond the discourse of ‘inclusion’ and explore liberation, decolonisation and healing from multiple lenses.

About Race Reflections

Race Reflections is a thought leader in anti-racism, equity, and social justice in the UK. Headed by an experienced micro-team, we are a community of hundreds of thinkers, practitioners and organisers seeking to rethink inequality, injustice and oppression, their impact on our psychological worlds and on the world around us. Race Reflections is also a bank of deeply challenging articles, courses and disruptive learning and development/consultancy.

We believe fundamentally that D&I provisions entrench or reproduce structural inequality, foster dissociation rather than connection and fail to engage with the lived experience of inequality, injustice, and oppression.

Our approach aims to develop reflection that encourages engagement with head and heart so as to tackle the reproduction of inequality at micro, meso and macro level. We use psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology, and group analysis, which is truly our uniqueness. We are pioneering work on racial trauma, oppression and justice as applied to various settings from this multidisciplinary vantage point. We are thus uniquely placed to edit a volume on whiteness in the workplace, the harm it creates, and the strategies employees of colour use to defy, resist and attempt to thrive in the midst of its violence.

About the co-editors

Guilaine Kinouani

Guilaine is the founder and director of Race Reflections. She is a psychologist and group analyst with over 15 years of experience working with issues of equality and justice. Guilaine’s first book Living While Black: The essential guide to overcoming Racial Trauma (Ebury: Penguin Random House) is a powerful exposé of the lived experience of various manifestations of racism and their sequels on the black subject. In her second book, White Minds (Bristol University Press) she puts forth a psychosocial analysis of whiteness and turns her analytic gaze onto people racialised as white. Her third book, Creative Disruption (Palgrave MacMillan), which is a co-edited (with her peers Hannah Reeves and Claudia Di Gianfrancesco) volume is part of the Studies in the psychosocial series. It considers the potential of creative disruption as praxis when it comes to knowledge production and associated ontoepistemic matters. The book is expected in 2024 Guilaine is currently completing a PhD in psychosocial studies at Birkbeck which focuses on the reproduction of whiteness in the clinic, using a group analytic research frame she developed.

Furaha Asani

Furaha is an interdisciplinary scholar, mental health advocate, award-winning teacher and speaker, writer, and research & development consultant. Her research interests lie in responsible R&D and identifying actionable roadmaps to implement this, global health equity, mental health & mental hygiene, immigration precarity and borders at large, anti-racism in research, and science in pop culture. Furaha has published and spoken on these subjects across a broad range of platforms and events.

To read and submit to the call to contributions, click here:

Thank you for reading!

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