Can Black employees ever be authentic in the workplace?

11/21/22 • 18 min

In today's episode Guilaine responds to a listener 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 their 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 change can be achieved with sustained effort but that a blanket expectation of authenticity doesn't take into account difference 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
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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email [email protected]

To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email [email protected]

Previous Episode

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 is 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 hpw 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.
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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Next Episode

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 persons social or economic station in society determines their value in that society which creates prejudice pr 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 peoples 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 [email protected]