Racism at Work

• 2 July 2020
• Farzana Aslam

The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it – and then dismantle it.

Ibram X. Kendi

In the wake of the brutal killing of George Floyd a wave of companies made public declarations speaking out against racism and making a commitment to tackle racial inequality within their workplaces. These public declarations are unprecedented and mark an opportunity for transformative change.  The fact it is only now, in 2020 and in response to protests across the globe in support of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, that companies are openly acknowledging that racism exists within their organisations is itself problematic and illustrates that achieving such change will be neither an overnight, nor easy task.

In most developed economies discrimination against black or ethnic minority workers is legally prohibited.  Most companies, particularly multinationals, also have internal policies that prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, and promote equality, diversity and inclusion.  Yet racism in the form of structural and systemic inequalities continues to persist.  The challenge is that inequality has become so deeply embedded in the practices, norms, and workplace culture within our public and private institutions that we have difficulty in identifying where and when racism is at work.

A recent study (Amis, Mair & Munir, 2020) looked at why this might be so.  Following a literature review of 232 articles, 76 books and 14 government policy unit reports, the authors (Professors from the Universities of Edinburgh, Stanford and Cambridge) concluded that that at each step of a person’s career, from hiring through to role allocation, promotion and compensation, the way in which organisational practices are carried out reinforce and reproduce inequality and build upon each other so that the effect is a cumulative disparity in employment opportunities and outcomes built along racial lines.

The authors argue that these practices are allowed to go largely unchallenged and become part of an organisation’s way of doing things due to 3 prevailing myths that have become pervasive in our workplaces, our management literature, and the thinking and teaching in our business schools.

3 Workplace Myths That Perpetuate Racism at Work

1. Efficiency – This first myth assumes organisations are driven by a purely rational desire to pursue and achieve economic efficiency.  Ergo, organisational practices are assumed to be driven by a similar desire to achieve efficiency.  Take the example of compensation.   Disparities in starting salaries are often justified on the basis of having to offer candidates what the market demands, and yet research reveals a distinct ethnicity pay gap, with the biggest disparity being 17% between black male graduates and white male graduates.

2.  Meritocracy – The second myth assumes that there is an open and level playing field in the world of work.  The myth of meritocracy shows up in the short-cuts that companies make to assess competency.  Take the practice of hiring; studies show that candidates with similar experiences, interests and presentation styles to those of the person hiring are generally preferred and those traits often override an assessment of hard skills.  This phenomenon, known as the affinity bias, or a preference for ‘people like us’, carries on through to role allocation, promotion, and compensation practices.

3. Positive globalization – The third myth identified by the authors is that of positive globalisation, the idea that the outcome of globalisation has resulted in an overall positive benefit for all.  However, in the context of the labour market in particular, globalisation has resulted in inequalities being maintained and reproduced along geographical lines, with workers from the global north benefitting disproportionately in terms of the distribution of rewards and opportunities. Rather than raising the bar to achieve better working conditions for all, differences in local laws and market conditions are used to justify differential treatment of workers within the same organisation.

These myths have become so institutionalized that they are rarely scrutinized.  Taken together they combine to justify and perpetuate disparities along gender, class, or racial lines and leave unexamined the role played by unconscious biases that continue to underpin human resource decisions.  Accordingly, an important part of what must be done to tackle racism in the workplace is to debunk these myths and challenge the accepted way of doing things.

Acknowledging that there is a problem is the first important step, dismantling the racist elements of human resource practices is the next.  This will require organisations to identify, understand, question, and problematise the unconscious biases and blind spots that show up in routine human resource functions and block our ability to build diverse and inclusive workplaces.