Transform Workplace, Breaking Barriers, How Decentering Whiteness Empowers Change

Introduction: In today’s dynamic corporate landscape, the imperative to foster diversity and inclusion reigns supreme. Amidst this call to action, Janice Gassam Asare’s groundbreaking book, “Decentering Whiteness in the Workplace,” emerges as a beacon of insight and transformation. Offering a fresh perspective on dismantling systemic biases, this compelling narrative embarks on a journey toward equitable workplaces.

Dive deeper into the transformative insights of “Decentering Whiteness in the Workplace” and unlock the keys to fostering inclusivity and empowerment in your organization.

Genres

Business, Diversity & Inclusion, Workplace Culture, Social Justice, Organizational Development, Leadership, Human Resources, Equity, Anti-Racism, Corporate Governance

“Decentering Whiteness in the Workplace” delves into the complex dynamics of corporate culture, shedding light on the pervasive influence of whiteness and its impact on organizational structures. Through meticulous research and poignant anecdotes, Asare navigates the nuances of privilege, offering practical strategies for fostering inclusivity and dismantling systemic barriers. From reimagining leadership paradigms to challenging traditional HR practices, this book serves as a catalyst for transformative change, empowering readers to champion diversity and equity in their professional spheres.

Review

Janice Gassam Asare’s “Decentering Whiteness in the Workplace” is a tour de force in the realm of corporate literature, offering a compelling blend of scholarship and actionable insights. With clarity and conviction, Asare navigates sensitive topics, guiding readers toward a deeper understanding of systemic biases and their implications. Empowering and enlightening, this book is essential reading for anyone committed to fostering inclusive workplaces and driving meaningful change.

Recommendation

Many workplaces prioritize the needs and norms of white staff members, which can result in an uncomfortable and unsafe environment for BIPOC employees. According to organizational psychologist Janice Gassam Asare, today’s leaders have a responsibility to create more equitable workplaces by “decentering whiteness.” When you decenter white voices, Gassam Asare explains, you create space for workers from marginalized backgrounds to share their experiences and perspectives. Discover how unconscious bias may be affecting your workplace culture and how to take action to trigger systemic change.

Take-Aways

• Leaders have a responsibility to create a more equitable workplace by decentering whiteness.
• To fight unconscious racial bias at a systemic level, identify where white-centering is occurring and take steps to reduce it.
• Make your hiring practices more diverse and inclusive by mitigating bias.
• Create workplace policies that protect the most vulnerable employees.
• To decenter white voices in your workplace, give BIPOC employees opportunities to be heard.
• Work toward a more compassionate culture, while broadening team members’ perspectives.
• Decentering whiteness in your workplace depends on gaining awareness and then taking targeted action.

Summary

Leaders have a responsibility to create a more equitable workplace by decentering whiteness.

“White-centering” refers to prioritizing or uplifting white people or white culture over other people, communities and cultures. For example, if a Black or Indigenous individual or a person of color (BIPOC) is sharing her personal experience navigating systemic racism, someone who shifts the focus of the conversation to the indignities that some white people have experienced would be white-centering the dialogue.

White-centering is symptomatic of white supremacy, the belief that the white race is inherently superior and should dominate. However, anyone, regardless of the person’s race, can center whiteness. Racially marginalized people often engage in actions and share points of view that reinforce the dominance of white culture. In today’s workplace, white-centering can result in workplace systems – policies, processes, procedures and practices – that prioritize the needs and interests of white individuals over their BIPOC colleagues.

“At an early age, we all learn to center white feelings, white experiences and white knowledge to the detriment of other racial groups.”

Historically, centering whiteness has helped protect white privilege. The notion of a white identity emerged in the 17th century when European Americans began conceptualizing whiteness in terms of the privileges and freedoms white people enjoyed due to their race. Leaders in today’s workplace must take accountability for and work toward creating a more equitable environment where all team members can thrive.

To fight unconscious racial bias at a systemic level, identify where white-centering is occurring and take steps to reduce it.

White-centering can lead to bias across workplace systems, including: how you evaluate employee performance; your work arrangements with employees; pathways to career advancement and promotion; how you determine which employees to retain; your customer service practices; and vendor sourcing. To reduce white-centering, identify where the potential for bias is most likely to occur at a systemic level. For example, if you were examining how you evaluate employee performance, you’d consider the ways bias can creep into your “data-driven” decisions.

In academia, student evaluations often directly influence whether professors advance in their careers. Research shows that professors from underrepresented racial groups often receive less favorable student evaluations, which can threaten their career mobility within predominately white institutions (PWIs).

“Any organization or institution that is striving to decenter whiteness must recognize the ways in which workplace systems perpetuate cultures of exclusion, harm and oppression.”

To decenter whiteness when evaluating performance, clarify the competencies you’re measuring and evaluating for each role and design a rubric to help evaluators assess employees. Involve people from diverse racial backgrounds in the evaluation process and educate evaluators about unconscious bias. A performance review calibration process, requiring evaluators to discuss how they’ve rated employees with their peers, can help identify bias.

Aspire to decenter whiteness in your customer service processes, too. For example, if your marketing team is primarily white, they may not understand why BIPOC consumers might find specific approaches off-putting or racist. Consider using focus groups to gauge audience perceptions across diverse demographics.

Make your hiring practices more diverse and inclusive by mitigating bias.

You can decenter whiteness in your hiring practices in numerous ways:

• Job postings – When organizations craft job listings, they often view the default candidate as white. Hiring managers may find themselves pushed to hire “a certain kind of candidate,” or postings may use coded language that discourages different groups from applying. For example, requiring candidates to be from “top universities” may deter students with degrees from historically Black colleges and universities from applying. Cultivate an awareness of biased wording, and consider using equity consultants to review or write your job postings.
• Applicant tracking systems (ATS) – If you use ATS to recruit candidates, be mindful of the fact that humans created the software you’re using. Thus, the ATS may reflect human bias. Consider making your ATS process more equitable by anonymizing the demographic information on applicants’ CVs.
• Hiring committees and candidate evaluations – Applicants will likely face unconscious bias if you don’t have diverse hiring committees. Decenter whiteness by creating a rubric or scorecard before conducting interviews, ensuring everyone involved in hiring has an aligned approach to assessing applicants.
• Job interviews – Decenter whiteness in interviews by creating a structured interview process and sticking with set questions. In unstructured interviews, the interviewer may ask the interviewee questions such as “Where do you live?” which they could use to gauge the candidates’ proximity to whiteness and privilege.
• Referral hiring – Relying on referrals often leads to racially biased hiring. Consider eradicating referral hiring altogether. If you continue the practice, center your program around targeting prospective employees from underrepresented backgrounds.

Create workplace policies that protect the most vulnerable employees.

Your workplace policies are the guidelines dictating best practices and appropriate conduct. These policies must reflect your company’s commitment to equity and inclusion. Many companies fail to create policies protecting their nonwhite employees. For example, businesses embrace the notion that “the customer is always right,” but customers are sometimes overtly racist and harass BIPOC employees. You also need to identify ways that you’ll protect employees from these sorts of customers.

“Every workplace policy should be developed with the most harmed and vulnerable employee in mind.”

It’s also important to enact policies that protect BIPOC customers from bias. Starbucks, for example, made headlines after a white manager called the police to arrest two Black men who were only guilty of using the café for a meeting. The manager called the local authorities because the men hadn’t placed an order. In his actions, the manager prioritized the comfort of white customers and his feelings over the dignity, desires and needs of the Black men.

Consider all the possible ways racial harm might manifest within your workplace and what protections you have or should implement to protect customers and employees who come from more marginalized backgrounds. Assess the current policies you have in place, including any that govern grooming standards, and reflect on whether they have disparate effects on your non-white workers.

To decenter white voices in your workplace, give BIPOC employees opportunities to be heard.

In the workplace, the centering of white voices often occurs inconspicuously, making the issue difficult to address. For example, in meetings, non-white employees may find that others don’t acknowledge or hear their perspectives when they speak. Consider employing the “round robin” technique, allocating time for each person to share his or her perspective.

“One of the biggest barriers to an antiracist world is the tendency to center whiteness in all aspects of an organizational culture.” (Author Layla F. Saad)

Be wary of “racial gaslighting,” which occurs when a BIPOC employee shares an experience with racism only to have others question or invalidate that lived experience. You should also stop tolerating “tone policing,” which occurs when people try to control how another person relays information. Non-white women often experience tone policing: People feel comfortable telling them to “calm down” in workplaces that center whiteness. Exit interview data can illuminate areas in which you need to decenter whiteness: When a BIPOC employee leaves your company, take the opportunity to find out how workplace conditions entered into the person’s decision.

Work toward a more compassionate culture while broadening team members’ perspectives.

Don’t push BIPOC employees to share difficult or traumatic experiences with racism at work in hopes of inspiring white employees to show empathy. Rather than pressuring people to relive their traumatic experiences through retelling them, focus on educating your employees about the historical oppression different groups have faced. For example, if your workers understand how the World War II Japanese internment camps affected generations of Japanese Americans, they might show more sensitivity toward people of different backgrounds.

Consider expanding your organization’s diversity and inclusion programming to encompass relevant topics for your employees. For example, you could educate teams on how hair discrimination has disproportionately affected workers with Afro-textured hair. Encourage employees to engage in compassionate listening: Ask them to truly hear what another person is saying without making comments that invalidate the other’s experience.

“When it comes to compassionate listening, it’s helpful to remember three Rs: listen without feeling the need to respond, relate, or provide recommendations.”

Decentering whiteness starts within you and can be a lifelong journey for people of all races in a white-dominated society. Surround yourself with community members who hold you accountable as you decenter whiteness within yourself. Take time to educate yourself, consuming content from creators from communities you don’t know much about, thus expanding your perspective. Embrace humility, aspiring to listen when others critique you rather than respond defensively.

Decentering whiteness in your workplace depends on gaining awareness and then taking targeted action.

It’s not enough to hire employees with diverse backgrounds. You need to create workplace cultures where marginalized employees feel safe being themselves. Decentering whiteness in the workplace involves three main components:

1. Recognition – Note that you are centering whiteness in a way that puts BIPOC people at your company at a disadvantage and resolve to gather more data about the extent of the issue. Take workplace incidents seriously if they suggest certain groups of employees may feel marginalized, bringing them to HR.
2. Admission – Consider formally acknowledging that your company has engaged in problematic behavior, signaling your interest in decentering whiteness moving forward, either publicly or internally. Decide whether you need external support – hiring a DEI consultant, for instance – to take corrective action and implement strategies and policies that mitigate further harm.
3. Responsibility – Hold leadership accountable for decentering whiteness and review and revise your organization’s goals to ensure you create a more equitable workplace culture.

To center marginalized voices, be specific about which groups your interventions are designed to serve – a sponsorship program to advance the careers of Black workers, for example. Remind employees that identifying underrepresented groups needing support isn’t exclusionary, as everyone benefits from a more equitable, diverse workplace culture.

Use data collection and analysis to identify the programs and interventions that are most needed in your workplace. Disaggregate the data, ensuring you draw insights based on the experiences that team members from different backgrounds face. When you identify common issues marginalized employees face, consider creating focus groups to try to solve these issues. Identify any awareness and education gaps you could attempt to bridge through educational programming.

Don’t wait until issues arise to implement the processes needed to deal with them. For example, don’t wait until several employees call out your company for being racist before engaging in unconscious bias training.

About the Author

Janice Gassam Asare, PhD, is the founder of BWG Business Solutions, an award-winning DEI consulting firm.