Governing racial justice through standards and the birth of ‘White diversity’: a Foucauldian perspective

Abstract

Drawing on a longitudinal qualitative approach to corporate diversity policies in France, based on more than 80 in-depth interviews (N = 86), this paper examines the paradox conveyed within these policies by the rise of 'raceless' diversity concepts. This is what I term White diversity, exploring its construction and appropriation in the light of technologies of normalisation, referred to in English as standards. Building on a Foucauldian approach to normalisation, the paper engages with the case study of the French Diversity Label. It explores the ways in which market-based mechanisms of regulation have shaped the management of race difference. It demonstrates in particular how normalising antidiscrimination through voluntary social certification has contributed to upholding whiteness in organisations.

Between Rhetoric and Reality: An Intertextual Analysis of EU Diversity Charters

“…The first DC in Europe was introduced by the CEO of Axa, Claude Bébéar, in 2004(European Commission, 2023. Besides gaining support from the French government, increasing workplace diversity was also supported by emblematic French business leaders of the time (Doytcheva, 2020). In this respect, the Charter is a joint initiative mandated from the top of France's political and business world.…”

Reconfiguring Diversity and Inclusion for AI Ethics

“…Milena Doytcheva connects corporate diversity policies in France that jettison race and ethnicity in favor of 'universalisation' to the adoption of "racist structures and power relations within purportedly race-conscious procedures. " Importantly for our discussion of engineering logic below, Doytcheva relates this "unversilization" to the outsourcing of diversity standards and measurement to technocratic self-regulatory instruments, bodies and consultants [21]. The focus on technical approaches and metrics within these documents and lack of clear connection to civil rights aims may pose similar risks here.…”

On the edge of diversity: Anti-Muslim racism and discrimination in white diversity spaces

“…It should be also more strongly linked to critical race and critical whiteness theories, emphasising the pervasiveness of racist structures and power relations in white racialised organisations (Ray, 2019; Bonilla-Silva, 2018 [2003]); as well as their ability to produce every-day, organisational, and structural dominance based on ‘epistemologies of ignorance’ and other ‘epistemic maneuvers’ by hegemonic whiteness (Mills, 2014 [1997]; Mueller, 2020; see also Garbes, 2021) to hamper social change. With these theoretical backgrounds, the critical approach, which I advocate for, pays moreover particular attention to the intertwining of scholarly and practical articulations of the diversity paradigm (Doytcheva, 2020b), not least by considering language as practice, at the interface of structures of cognition and action (Fairclough, 2013).…”

“…In examples like these, highly paradoxical articulations of diversity are given free rein, contributing to de facto reinstate racist structures and power relations within the very spaces designed to pursue equality. That is what I have referred to as ‘normalised diversity’ (Doytcheva, 2018, 2020b) – not least based on techniques it takes upon, namely those of standardisation, which is termed normalisation in French; according to fieldwork observations, one of its most prominent characteristics is that of being predominantly white . The concept of white diversity is thus intended to highlight the ways in which business re-appropriation of equal opportunity colludes with racist structures and power relations to uphold hegemonic whiteness.…”