Observing whiteness and Black resistance in a Midwestern municipal government: An interracial ethnography

Abstract

Racism continues to permeate American society and brings about social injustice as it privileges whites while marginalizing people of color. The endemic nature of racism identified by critical race theorists suggests that all American organizations are plagued by this social ill, yet very little research in human resource development explores racism in organizational settings. The purpose of this paper is to use participant observations of white and Black researchers to document how white-dominated leadership deploys procedural rules and microaggressions to marginalize Black participants in a small urban municipal government setting and the ways members of the Black community work to resist racial marginalization. K E Y W O R D S human resource development, local politics, racism, small urban, whitenessRacism continues to permeate American society (Bell, 1992;Dixson & Anderson, 2018) and brings about social injustice as it privileges whites while marginalizing people of color (POC) (Bonilla-Silva, 2014;Delgado & Stefancic, 2017;DiAngelo, 2018). Human resource development (HRD) research has been critiqued for failing to adequately address issues of race (Bohonos, 2019;Johnson, 2019;Rocco et al., 2014). The endemic nature of racism identified by critical race theorists suggests that all American organizations are plagued by this social ill, yet very little research in HRD explores racism in organizational settings.Emergent scholarship is calling for a greater emphasis on social justice in HRD research (Bohonos et al., 2019;Byrd, 2018;Collins, 2019), which requires more attention be paid to the effect of racism on organizational practice. Additionally, Sparkman (2019) suggests that there is an imbalance in the HRD diversity literature in which theoretical research is much more prevalent than empirical studies and calls for an additional empirical work to aid in the development and refinement of HRD diversity theory. BACKGROUND AND RESEARCH QUESTIONSAs first-and second-year doctoral students in HRD, the researchers formed a friendship based on a shared interest in research on racial justice. As our relationship grew, we noted perspectives from our respective positionalities, Black man and white man, were lacking in the field's research about race. In response, we began a project enabling us to compare our Black and white observations about race. This approach builds on research that explores differentiated experiences between women of color and white women (Childers & hooks, 1990), and Black men (hooks

Workplace hate speech and rendering Black and Native lives as if they do not matter: A nightmarish autoethnography

“…While there is a growing body of literature that addresses racism in organizational settings, “analysis that specifically focus on anti-Black racism remain rare” (Mir and Zanoni, 2021: 27) as do problematized conceptions of whiteness (Bohonos, 2019a). Several recent studies have pointed to the prevalence of white norms in organizational settings including talent management (Simon, 2019), customer service (Grandey et al, 2019) higher education (Bell et al, 2021; James-Gallaway and Turner, 2021), construction (Bohonos, 2020), public service (Bohonos and Johnson, in press) and high-level corporate leadership (Glass and Cook, 2020; Sisco, 2020), and on how racial minorities navigate white dominated working environments (Bohonos and Duff, 2020; Lewellen and Bohonos, 2020; Rabelo et al, 2020; Sisco, 2020; Small, 2020; Smith et al, 2019). Some studies have also focused on negative reactions of whites to growing levels of diversity (Bohonos, 2020; McDonald et al, 2018; Novicevic et al, 2019; Rabelo et al, 2020).…”

Diversity Officer Development Programs: A New Approach to Cultivating High Performing Chief Diversity Officers

“…With Chief Diversity Officer positions rising in prevalence across economic sectors, it is time for the human resource development (HRD) community to ask questions about how employees are being prepared to thrive in the new CDO roles. It is exciting that HRD has an increasingly robust body of literature relative to organizational diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice (Alfred & Chlup, 2010; Bohonos & James-Gallaway, 2022; Bohonos & Johnson, 2021; Byrd, 2009; Byrd & Scott, 2018; Byrd & Stanley, 2009; Carter et al, 2022; Collins, 2013; Collins & Callahan, 2023; Davis et al, 2020; Gedro, 2010; Gedro & Mizzi, 2014; Henry, 2021; Kwon, 2021; Kwon & Archer, 2022; Lewellen et al, 2020; Procknow & Rocco, 2016; Santamaría et al, 2022; Sisco, 2020; Sparkman, 2017; Wicker, 2021) (see Table 1 for a description of how these works would inform the development of DODPs). It is also promising that calls are continuing for academic HRD programs to foreground this research in our teaching (Alfred et al, 2020; Bohonos et al, 2019).…”