Reflections on whiteness: Racialised identities in nursing

Abstract

In this article, I discuss the structural domination of whiteness as it intersects with the potential of individual critique and reflexivity. I reflect on my positioning as a white nurse researcher while researching international nurse migration. I draw on two large qualitative studies and one small focus group study to discuss my reactions as a white researcher to evidence of institutional racism in the British health services and my growing awareness of how racism is reproduced in the British nursing profession.

Attending to our conceptualisations of race and racism in the pursuit of antiracism: A critical interpretative synthesis of the nursing literature

“…Evidence continues to grow and be presented, but white nurses and white leadership still see racism as something which happens ‘over there’. By returning to Allan's (2022) reflection, ‘I found the racism I heard about in the IEN's [international nurse migrants] accounts disturbing but I did not yet recognise my own part in the white supremacy which underpinned the systemic racism I was told about’, we can see how this speaks to the potential overinvestment we make in the evidence of experience to impact the hearts and minds of white people, or disrupt the status quo. A recent large‐scale survey in the United States found that white nurses simply do not understand the severity of the problem; 72% of Black respondents said there is ‘a lot’ of racism in nursing compared to 29% white respondents (Tobbell & D'Antonio, 2022).…”

“…When perpetrators are identified only through acts of overt racism, bystanders or onlookers (the rest of us) can assume positions of neutrality and nonaccountability. This is summarised in Allan's (2022, p. 5) candid reflection upon her long career as a nurse researcher, ‘I found the racism I heard about in the IEN's [international nurse migrants] accounts disturbing but I did not yet recognise my own part in the white supremacy which underpinned the systemic racism I was told about’. The creation of distance enables white nurses to position racism as a ‘BAME/Black/Asian/minority ethnic nurses’ issue.…”

A critical race analysis of structural and institutional racism: Rethinking overseas registered nurses' recruitment to and working conditions in the United Kingdom

“…It appears to us that the dominant group's White supremacist belief that language is purely an intellectual achievement rather than constructed by social habitus and access to resources is fundamentally racist. An unwillingness to acknowledge unconscious bias in nursing and the daily experiences of ORNs as they face racism because of language differences and lack of fluency arises from nursing's historical racism and unwillingness to examine the fallacy of the White liberal viewpoint (Allan, 2021). With the UK's exit from the EU, it is timely and appropriate for the NMC to consider introducing localised workplace and appropriate language assessments as part of the employing organisation's recruitment process fairness and equity.…”

Language as a proxy for race: Language and literacy and the nursing profession

“…It is also equally possible to not be White but enact Whiteness in practices and policies. Positioning oneself in the race conversation starts with understanding one's own history with race and racism (Allan, 2022). Poe (2017) advises that conversations about race be situated in ones own local context.…”