Race Reflections AT WORK

Tensions between Black employees

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Episode notes

In today's episode Guilaine reflects on a question that has come up in her personal conversations with siblings, how do you navigate tensions between Black people in the workplace that might be described as being related to internalised anti-blackness/negrophobia.

She thinks around the theory that surrounds these concepts, considers how many of the concepts we have explored on the podcast as being primarily being perpetrated by non black people can also be enacted by people racialised as Black. She considers the reasons why this topic can be controversial and why it is often not addressed or named. 

She then discusses some observations from her experience within group analysis during the high level of racial tension that came with the murder of Gorge Floyd. In addition to all the other theory and explanations for these tensions she encourages us to think with complexity and multiplicity about the function these tensions have within groups and institutions, how these conflicts serve power hierarchies  That conflict can be a gladiatorial entertainment and distraction, and that conflict can be a displaced version of tensions with the people at the top of the organisation that cannot be targeted safely, and that those people in positions of power are always implicated when there is tension within their teams.

This episode touches on many issues previously covered in podcast episodes such as these:

Black Authority in the Workplace: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/8252930

Envy: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/8728416

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