Race Reflections AT WORK

In today's episode Simone reflects on how Black women and others experience discrimination at work while pregnant, linked in to Black Maternal Health Week that took place in April earlier this year, organised by the Black Mamas Matter Alliance: https://blackmamasmatter.org/ They consider the range of people who experience pregnancies, and define and explore the spectrum of gender identities,...

In today's episode Guilaine reflects on a the situation in Burkino Faso and what we can learn from that in relation to the workplace. How we can see the ways that whiteness, colonialism, and coloniality are playing out and glean insights into the working of those systems of domination. Fundamentally she urges us to pay attention to how what happens within the macro (ie the geopolitical level)...

In today's episode Guilaine reflects on a question she has received in multiple settings about how scapegoating operates, and why specific people might be targeted as scapegoats. This query is very prominent in the work she does and is a major part of her current doctoral thesis. She expands around the thinking previously shared on the podcast about both scapegoating, and the location of dist...

In today's episode Guilaine reflects on when Diversity, Equality and Inclusion policies, procedures, rules and regulations, become blockers to achieving, or advancing, diversity, equality and inclusion within the workplace. Or as she prefers to see define it blockers to combating inequality, injustice and oppression  getting in the way of achieving liberation. She shares her observations arou...

In today's episode Simone reflects on the invisible and unpaid labour that students of colour do within higher education. They use the article The Invisible Labor of BIPOC Students by Stephanie Tavares: https://www.ncan.org/news/560484/The-Invisible-Labor-of-BIPOC-Students.htm as a jumping off point, drawing on their lived experience within higher education. They talk about how activists are...

Today's episode is a follow up to this previous episode: Money, money, money: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/episodes/13872328 Guilaine begins by reflecting on how her specific collection of intersections interact with her relationship to money/worth, considering what it means to be a Black woman from the inner-city and how that collection of identities chimes more with her experience tha...

In today's episode Simone reflects on how racism operates in higher education environments. They begin by thinking about their lived experiences within education both as a student and as a professor. They consider how “gifted and talented” programs are a tool of white supremacy and the obstacles for Black people in terms of attending higher education. Reflecting on the stark contrast between...

In today's episode Guilaine begins by reflecting on how people who are racialised as Black who are introverts are treated at work, her thoughts on this are still cooking but she has been noticing more and more testimony and stories from Black people about these experiences. She begins by thinking about the ways she herself is an introvert. Then she asks some questions: Have you noticed that B...

In today's episode Simone reflects on the tokenism of corporations and other workplaces in the ways they treat Black people and people of colour. They begin by thinking about some scenes in season 2 of the TV series Severance which represent this dynamic and which have resonating with many viewers of colour. Then they consider the current situation in the USA where the Trump administration is...

In today's episode Guilaine reflects on intuition. What it means to include or to exclude the guts, the body, knowing with the body, knowing outside of “rational paradigms” or whatever we choose to call these forms of understanding.  She defines the areas that intuition can cover and the different ways that people can think about these phenomena, and draws on her own lived experience as someo...

In today's episode Simone reflects on pregnancy and racism at work, taking an intersectional lens, considering the experience of people who are pregnant and people who birth which includes more people than just cisgender women. So they begin with some definitions and discussion of these lenses and categories. This episode is a companion to the episode on motherhood and/or parenthood and racis...

In today's episode Guilaine reflects on the treatment of Chidimma Adetshina in relation to the Miss Universe competition, specifically her treatment within South Africa in relation to her perceived nationality that resulted in her becoming Miss Universe Nigeria, before coming second in the over-all competition. She muses on the case, beauty, the race and migration related politics of France a...

In today's episode Simone reflects on ageism and how it intersects with other systems of oppression inside and outside of the workplace. They draw on their experience working with clients, their personal experience and some studies and articles around the topic. They begin with their definition of ageism as a system of inequality that impacts people who are either on the young or old sides of...

In today's episode Guilaine shares a personal statement that encapsulates her personal position, politics and solidarity around the genocide happening in Palestine, and then reflects and expands on that. Her base position is that she stands in solidarity with Palestine from the wounded margin of Black liberation, but that she will not, and should not take the lead in this struggle. Particular...

In today's episode Simone reflects on the experiences of people who go through pregnancy and birth whilst navigating and trying to balance that with employment. They begin by with a note about why they are using more inclusive terms to cover this subject and some definitions of cisgender, transgender and intersectionality. And suggest we keep all of this in mind during the episode as most of...

In today's episode following two queries on social media for her to do so, Guilaine reflects on the Police officer being found not guilty for the fatal shooting of Chris Kaba. First she thinks about the reasons she was hesitant to talk about this subject, she hasn’t read or studied the case in an in-depth way as she finds anti-Black police brutality particularly activating/triggering because...

In today's episode Simone reflects on autism, neurodivergence and racism in relation to work. They begin by talking about how and why they decided to cover this topic, reflecting on how they are autistic and work supporting autistic people, and how autistic and neurodivergent people are often unable to remain in employment or are unceremoniously fired. How these stories are systemic but are o...

In today's episode Guilaine reflects on White Liberals, and on her past inclination to take people straightforwardly based on the words they write and the face they present to the world. She considers how experiencing the duality and complexity of people presenting as anti-racist publicly who in their personal interactions reveal themselves to be anti-black, has led to her trying to be more c...

In today's episode Simone reflects on the COVID 19 pandemic and how it intersects with racism and ableism. They begin by thinking about the Olympics in relation to a lack of COVID mitigations and how we need to have conversations about COVID and racism in relation to workplace inequality. How so many things are connected; with racism, xenophobia, classism and white supremacy at the root of it...

In today's episode Guilaine continues her reflections on relationships between Black people, continuing on from her thoughts in this episode: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/15451884 She addresses a question she has been answering for a long time and that keeps coming back: Should people of colour only receive therapy from therapists/analysts/psychologists/mental health professionals of co...

In today's episode Simone reflects on the relationships between racism, sexism (and other systems of oppression) and anti-fat bias. They begin by thinking about how the curves of people’s bodies are seen and understood through a very racist lens, and how pregnant people are seen as if their bodies belong to the public. Situating all of this within histories of White Supremacy and how these pr...

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...

In today's episode Guilaine responds to, and reflects on, a dilemma from a listener who is a Black woman dealing with the way that workplaces tend to view her as overqualified, is having difficulty navigating these dynamics, has ended up moving from job to job, and increasingly feels the need to hide her knowledge and experience. Guilaine thinks through the issues around this problem, keeping...

In today's episode Guilaine reflects on extraction, the process of which touches on ancestral vulnerability, blackness, colonial dialectics and coloniality in the workplace and generally racialised dynamics, and echoes her recent trip to the Congo. She offers an aside on how plagiarism as an accusation can be weaponised and racialised against people of colour, particularly women of colour and...

In this re-released episode first published  on 3rd May 2021, Guilaine considers the influence of the past on the present by exploring the concept of transference, what it means and how it might manifest in the workplace. This episode is all about making present-past links to better make sense of conflicts, tensions and race-based difficulties at work.  Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts...