The Wretched of the Work: Anger, Fear, and Hopelessness as Impacts of Experiencing Workplace Racism in British Columbia, Canada

Abstract

Drawing inspiration from Frantz Fanon’s work on the colonization of racialized subjects, this article illuminates how racial discrimination impacted the wretched of the work, in reference to a group of racialized civil servants, in primarily White institutions of public service in British Columbia, Canada. Specifically, using data from twenty-five in-depth qualitative interviews, the article presents findings on the affective impacts of workplace racism on this group of participants. In this regard, anger is discussed as internalized, nonviolent and pent-up frustration over oppressive everyday microprocesses that presented significant workplace barriers to racialized workers. Subsequently, fear is outlined as shaped by the lingering concerns on the part of racialized subjects over the very real prospects that their employers could retaliate against participants using any pretext and at any given time. Lastly, hopelessness is explicated as the feeling of disempowerment driven by the belief that workplace inequities would persist irrespective of what participants did to seek equal and respectful treatment at work. Ultimately, through outlining findings as anger, fear, and hopelessness, this article adds to the existing body of scholarship on how workplace racism not only leaves an indelible mark on racialized targets but also why it wreaks havoc in employment relations, further reinforcing existing empirical literature on the debilitating impacts of workplace racism. Lastly, in view of the fact that racialized public servants have received scant research attention, the findings underscore the need for publicly-funded employers to address White supremacy and institutional domination in their midst on a priority basis.

Situating the Nonprofit Industrial Complex

“…Community service workers and those in related positions, who are themselves structurally marginalized and contend with precarity, may be coerced into immoral practices that include: upholding surveillance (Michaud et al 2023); working within punitive and carceral policy frameworks (Bergsma et al 2023;; and being coerced into additional layers of exploitation out of moral guilt, solidarity, and/or care for community (Mamdani et al 2021;Patrick 2019, p. 174;Reynolds 2011). These layers can include withstanding a pervasive culture of white supremacy within a nonprofit (Anakwudwabisayquay et al 2023;Asey 2022;Badwall 2016;Lavallee and Harding 2022). As funding is typically linked to institutions that benefit from the status quo, and which systematically reflect hegemonic whiteness, workers who are Indigenous, Black, or otherwise racialized may suffer direct psychological and material consequences from experiencing the contradictory desires to both serve their communities and contribute to their exploitation.…”

Engaging First Nations People at Work: The Influence of Culture and Context

“…Numerous studies examining workplace barriers for racial and ethnic minorities in North America illustrate that the design of many systems, including healthcare, education, policing, law, and for-profit organisations, is based on ethnocentric models that esteem dominant euro-western cultural values (Asey 2022a(Asey , 2022bEmerson and Murphy 2014;Offermann et al 2014;Wiecek and Hamilton 2014). Organisational culture reproduces behaviour and is embedded in vision, mission, values, beliefs, and common expectations (Deal and Kennedy [1982] 2000; Kotter and Heskett 1992;Schein and Schein 2017;Smircich 1983).…”

“…Racism and its associated behaviours occur across societies. Yet, Indigenous peoples in Canada experience racism framed under the weight of settler colonialism, which adds complexity to solving problems as it interlocks and confounds with white supremacy, the ideology of capitalism, and heteropatriarchy (Asey 2022b;Anderson and Ruhs 2010;Barker 2015;Devereaux 2022;Regan and Alfred 2013;Woolford 2015).…”