When Similarities are More Important than Differences: “Politically Black” Union Members’ Experiences of Racism and Participation in Union Leadership

Abstract

Employing survey data from the largest (known) sample of Black, Asian, and minority ethnic staff in British higher and further education, I respond to King's call to examine minority leadership within trade unions. Drawing on theoretical insights from the psychology of social movements, I examine how perceptions/experiences of racism, exclusion, bullying, and barriers to promotion impact on minority union leadership through different types of union involvement (e.g., attending local meetings, seeking union help, etc.) The findings suggest that perceptions of racism and experiences of bullying have a positive indirect effect on minorities taking up union leadership through attending union meetings and raising issues of racism with the union, but not through other forms of union involvement. In line with theory, this pattern of results suggests that union efforts to increase attendance and positive contact at local group meetings, along with efforts to build trust in the union's position on racism, may be important for increasing the representativeness of union leadership. As an ancillary goal (not explicitly stated in King's call), I test various intersectional accounts of experiences of racism across ethnicity and gender and find commonality across difference. Employing appropriate (Bayesian) methods offers intersectional researchers with the opportunity to examine such similarities across social categories that may

Intersectional Oppression: Multiple Stigmatized Identities and Perceptions of Invisibility, Discrimination, and Stereotyping

“…Our findings therefore suggest that multiply‐stigmatized individuals are sensitive to the idea that others ignore and dismiss their perspectives and, often, their personhood (Biernat & Sesko, ; Sesko & Biernat, ), and that their identities play a role in this mistreatment (Purdie‐Vaughns & Eibach, ). The present research extends literature on intersectional invisibility, which has previously focused on perceptions of multiply‐stigmatized targets (Biernat & Sesko, ; Livingston et al., ; Plant, Goplen, & Kunstman, ; Sesko & Biernat, ; Sesko & Biernat, ) by providing ratings by multiply‐stigmatized targets, themselves (see also Sweetman, ). The present findings suggest that understanding felt invisibility may be important for comprehending meta‐perceptual outcomes for multiply‐stigmatized individuals; for example, for understanding how stereotype concerns shape how multiply‐stigmatized targets anticipate being judged in cross‐group interactions (see Shelton, ).…”

“…Later, Crocker and Major () suggested that, in addition to Black Americans, non‐Black racial minorities, women, older adults, sexual minorities, and individuals with a history of mental illness (among members of other oppressed groups), despite facing varying sources of stigmatization, are united by the task of navigating systems and structures that subjugate their personhood. Yet, both analyses stopped short of acknowledging the intersectional nature of social identities, which describes how the overlapping nature of identities influences lived experience (Cole, ; Sweetman, ; Warner, ; Warner & Shields, ). That is, a Black person is not only Black; that person also possesses gender, sexual orientation, and class identities, among many others, some of which may also be stigmatized and all of which modulate the experience of being Black in America (Warner, ).…”

Scholarship and Activism Diverge: Responding to MLK's Call with Theory and Research on Diversity, Political Action, and Resistance to Oppression

“…Toward the end of MLK's life, his focus began to shift toward poverty, class relations, and institutions that disadvantage the less powerful in society, complicating the more single‐identity focus of his earlier activism (King, /2010). This underexplored, wider development in MLK's thinking (see Sweetman, Leach, Spears, Pratto, & Saab, ) begins to reflect critical and Black radical approaches to understanding systematic oppression, inclusive of multiple intersecting identities and systems of oppression (see Sweetman, ).…”

“…In contrast, much psychological research on race and racism has not embraced these critical perspectives, and for decades, scholarship has focused on implicit attitudes, cognitive mechanisms underlying bias and stereotyping, and “modern” forms of racism that have allegedly replaced more “old‐fashioned” forms of racism (Pehrson & Leach, ). This research has not adopted intersectional approaches to understanding how racisms organize and sustain White supremacy, and instead focus on the simple comparison between White and Black without acknowledging how other social identities and systems of oppression may change the ways in which Whiteness and Blackness are experienced and practiced or, indeed, when experience and practice is shared across multiple identities (Cole, ; Sweetman, ). The past few decades of research have begun to focus on the experiences of discrimination among victims of White supremacy, but these approaches continue to rely on the single‐category comparison between White and Black, or Man and Woman (e.g., Swim, Cohen, & Hyers, ).…”

“…The authors examine how more democratic and cooperative forms of economic organization in “the solidarity economy” offer academics an opportunity to teach and research more “radical” solutions to racial inequality. Following this paper, Sweetman () presents research responding to MLK's question around Black engagement and leadership within Labor unions. He examines experiences of racism and pathways to labor union leadership among “politically Black” academics in the United Kingdom.…”