Whiteness in Scotland: shame, belonging and diversity management in a Glasgow workplace

Abstract

This paper uses analysis of interview transcripts and notes from participant observation to explore white reactions to the introduction of diversity management in a large public sector workplace in Glasgow. The paper analyses white talk about racial equality in a social context where the shaming, exclusion and demonization of disadvantaged groups including migrants, asylum seekers and the poor have ensured that issues of entitlement and race are highly charged. It is suggested that in such contexts diversity management is being wielded as a new kind of civility by middle-class people invested in the objectification of poor whites. This represents a form of class conflict over belonging within the body of whiteness that risks reinforcing rather than redressing racial resentments.

Sociology of Whiteness

“…Sociologists have subsequently expanded upon this record to identify the ways in which social class and whiteness interact to powerfully shape identity (Twine 1999(Twine , 2001(Twine , 2010McDermott 2010), politics (Morgan & Lee 2018), health (Metzl 2019), and a host of other outcomes. Class has been especially important in shaping the lived experience of whiteness in countries such as India (Al Ariss et al 2014) and the United Kingdom (Russell 2014).…”

“…Many scholars have documented working-class white anger at perceived advances by the Black community, such as the white ethnic backlash against the gains of the civil rights movement in the 1970s (Patterson 1977, Formisano 1991, Durr 2003. A sense of competitiveness with nonwhites and defensiveness of their own tenuous standing characterize a common portrayal of the white working class; it is one that feels targeted (Russell 2014) yet sometimes supportive of multiculturalism (Beider 2014), and nostalgic (Maly & Dalmage 2015) as well as fearful of the future . Ultimately, working-class white votes were critical in determining the outcome of one of the greatest political upsets in recent history-the 2016 presidential election (Morgan & Lee 2018).…”

‘Sir, it was my right of way!’ Examining cultural change and the contested entitlements of automobility

“…Naturalised, habitual, multiple and overlapping, entitlement claims are embedded within stable beliefs, durable structures and meanings that makes sense of social worlds ordered into stratified hierarchies and entrenched in cultural hegemony (Jiang et al 2017). As expressions of subjectivity centred on notions of belonging and exclusion (Russell 2014), with both material (e.g. livelihood) and non-material outcomes (e.g.…”