Uninvited questions and queries around people’s racial lineage

In today's episode Guilaine responds to a query that came up when she recently received an honorary doctorate related to her contribution to analytic and psychodynamic theory and psychodynamic and analytic practice, specifically in relation to marginalised groups and race. She reflects on how she feels about this doctorate in terms of her personal journey within academia, how this doctorate is (so far) her most significant career achievement, and that it has a similar narrative arc to her experience of writing her first book Living While Black: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442992/living-while-black-by-kinouani-guilaine/9781529109436She teases out the ideas around this question, considering social media, transparency, reflexivity, intersectionality, disclosure, accessibility, connection, cartesian dualism, trauma, splitting, joy, beauty, pleasure, resistance and sharing work when it is still half formed.She refers to this previous episode of the podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/episodes/15059341Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

In today's episode Guilaine reflects on how the perception of language and linguistics can become dislocated through a primitive colonial imaginary to the point where people do not hear language as it is.She presents a hypothesis around the ways that the literal sound of racialised people talking can become distorted and dislocated in the ears of white people listening. She draws on two anecdotes as examples, both consisting of French speakers being heard as speaking non-French languages, one in an online video from a few years ago of two Black French people, and one a personal story of racial violence that she and her mother experienced. In addition she considers some passages by Frantz Fanon in his book Black Skin, White Masks: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/313127/black-skin-white-masks-by-fanon-frantz/9780241396667She asks what happens to the white psyche when exposed to stimuli related to Blackness and African-ness absorbed through the white imaginary. And considers the way this phenomenon distorts reality impacting how The Other is perceived. She compares it to the racial hostility that happens when someone is speaking in a rational, clear and precise way but the interlocutor cannot understand. She calls this racial contempt where people of colour's words are seen as “mumbojumbo”.She posits that this distortion functions differently from epistemic credibility and violence, it acts more as an intellectual block, playing out as a distortion, an almost physical experience, where people are literally not heard, or what is heard is not heard as is, but as imagined.Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

In today's episode Simone reflects on how even though DEI initiatives end to fall short of meaningfully achieving their aims, operating as lip service for corporations, banning them only creates more harm.They talk about how the US courts have been utilised by the Trump administration and the way this impacts workplaces and schools. And how eliminating diversity initiatives in healthcare has some serious implications for racial health equity.They look at this article:  Elimination of Federal Diversity Initiatives: Implications for Racial Health Equity by Latoya Hill, Samantha Artiga, Akash Pillai, and Alisha Rao https://www.kff.org/racial-equity-and-health-policy/issue-brief/elimination-of-federal-diversity-initiatives-implications-for-racial-health-equity/Then they consider how this impacts both staff and service users within healthcare. They consider how banning DEI work disproportionately impacts people of colour who tend to deliver these services, and also seriously sets back scholarship around these areas. Linking these issues to White Supremacy, capitalism and the legal enshrinement of false binary ideas around gender and sex. They finish by looking at some of the efforts to fightback against the Trump administration in these areas.Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

In today's episode Guilaine reflects on some questions and queries that people of colour, particularly Black people experience, in relation to their “racial” lineage and heritage. How these function as racist micro-aggressions and in particular the relationship between what is being asked, the histories of colonialism, and the power structures of White Supremacy.She focuses on one of the most familiar micro-aggressive questions, “Where are you really from?” and it's more subtle forms, and then explores queries about the specifics of Black people’s family history regarding whether they are “mixed”, through the lens of colonial violence and rape in within the African continent and the islands of the Caribbean.Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

In today's episode Guilaine reflects on the binary polarisation of justification when it comes to accounting for workplace dynamics, particularly in cases of discrimination. Situations where for example an employee of colour makes a complaint and it is dismissed, in their belief due to the colour of their skin, but their employer claims the dismissal is due to the employees conduct, behaviour or ability to do the job. The two forms of justification tend to be pitted against each other.She then lays out how this binary dichotomy created around these issues has a heavy risk of a false negative, which is an ethical risk in terms of failing to see discrimination when discrimination has occurred but is also arguably a general risk for the health of the institution involved.She explores three reasons that this binary is false or simplistic:Discrimination is much more likely to happen when the institution finds a problem with an employee of colour Poor performance, whether it is present or not, is likely to be explained based on race due to fundamental attribution error/group attribution error.Poor performance and discrimination are not independent, they co-relateShe finishes up by recommending that we throw out this binary framework in regards to race, but also potentially to many other areas of life and forms of discrimination.Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

In today's episode Guilaine reflects on how covert racism functions, in particular within the cultural context of the UK.She begins by defining covert racism as a form of racialised bias/discrimination that is not explicitly, overtly and obviously manifested. This results in the people experiencing it being faced with issues of deniability, ambiguity and a near impossibility for redress, becoming mired in questions of what is counted as specific evidence of motivation for the racism.This topic was inspired by the work she is doing for her new book about whiteness in the workplace. She expands on experiences she documented in her book Living While Black and on reflections she had with her book White Minds.She then poses the question of how we get to a place of mutual understanding and of recognition of covert racism. She considers the ways to prove convert racism and locates three forms of proof:  Historical resonanceEmpirical dataLived experienceShe concludes that by thinking about systems, statistics and probabilities it is possible to prove covert racism if there is a real desire to do so, and wonders if the ways we have to try to achieve justice are an obstacle in terms of finding and using this proof. Living While Black: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442992/living-while-black-by-kinouani-guilaine/9781529109436White Minds: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/white-mindsSubscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

How Black women and others experience discrimination at work while pregnant 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, and discuss the relationship of biology and gender. They use the article  Black Birthing Persons Matter—All of Them by Zahada (Kiersten) Gillette-Pierce: https://info.primarycare.hms.harvard.edu/perspectives/articles/black-birthing-persons-matter as a jumping off point as well as drawing on their own research around reproductive journeys of transgender and non binary people.Then they look at "'Oh gosh, why go?' cause they are going to look at me and not hire": intersectional experiences of black women navigating employment during pregnancy and parenting by Mehra et al: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36627577/Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

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) has impacts and implications on the meso (ie the institutional functioning within workplaces) and the micro (ie our own psychological functioning and the way that we relate to one another.)Some previous podcasts that this episode is in communication with:Tensions between Black employees: https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1623760/episodes/15451884-tensions-between-black-employeesCharacter Assassination: https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1623760/episodes/16003086-character-assassinationPersonal Position Statement on Palestine: https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1623760/episodes/16170006-personal-position-statement-on-palestineReflections on a trip to the Congo: https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1623760/episodes/14947769-reflections-on-a-trip-to-the-congoExtraction: https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1623760/episodes/15301647-extractionMusings on the complex politics around race, Africa and the Miss Universe competition: https://www.buzzsprout.com/admin/1623760/episodes/16261736-musings-on-the-complex-politics-around-race-africa-and-the-miss-universe-competitionSubscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

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 disturbance, covering basic definitions, existing psychological theories and her own more group analysis focused thoughts.She covers the ideas around repetition compulsion that locate the reasons people are scapegoated generally within their inner lives and backgrounds, but also calls this out as potentially toxic victim blaming, asking us to consider the structural and systemic factors at play. She doesn’t have a final answer, and perhaps no final definitive answers exist for situations so influenced by many lenses and contexts. But she offers many angles and potential theories along with some advice on how to approach scapegoating within groups. Location of Disturbance and Scapegoating: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1623760/episodes/8127268Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

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 around how these instruments designed for social progress eventually become corrupted by the status quo serving only to maintain the apparatus of oppression or domination. She thinks about how these mechanics function. She isolates three specific ways that DEI policies and procedures operate:Social performanceHelping to ensure (at least in the mind of the institution) legislative compliancePreempting defence and anticipating what charges may be made against the institutionShe also considers how written statements of intention and aspiration can be blurred into being seen as statements of fact, and how this can obscure our understanding of actions taken, and position institutions as over-identified/indistinguishable with these positions.She finishes by considering what can be learnt from this and ways to mitigate these effects.Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.