Table 1
Overall conceptualization of the theoretical frameworks.
| RESPONSES TO RACIALIZED SITUATIONS | ||
|---|---|---|
| Racial identity (Helms & Piper, 1994) | Conformity | Internalization |
| Internal response (Faulkner, 2000a, 2000b, 2007, 2009a, 2009b) | Inauthenticity | Authenticity |
| External response (Kendi, 2016) | AssimilationSegregation | Antiracism |
Table 2
Codebook and example segments of text.
| BEN’S RESPONSE | CODE | DEFINITION | EXAMPLE CODE SEGMENTS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Racial identity (Helms & Piper, 1994) | Conformity | People of Color’s experiences in early stages of career thus they feel they cannot be agentic for fear of job loss, conform to the status quo and don’t speak up to racism (e.g. fear, unawareness, toning down cultural norms, hiding/masking parts of identity, low career maturity) | “I used to be more just conform… I bought like $400 headphones to make sure, those are noise cancellation, to make sure the sound doesn’t leak out…” “Would I feel comfortable doing that? No. So my level of comfort and like, I guess, expressing myself, hasn’t gotten like to the point where I feel like I can do that with no consequence and that’s like quote/unquote in my head.” “I didn’t call them out on [the racist picture]. I just let it go…” |
| Internalization | People of Color’s experiences in latter stages of career, thus they feel they have leverage in order to be agentic in recognizing race and racialized systems and acting to dismantle them for self and others in racialized workplaces (e.g. combats racism, values cultural and racial identity, contests white normativity, embraces and supports cultural capital, career maturity) | “I didn’t call them out on that. I just let it go, and I should have… I’m not going to do that anymore, when stuff happens like that.” “I used to be more just conform, but now as I’ve gotten older I’m like, no, I’ve earned my right to be here, too…” | |
| Internal response (Faulkner, 2000a, 2000b, 2007, 2009a, 2009b) | Authenticity | Ben is able to recognize himself as both a Black man and an engineer. (e.g. self-definition of worth, bringing cultural capital, confidence, cultural and racial identities embraced, self-agency) | “When I’m coding or in my zone over there working on code, I like to listen to rap music…it just kind of just keeps me in the zone, just keeps me, make the job fun and just kind of into my work.” “And so basically my manager was stuck in a situation, so I went to him and said, ‘you know what, I’m confident I could finish this project and bring it home.’” |
| Inauthenticity | Ben is unable to fully recognize himself as a Black man or an engineer. (e.g. masking parts of identity, downplaying cultural capital, devaluing Blackness, cultural mismatch, lack of confidence) | “Would I feel comfortable doing that? No. So my level of comfort and like, I guess, expressing myself, hasn’t gotten like to the point where I feel like I can do that with no consequence and that’s like quote/unquote in my head.” | |
| External response (Kendi, 2016) | Racism | Situations that devalue People of Color (e.g. Racialized situations, manifestations of structural and individual acts of racism, bias, systems of oppression, dis/advantages of one race over another, normalization of whiteness, diminished agency, disregard of cultural capital, unequal distribution of resources) | “So he passed the phone to me and I look at it and there’s a picture of a snowman being hung on a noose in a tree.” |
| Segregation | Situations in which Ben or others blame Black people for the struggles they face (e.g. threats, devalue contributions of People of Color, advocate whiteness, “othering”) | Not observed | |
| Assimilation | Conforming to societal norms in order to ‘fit in’ to normative expectations (e.g. accepting white normative values/standards, masking identity, recognizing racism but not calling it out, changing to fit the mold, act in accordance to white acceptability) | “I don’t even have to be disrespectful but at least say something.” | |
| Antiracism | Recognizes injustices and actively works to combat them (e.g. combats racism, embracing cultural capital, flouting whiteness, advocates for diversity, inclusion, justice and equity) | “I ended up leaving early and so later on that day he called me and he was just like, ‘I see you feel, the decision I made affected you.’ And I told him ‘yes it did’ …So I told him, ‘well, I’m going to tell you now I’m not quitting but I’m telling you I’m not going to work a second over 40 hours for you ever again. I’m telling you now, when there’s an issue I’m going to come up with every excuse in the world why it can’t be done knowing it can be…” |
| NARRATIVE STORY | OBSERVATIONS |
|---|---|
| Current Workplace: Do Black Lives Matter at Work? | |
| I work for a “global” company, Company Z, “so we can’t cater to whites or Blacks, or just one particular person because you wouldn’t be in business very long. From a culture and company standpoint, even with like the current climate we’re in now, our company was pretty explicit when you talk about Black Lives Matter. And our CEO sent several emails talking about just trying to promote that. So from a company culture perspective, I can appreciate that. | |
| “I think another challenge when you don’t have diversity, it’s like I have to work really hard to, either you conform to them, or like you have to fight for change or fight to like push yourself out there. So I’ll give you an example, some recent. When I’m coding or in my zone over there working on code, I like to listen to rap music. That bothers people. Even though I got headphones on, it’s like why does that bother you what I’m listening to? And not only that when I’m listening, usually I like to be at my desk so I’m not bothering nobody, I have headphones on and I like to like dance while I’m coding, it just kind of just keeps me in the zone, just keeps me, make the job fun and just kind of into my work. Well, people have reported me because of that and it’s like it’s disturbing to them and it’s like come on, now, it’s not like I’m out breakdancing on the floor, merely just rocking, but it’s things like that to where like if you diverse, it’s like you learn those are just things that, from my culture, those are the things we do to excite us and motivate us to like keep going. But if you’re not used to that, then it’s like you’re doing something wrong. | Authenticity – Ben authentically uses motivational tools such as rap music and dancing while he works. In this moment, he sees his Blackness as an integral part of who he is as an engineer. Although he is productive and nobody can hear it, he still receives complaints. Racism – Some of Ben’s coworkers reported him for his dancing and music, which was a form of intimidation. Ben explains how the lack of diversity affects how his culture and motivation techniques are silenced because they differ from white normative values. |
| “And believe me, I got several different examples of things like that. And I used to be more just conform, but now as I’ve gotten older I’m like, no, I’ve earned my right to be here, too, I put in work just as much if not more. If you have a problem with this, that’s not my problem. I’m not disturbing anybody. I mean, I bought like $400 headphones to make sure, those are noise cancellation, to make sure the sound doesn’t leak out, but so it’s not my problem to cater to your, to your, I’ll just say to your bias. So it’s like, I mean, I’m going to do it. And I’m glad I started to take that stance.” | Authenticity, Conformity shifted to Internalization – With experience and growing self-assuredness, Ben began to assert himself–resisting conformity– in the workplace. He does not “cater to [their] bias.” He knows what supports his identity as a Black engineer and authentically uses these methods. Ben’s racial identity shifts from conformity at the time of the complaint to internalization as he speaks during the interview. He recognizes that music supports his productivity and will not conform by stopping this method. |
| “I have a coworker that sits with me, a white coworker, this is another great example. He literally comes to work, puts both his feet on his desk, and lays back in his chair and plays on his phone all day. Comfortably. It’s just like, it’s just regular, he’s known for doing that all the time. Would I feel comfortable doing that? No. So my level of comfort and like, I guess, expressing myself, hasn’t gotten like to the point where I feel like I can do that with no consequence and that’s like quote/unquote in my head. But there are definitely levels of relaxation that I’ve been able to say, okay, it’s not that bad, I can do this and still things will be okay.” | Inauthenticity and Conformity – Ben is guarded due to fear of racial bias. Because he is guarded, he cannot fully be his authentic self and feels the need to conform to expectations. Conversely, a white coworker relaxes without fear at work, comfortably unaware. |
| I Should Have Spoken Up | |
| “…It shows basically in what I’m about to tell you, to be comfortable enough to do what I’m about to tell you, shows that like, you know, you don’t even feel nervous about doing this.” At Company X “there was no diversity there. It’s 99% white and then 1% Black. There’s no diversity.” One day, “we’re in a team meeting at [Company X], there’s about 10 of us on the team. There were just two Black men and then everybody else was white. So while we’re waiting for this meeting to start, we’re kind of in this huddle, one of my team members is laughing at this picture she’s looking at and so she looks at the picture, she laughs, and she passes it around. We’re kind of around this round table. So she passes it to her friend and she looks at it and laughs and then she passes it down and down and so and it ended up coming to my African American coworker, who was new. He just graduated so he’s already just fresh from, he’s just now joining the workforce so he looks at it and all he could do is drop his head. So he passed the phone to me and I look at it and there’s a picture of a snowman being hung on a noose in a tree. And I just remember looking at that, and it was just like, okay, and I just gave it to her and didn’t say nothing about it. | Conformity and Racism – Ben’s preamble describes a company culture that supported his white co-worker’s comfort in sharing the racist imagery of a snowperson with a noose around its neck. For such imagery to be openly shared as a joke and not seen as problematic is an explicit act of racism. He felt uncomfortable calling out the racism expressed in the picture and office. His discomfort reflects an unnamed fear of the oppressor and racist retaliation. At the time of the racist event, Ben’s racial identity aligned with conformity status because he obeyed white culture. |
| “The lesson I learned, and it still haunts me to this day, is that I didn’t call them out on that. I just let it go, and I should [not] have. Especially, my coworker was Black, I almost felt like, and we never talked about this but it almost felt like he was almost hoping and relying on me to say something because I had a voice, I had been there for some years, so I was accomplished, I was doing a good job there so I had a voice to say something and I didn’t and it was like, again kind of that ties in as well where it was like I’m not going to do that anymore, when stuff happens like that. Because that haunts you. | Conformity shifted to Internalization – In the incident shared, Ben did not call out racism but wishes he could go back and change the situation. He had seniority, but did not use it to combat racism. At the time, his fear of how his white coworkers would respond led him to conformity. Now he recognizes and will use his seniority to call out racism. He feels he can speak up against racism without fear of consequences. Thus, his racial identity shifts to internalization status with a commitment to his racial group. |
| “I know it does for me and it was just like one of those things if I could go back I definitely would have called them out on that. I don’t even have to be disrespectful but at least say something. | Assimilation – Ben offers that he would not “have to be disrespectful but at least say something.” Even if he does say something, he wants to stay within expected norms. In contrast, his white counterparts in Company X were unconcerned as the picture was shared with the group. |
| “So now that I’m older and I have more success and been doing this for a while and have a certain level of, I don’t really want to call it privilege because I don’t think I’m there yet but seniority. We’ll just call it that. I’m in a position now where I can speak and not be afraid to. And then, too, not just not be afraid to, but have the confidence to where like if they did let me go, okay, fine, I’ll just find another job. I’ve got 15 years’ experience at this point so finding a job won’t be hard so now that I have that I just feel like I have this almost responsibility to say something now.” | Antiracism, Authenticity and Internalization – Ben has the confidence to call out racism and will do so from a place of authenticity if placed in the position again. He is willing to put his job on the line to be an antiracist and combat racism because he knows his value as both a Black man and an engineer–a Black male engineer–and will not suffer in silence. Thus, his racial identity has developed into an internalization status within the workplace. |
| My final straw with this company was when “I was the team lead on the project and we ended up finishing the project successfully. And so that project as big, as visible as it was, the only thing I got from that project was a pin that my manager literally got from a gumball machine that said, ‘good job.’ That was it, no raise, no extra money, nothing. Literally, I’m watching other people around me get promoted for way less. So anyway, I made a point, when this happened I kind of knew okay, it’s time for me to go. So that was kind of my last straw and I decided to go ahead and, as LeBron says, take my talents elsewhere… | Racism/Authenticity – Ben was not rewarded for his hard work like he was promised. In the face of this racist behavior by his supervisors, Ben felt authentic by recognizing his talents and giving himself the agency to take action and leave the company altogether. He was in search of a company that would reward his talents. Authenticity – Ben understands his worth as an engineer. He sees his talent and recognizes that others will value him, even if this company does not. |
| “That feeling of pushing yourself and going and working that hard to just get a pin, a pin that they can put on your, a good job pin that you get out of a 25-cent gumball machine, that feeling, it was a horrible feeling. Especially when you see people around you that are doing way less get promoted and get all these opportunities for advancement, and I just was like, I’m not going to let that happen to me again. I’d rather quit a job, a good job than to have to have that feeling again.” | Authenticity – Ben felt authentic in his stance against the lack of promotion in his workplace. He states that he’d “rather quit a job, a good job, than to have that feeling again,” the feeling of working hard and not being rewarded. He recognizes his worth and will not let himself be treated unfairly again. |
| Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say | |
| “So I ended up going to this company called [Company Y]. So when I got there, they had hired a third party to write an app for them but that person quit. And so basically my manager was stuck in a situation, so I went to him and said, ‘you know what, I’m confident I could finish this project and bring it home.’ So my manager was like ‘man, if you do that I’m going to get you some [NBA] tickets, I’m going to give you a raise and all this and this’ so that of course doing that motivated me even more. | Authenticity – Ben feels authentic as an engineer. He knows his abilities and has the confidence that he can complete the project. |
| “I worked hard and it was challenging but I ended up getting it done. So we celebrated and they took us, as a team, they took us all out to like an [NBA] game. I think they like had a lunch for us or something. So anyway, once the celebration and the smoke cleared, I went to him and I was like, ‘okay, so what’s with my raise?’ His response was, ‘I’m sorry, it’s not in the budget. If I have to do it for you, I have to do it for everybody.’ And I got pissed, man, I was just like, ‘no, that ain’t what you said. You promised, you dangle a carrot under my nose saying you going to take care of me if I took lead, now you going back on your word.’ He was like ‘I’m sorry.’ | Racism – Ben sees the supervisor’s refusal to give him the promised raise as an act of racism. When the supervisor says he would have to give the raise to everyone, he devalues the contribution Ben made to this important project. |
| “I ended up leaving early and so later on that day he called me and he was just like, ‘I see you feel, the decision I made affected you.’ And I told him ‘yes it did’ and I explained that, what happened at [Company X] and how that made me feel and I said ‘like you’re doing the same thing even though I explained it to you before.’ So long story short he was like ‘well, I’m sorry you feel that way.’ So I told him, ‘well, I’m going to tell you now I’m not quitting but I’m telling you I’m not going to work a second over 40 hours for you ever again. I’m telling you now, when there’s an issue I’m going to come up with every excuse in the world why it can’t be done knowing it can be, and tell you now that I’m not going to dedicate myself at all, to overwork in anything and put any extra effort in the job that I do…’ So he asked me, he said, ‘well, are you putting in your resignation?’ I said, ‘no, I’m not quitting. No, I’m not putting in my resignation at all, I’m just letting you know now that from now on, this is what you’re going to get out of me.’ He said ‘okay.’ | Antiracism – With confidence, Ben stands up to his boss about the injustices in his workplace. He stopped putting in extra time and effort that goes unrewarded as a means of protest. |
| “Well, the next day, I woke up and I don’t know what came over me but I was just like, I knew we had, the product that we had just built, we had some bigwigs coming in to look at it, and he had some stuff he wanted me to do, a couple of changes he wanted to make. And I told him ‘I was sick I couldn’t do it.’ And he was ‘okay, when do you plan on coming back?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know. I got two weeks sick time, whenever I feel better, I’ll be back. I don’t know when that could be. It may be tomorrow; it may be two weeks. Whenever I feel better, I’ll call you and let you know. In the meantime, just wait until I call you to tell you that I’m better.’ And keep in mind, these are very strong words and very assertive words that I’m using. I definitely could’ve lost my job over it, for saying it. But in my mind, I had just had enough and I was just like, if I lose my job, fine, but I just won’t, I don’t have to do that and I’m not going to work for nobody like that ever again. I’m not going to ever feel like that at no other job ever, like what they did for me at [Company X] and how that made me feel. And I was just confident. And believe me, again, I knew full well that he could’ve easily like said, well, I’m going to let you go but I just didn’t care. I was just confident in myself I guess. So anyway he said, ‘okay, well, I hope you feel better.’ That was about 9 o’clock…he called me about 11 am and said, ‘I got to tell, I went and I talked to the CFO and we’re able to get you a $5,000 bonus’. And I was like, ‘cool, we can work with that, that’s good…’ | Antiracism and Internalization – Ben’s stance against his mistreatment in the workplace is shown through his confident protest against coming to work. His actions were antiracist in that he took action to protest against injustice. Although he knew he could lose his job over this, he did not care and internalized his identity and stance. He knew his value and that he could go somewhere that supported him. Authenticity – Ben is unwilling to ever again not stand up for himself. He is confident in his identity as a Black man to protest against future injustices. He is also confident in his identity as an engineer, knowing he could be fired but willing to take his chances. Left unsaid is that, like the situation with his previous company, he knows he can get a job somewhere else. |
| “…So then he was like ‘I know you’re sick, when will you be able to come back?’ My exact words was, ‘Shit, I’ll be back tomorrow.’” | Antiracism – Ben is successful in his efforts to call out his unfair treatment and receive the compensation he felt he deserved. |
| Gotta Represent | |
| “If I can do it anybody can and that was one of the other reasons that drove me to get a degree was just so I can be a voice to say, man, like this is something we can do, too. There’s plenty of people that’s way smarter than me. I’m doing this with just sheer work ethic, you know, if I actually had, you know, a lot of this given to me earlier, ain’t no telling where I would be, but I would just say if I can do it anybody can. We don’t see from a media standpoint or from a perception standpoint, when you see [my discipline] it’s hard to imagine Black men especially doing it. But we are, we here and we can and we definitely got the toolset. I’m telling you, a lot of people I work with, a lot of people of different races. I have been [outperforming] and then I’m just me so I can imagine like, you know, other guys doing the same. All these athletes, they literally just say I’m going to use my mental toughness and mental abilities in the same kind of approach that I take towards athletics. Let me take that same drive and put it in academics–we’ll run the world. So we[‘re] already superheroes, just look what we’ve accomplished. I think for us to be able to like endure slavery and the day slavery is over with, there’s no reparation check, no–okay, here’s a path you all can start going, 40 acres and a mule–nothing. Slavery’s over figure it out. And we figured it out. Got Jim Crow and all this–figure it out. Just to always be able to, always make something out of nothing, always having to over-prove yourself, always having to do way more.” | Anti/racism and Internalization – Ben is an antiracist, role model, and advocate for Black engineers to keep pursuing their careers. He sees his cultural capital and internalizes his identity to help other Black engineers. He recognizes that the media is biased based on race and does not portray engineers as diverse, which hinders underrepresented people’s ability to see themselves in that position. Authenticity/Internalization – Ben’s identities as a Black man and as an engineer are inseparable. By outperforming other engineers, he affirms his worth as a Black engineer. He also recognizes that the struggle is not just his alone but is a consequence of racism in the workplace. |