How White Supremacy Permeates Our Culture and Workplaces
A white woman’s experience propogating and falling victim to oppressive systems at work
For many, the notion that white supremacy is present within our organizations and workspaces is difficult to accept. I’ve known friends and colleagues to balk at the idea, and I understand why they’re resistant. We often work in places with friendly coworkers, leaders who have committed to DEI, and we tend not to see overt racist symbols, flags, or icons present in the office. Nevertheless, white supremacy permeates our workspaces and institutions in subtle and pervasive ways.
As a young, optimistic white woman in the mid-west, I started my career in management filled with fiery ambition and hope. I was raised on the notion that Corporate and professional workspaces were fair, inclusive, and meritocratic. And with no formal training in leadership, I found natural success through an ability to bring groups together and foster positive, progressive workspaces. But my optimism was short lived. In just a few years time, I began regularly encountering the effects of oppressive systems inherent to different professional spaces.
I would create intense engagement and loyalty from my direct reports, only to be eroded by the systemic bias and injustice that was inherent in the hierarchy of the organization. I soon found myself at the giving and receiving ends of unconscious bias in hiring. I’ve seen blatant (yet somehow unintentional) sexism and racism applied to compensation practices. And my credibility was regularly devalued in direct response to my support of under-represented groups. I’ve come to see just how pervasive these issues are, and it’s time we shed light on exactly how they work.
20 Years of Cracked Foundations
In 2001, Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun wrote an outstanding summation of what I and so many others have regularly (often unknowingly) experienced throughout our careers. The authors discuss the ever-elusive nature of culture and how its affects can be so damaging. They describe culture as simultaneously all encompassing and yet difficult to define. In this void of understanding, Jones and Okun provide 13 specific points that identify white supremacy in the culture of organizations. Now, twenty years after initial publication, when Black Lives Matter, DEI, and anti-racist efforts are again at the forefront of our collective conscience and saturate our corporate media, these 13 concepts outlined and explained by Jones and Okun could not be more relevant.
Jones and Okun describe the aspects of white supremacist culture in organizations as “damaging because they are used as norms and standards without being pro-actively named or chosen by the group” and that they “promote white supremacy thinking.” They clarify that white supremacy is “damaging to both people of color and to white people.” And as a working white woman, I can assure you that I have both been victim to and propagated white supremacist ideas without even realizing.
But the profound failure of white supremacy is the inherent truth that it damages all parties involved. It is more than the overt, gross behaviors and beliefs of the hateful and ignorant — in many ways, it has become the ‘air we breathe’ and served as a subconscious foundation to how we operate in professional spaces. And my belief is that the work of improving our cultures, institutions, and workspaces begins with a more universal awareness of each of these concepts, coupled with anecdotes detailing the negative effects they cast on standard American leadership and how to address them.
(Introspective Exercise: While reading these points, pay attention to your thoughts. Can you relate to the effect of these aspects of our culture? Do you find yourself resistant to these concepts?)
White Supremacy & Working Cultures
1. Perfectionism
Perfectionism in our organizations causes us to measure a person’s value solely on the quality of their output and the frequency of their mistakes. Instead of creating safety and space to learn from mistakes, they are viewed as a mark against the inherent value of a person within the organization.
In my experience, this sense of perfectionism devolves into a culture that needs to blame an individual (either publicly or behind closed doors) when something goes wrong instead of learning from that mistake. This creates teams that see setbacks as demotivating failures that can negatively impact productivity for months or years instead of seeing these setbacks as opportunities to grow, innovate, and pull together as a more engaged team.
What’s the solution? Believe in your inherent value outside of your productivity; Your belief will inform others on how to treat you. And when it comes to mistakes, acknowledge them, thank the individual for the opportunity to learn, lead the team or individual through an exercise in collectively owning the mistake and learning from it.
2. Sense of Urgency
This characteristic posits that there isn’t time to change the way we do things for the sake of creating a more diverse and inclusive workspace. It’s the idea that an all-white or all-male leadership team doesn’t have the time to poll their workforce (with greater diversity) before making a decision that lacks perspective and disproportionately benefits white men.
Most notably, I’ve seen this characteristic play out in hiring decisions over and over again. We didn’t have the time or money to create a broad sourcing strategy, or to find more classes to be represented in final interview stages.
Awareness is our greatest tool when combatting a sense of urgency. Good leaders educate themselves on the business case for diversity (because it’s been proven). They commit to diverse and inclusive strategies and account for the time and planning needed to honor those goals.
3. Defensiveness
Defensiveness is ‘the shield of the privileged’ which is used against a critic with less power. When critics are reasonable or attempt to hold someone in power accountable, defensiveness can be used to gaslight and turn the tables. It’s woven into the culture that an attack on leadership (whether constructive or not) is rude and inappropriate.
As humans, we all make mistakes. There are also an unfathomable number of ways to complete a task. It’s perfectly reasonable to accept critique and accountability given this complexity. And yet, defensiveness among leaders in our organizations is rampant. Even when critical mistakes are made, defensiveness is utilized to shift blame to the critic and avoid taking responsibility for their mistakes.
Defensiveness is difficult to overcome. We can take a huge step towards progress by identifying our defensiveness and practice accepting critique with curiosity instead of complaint. Jones and Okun also suggest that the structure of power within organizations prevents those in leadership from from fair facilitation and prevention of abuse. It can be powerful in situations of conflict to have a neutral party that can facilitate greater understanding while navigating imbalances of power between those involved.
4. Quantity over Quality
Have you ever noticed that we don’t measure the quality of relationships built in business settings? Even for jobs where success relies heavily on the quality of relationships with customers, vendors, or business partners, we measure sales or cost-down goals instead of the human connection. Measuring relationships is slightly more nebulous than our traditional measurements, but when the fields of psychology or human resources creates measurable data from these seemingly intangible human characteristics, business still places less importance on their findings than on their beloved ROI.
Throughout my career, I have been told that the fierce loyalty and production quality I could engender in my employees was unnecessary. The strength of my relationships was never worth validating, measuring, or considered in my compensation. Working in small businesses throughout my career, I can tell you that each founder took the depth and quality of my relationships for granted. They felt the loss of that employee engagement and loyalty when I moved on. I do not say this egotistically, it is a fact that any of my coworkers can attest to. I wish this was not the case. I wish that when I left a company, someone else would be there to understand that the intense intrinsic motivation of each employee is there for the taking, if you simply have the care to unlock it.
The solution to ‘quantity over quality’ is to remember the value of the process and the little conversations that happen in the lunch room or between meetings. A good example of this is catering to someone with a disability in a meeting or team. As a neurodivergent myself, I see the world a bit differently and I would occasionally need things explained or organized in a different way when working with other leadership. Instead of seeing this process as a burden, see it as an opportunity. The process of hashing out the details or providing more context for understanding also cements the topic for others. It provides space for different world views and perspectives to interact with the topic at hand and help the group as a whole create better solutions. While at face value my need in a meeting looks like a setback, it is in fact a strength, as well as the solution to this characteristic of white supremacy.
5. Worship of the Written Word
This characteristic has two components: That greater value is placed on written documentation more than any other form of information sharing (even when verbal methods are more effective for the situation), AND the belief that there is only one right way to complete something.
Most notably I’ve seen this play out in organizations with too many experts and too much ego. When you have several competent people working to solve a problem, the person with the most ego or the most hierarchical status and power will take charge of the group. There are usually several viable solutions to the problem but the lead ego has every incentive to take charge and claim that their way is the only way. Adherence to the first component requires that the solution is documented and the project’s leader is only going to document their favorite solution. It’s a self-enforcing cycle where the cultural value for written presentation promotes the person most willing to claim that there is one right way of doing things. The more humble, open minded, or less polished in written presentation are far more likely to be judged as incorrect in their potential solutions and deemed less qualified. In this environment, diverse opinions will begin to shut down and the organization will only benefit from one approach.
The alternative approach to this situation accepts the reality that there are many ways to do something. With this premise in mind, a group can be open to all the alternatives and optimize a solution based on the most significant contexual parameters. In this approach, there’s space for learning. There’s safety in suggesting a hair-brained solution because there are many possibilities. The organization can benefit from a diverse range of perspectives and possible solutions.
6. Paternalism
This characteristic will be difficult for those in hierarchical positions of power to understand. But if you’ve managed individual contributors or remember what it’s like to be one, you know well the grumbling that happens when decision making doesn’t make sense to the lower levels of the organizations. The most notable to me (because I took the complaints) are decisions not to invest in daily quality of life amenities for an office (think air conditioning, proper supplies, PPE, benefits, etc.). Paternalism in practice is a leadership team that doesn’t see the value in understanding the perspectives of it’s lowest level contributors in the company. And man are they making a huge mistake.
EVERY company I’ve ever worked in compromised their employee’s belief that the company cared about them AT ALL in order to save a few dollars. And when the complaints inevitably came in, I collected loyalty personally with my genuine care. In most cases I was unable to transfer this loyalty and engagement to the company because leadership didn’t want to consider another perspective.
The solution to this isn’t difficult. Genuine, human connection and care for your fellow human being (yes even if they’re a lifelong individual contributor) is a great start. Aside from care, organizations can explain their decision making to those not in positions of power. Middle level management and individual contributors benefit from understanding why and how decisions are made. And a leadership team that opens themselves up to potential criticism or accountability, also allows space for their decision making methodology to be questioned and therefore improve over time.
7. Either, Or Thinking
Either/Or Thinking is the moralistic judgement of every detail of our lives. It only includes space for something to be good or bad, right or wrong, in-group or out-group, instead of acknowledging spectrums and other forms of value. It is simplistic. It is the reason we struggle to allow ourselves to feel multiple things at once and evaluate competing ideas.
A conversation with a friend during the holiday season in 2020 comes to mind. She described struggling with the “conflict within her feelings.” She was pushing forward in her career and had so much to be grateful for. Simultaneously, several members of her extended family had recently passed away. With 2020 barely behind us, we can all relate to comparing our suffering to the pain of others and the need for gratitude. Either/Or thinking denies us the ability to embrace complexity. We can be ambitious at work and proud of our advances while simultaneously grieving the loss of loved ones or our previous way of life (regardless of how small these changes might be).
When you see Either/Or thinking at work, dig deeper. Make space for more ideas, creative thinking, nuance, and more thorough analysis.
8. Power Hoarding
Within a typical organization, a few select individuals have the power to make most of the decisions. They do this because they believe that they are the most informed, most intelligent, most experienced, and most deserving, making them the clear choice to steer the organization on its future course. This characteristic is the additional belief that power is limited and must be hoarded in order to protect this precious decision making process. Power Hoarding is an insecurity about the finite nature of power dressed up in a confident sense of superiority.
This scarcity mindset around power alienates others within the organization and demotivates them from sharing innovative ideas.
True leadership is standing securely in the belief that power is infinite, and the more you share with your team, the more you can build together.
9. Fear of Open Conflict
Constructive conflict can be an amazing source of growth and innovation. I’ve seen many engineers embrace constructive conflict and create better solutions for it. But as soon as these individuals apply constructive criticism or conflict to the more social aspects of their organizations, they’re maligned, seen as impolite or rude, or even blamed directly for the issue instead of accepting the potential merits of the criticism.
White Supremacists cultures place great care on being polite and avoiding conflict to its own detriment. I have found myself as highly valued in early stage companies where my blunt honestly is a considerable asset. Inevitably, culture progresses and the environment becomes inhospitable for my honest view. There’s a clear progression in these organizations where the culture becomes more polite and everyone operates behind a mask to avoid inciting conflict and ended up in the hot seat for bringing up the wrong topic.
Conflict isn’t difficult to navigate. Avoiding this characteristic comes down to practicing handling conflict and reserving anger or blame until after a criticism has been fully considered.
10. Individualism
Individualism is a pretty clear force within our culture and most of us understand it fairly well. It’s characterized by a greater comfort level working alone than as a part of a group (interesting that we use the term ‘individual contributor’), sole problem solving, a lack of accountability, little practiced ability to delegate to others and extreme value placed on individuals who can work without supervision or collaboration. Oh, and don’t forget competition and isolation.
Take a moment to feel what’s been written above. You work in an environment where your value is constantly being measured, you’re blamed harshly if you present a critic that’s too strong, and yet, within the tech industry, you’re expected to push boundaries, innovate, and participate in a learning culture. All the while, you’re trying to get ahead in your career and find recognition as an individual. These forces are at complete odds with each other. When it becomes too much, we tend to isolate and have difficulty trusting or coworkers.
We can find improved productivity and accountability by decentralizing decision making and problem solving. Instead of recognizing the accomplishments of the most prominant member of a group, organizations can measure its members based on their ability to work together towards a goal and recognize the accomplishments of all members within a group. The group can take ownership and accountability for both the failings and its successes. This creates trust instead of unnecessary competition.
11. Progress is “Bigger, More”
The way that our organizations determine success is largely based on the measurement of progress without much evaluation of cost. I’ve seen this quite a bit in manufacturing. Someone in middle management will improve production by substantial margins, but no one stops to evaluate this progress in relationship to its costs. Were these gains obtained through the reduction of quality of life in the staff? If so, the organization doesn’t quantify the value that is lost in this exchange. They’ll even deny that any value was lost, right up until the point that they have a union, strike, or mass walk off.
The process used to obtain progress is important, and if we take the time to evaluate it we can avoid the pitfalls of progress for the sake of progress. Another helpful tool is to consider how progress will affect the company in several years. Will your decisions now, made in the pursuit of progress, negatively impact the morale and perception of the companies values for a new employee who joins in five to ten years?
12. Objectivity
Most of the business owners, founders, and leadership team members I’ve worked with wield condescension over their employees. They feel that they’re value system, way of life, and ability to make decisions is superior in its logic and objectivity. This group tends to plan further ahead, have intense discipline in their work, and are able to produce results consistently through shear force of will. None of these attributes are bad, but they aren’t objectively better than other value structures. What about self acceptance? What about family? What if you face a disability or social status that severely hinders your ability to behave like this CEO/leadership group?
The condescension leads to caste and status systems within organizations. If you’ve ever worked in manufacturing, you’ve heard the term ‘carpet walkers’ used to describe the privileged few who work in comfortable, climate-controlled, and carpeted offices while the real production happens in uncomfortable settings. We’ve accepted this divide as a natural part of business, but it doesn’t have to be.
The reality is that we each have a slightly different world view, set of priorities, and personal values. If you’re in leadership, stop yourself when you judge another person against your personal worldview. It is not inherently better than any other person’s way of life. And if you’re in middle management or even just starting out, don’t let others tell you that their way is superior. Challenge their perception of objectivity and superior logic.
13. Right to Comfort
This characteristic is “the belief that those with power have a right to emotional and psychological comfort.” The subtle need and expectation of comfort comes between good intentions and true action. Instead of doing the uncomfortable work of valuing fair but harshly worded critics, those in power scapegoat the offending critic.
I have seen many examples of this where a leader feels uncomfortable and they work to center their psychological needs at the expense of those around them. It invalidates the experiences of marginalized communities within the organization and the group takes note of how the leader responds to the inciting and uncomfortable conflict. The new understanding of the cultural norms (affected by the leader’s response) creates an environment with less psychological safety for those without power and therefore hinders innovation and the pursuit of a learning culture.
These issues can be prevented by acknowledging that growth and learning come from discomfort and practice taking things less personally. Education helps both leaders and marginalized communities. It is powerful to understand how your feelings and discomfort fit into a larger picture of political and cultural oppression. As the potential critic or scapegoat in this scenario, education can also be used to clearly define a leader’s behavior when they attempt to find psychological safety.
I help women in tech become leaders despite working in white supremacist cultures. Apply for my 1:1 private coaching program if you’d like to work with me.
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