Mike Chitty

Helping realise development since 1986

Diversity, Inclusion and Power

33 Ways (and counting) that ‘Whiteness’ Works

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White in a black frame
Whiteness

I started in anti racism when some of my favourite musicians starting playing gigs in the late 70s for the Anti Nazi League and Rock against Racism and I was ‘just seventeen’, if you know what I mean. It was not long after Bowie had declared that ‘Britain is ready for a Fascist leader’.

In the 80s I trained as a Teacher when the impacts of race, class and gender on educational attainment and child development were taught rather than the mechanics of the national curriculum. It was the time of the miners’ strike and the North/South divide in the UK was wide.

In the 90s I worked in black, village schools in rural West Africa in an old British colony before coming back to Leeds to raise a family and build a career. I had some theory as well as a little practice and experience under my belt.

But no-one had re-framed the challenges of anti-racist practice with the study of ‘whiteness’ and how it operates until Tracie Jolliff introduced it to me at the NHS Leadership Academy perhaps 5 years ago. It has shaped my practice and my observations and reflections ever since.

Now I will ask leadership teams and boards to have a good look at how ‘whiteness’ operates in their culture. Because until we can start to see ‘whiteness’ as an ‘operating system’ and start to re-write some of its code, it will keep being extractive. It will keep producing inequities.

More recently working with Pauline Mayers on ‘Lessons From Henrietta Lacks’ has helped me to see a bit more of how my own whiteness operates as part of the wider system. Heather Nelson at the Black Health Initiative in Leeds too has helped me to look in the mirror. And Whiteness has also had me in its sights. “If you are going to do ant-racist work you will have your baptism of fire”. You will have many baptisms…

By ‘whiteness’ I don’t mean all white people. As Professor Kehinde Andrews has said ‘whiteness is not just for whites’. I mean a system of cultural and historical assumptions about hierarchy, power, objectivity, logical positivism, duality (whiteness is happier with black and white rules not shades of grey, nuance, wisdom and judgement) and patriarchy that are so deeply enmeshed in many ‘white’ cultures that they pass invisibly as ‘how things are’.

I have started to look for clues about how whiteness works. Signs of whiteness at work. In myself. In the organisations I work with, and for. In the communities and societies that I am a part of. That are a part of me. They are clues, not laws, or rules or truths.

  1. Whiteness looks for and at what is wrong with colour
  2. Whiteness commissions or supports people of colour to sort out ‘what is wrong’ (provide special course for people of colour, set up networks, write reports)
  3. When Whiteness experiences dissent or challenge it frames it as a threat and defaults to power and hierarchy over compassion and listening
  4. Whiteness likes to be taught by colour (What should we do?)
  5. Whiteness finds reflecting on itself difficult – it often triggers guilt and shame rather than hope and opportunities to change
  6. Whiteness often blames victims (if we feed the children they will become dependent)
  7. Whiteness polices tone – ‘calm down…’
  8. Whiteness when it feels threatened punishes
  9. Whiteness invites people to learn and when the learning becomes powerful, painful and the Zone of Uncomfortable Debate is entered with accompanying emotion, they close it down or punish the ones expressing their pain
  10. Whiteness values compliance over dissent
  11. Whiteness ‘does to’ rather than stands alongside
  12. Whiteness rarely looks hard at itself
  13. Whiteness learns slowly because it already knows how to look after itself
  14. Whiteness values self development over self sacrifice
  15. Whiteness exercises ‘power over’ in preference to ‘power with’ or ‘power to’
  16. Whiteness holds on to its power
  17. Whiteness sees itself apart from the system rather than as a part of the system
  18. Whiteness prefers domination to collaboration; competition to cooperation
  19. Whiteness is used to ‘winning’; getting its way
  20. Whiteness is trapped in its own miserable, extractive, consumerist nightmare of progress
  21. Whiteness finds it hard to see its paradigm of privilege
  22. Whiteness manipulates through psychological safety and self supporting cliques
  23. Whiteness recognises as intelligence/wisdom the products of white normative educational and developmental processes. It tends not to recognise the product of other non-white developmental norms.
  24. Whiteness claims inclusion and compassion – while presiding over enormous inequalities and violence
  25. Whiteness shies away from complexity and nuance in favour of evidence
  26. Whiteness tends to divide the mind from the body
  27. Whiteness encourages us to privilege certain world views and to dismiss others as unscientific, or not evidenced
  28. whiteness upon learning of the pain/trauma of others will become the emotional ‘victim’ needing comfort thus derailing the conversation and focus back to themselves
  29. Whiteness upon learning of the pain/trauma it causes others will become the emotional ‘victim’ needing comfort and thus derailing the conversation and putting the focus back to themselves
  30. Whiteness starts with white as the default. It then uses categorisation and tick boxes to fragment people, shift them away from default and identify them in more and more ways as Not Normal. To hide intersectionality by counting variables that it can then treat as ‘independent’.
  31. Whiteness prizes ‘knowledge’, but is very clear about the forms that it finds acceptable – fetishising a narrow field of science and turning away from epistemological positions that doesn’t privilege it.
  32. Whiteness sees ‘BAME’ as a ‘background’. In the foreground it sees opportunity.
  33. Whiteness prefers to see racism as an individual, personal act, an event that can be condemned – rather than as a structure of its making for its own convenience and power.

What have I missed?

Be A Better Leader – Ruby Ubhi

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If you prefer to watch your podcasts then this is for you!

I met Ruby at the NHS Leadership Academy in Leeds where we both work on various programmes. Ruby is a talent and leadership developer an executive coach, facilitator speaker and pracademic – practitioner and an academic!

We come from different generations, different backgrounds, different cultures, and different cities. In this podcast we explore what has shaped us and what continues to shape us in our leadership practice.

We talk about doing and being, collusion, Born to Run, race, gender and what growing up taught us. We also talk about social mobility, straddling two worlds and the pain that can involve…

Me and White Supremacy – Part 3 – Tone Policing

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Police - taking the knee? Or preparing for conflict?
Taking the knee? Preparing for conflict? Setting the Tone?

Tone policing is the subject of ‘Day 3’ of Layla F Saad’s “Me and White Supremacy”. The book is designed to be read, by white people, one section a day, but I am progressing at less than a section a week. There is not that much to read, but there is lots to think about – especially when I have over 50 years of ‘lived experience’ of my own ‘whiteness’ to reflect on. Also, times are so ‘heightened’ with C19, and the statue of Colston having just been deposited into the harbour where his slave ships used to dock.

There was a lot of anger and violence on display this weekend – at least – a lot compared to the usual reserved ‘Britishness’. We usually prefer our violence to take place on foreign shores or sports fields and to be state sanctioned and ‘lawful’ rather than ‘civil unrest’. There was the anger on the streets and the anger in the media that it provoked in response. Accusations of ‘criminal damage’ as graffiti on his statue labelled Churchill a racist and Colston was ‘got in the sea’.

We had discussed whether to join the protests in Leeds and decided on balance that we wouldn’t. Partly because we don’t want to risk contributing to a second C19 wave, but also partly because after many years of marching and protesting and so little to see for it I wondered if my energy and experience might not be put to better effect? To work on changing me rather than raging at the machine – again. And as I watched the news coverage of the protests unfold I do remember hoping that things remained ‘dignified’ and ‘lawful’. Tone policing in my own head? Yes. But also hoping for the promised land of a peaceful protest that leads to lasting change.

About as likely as hen’s teeth and unicorn poop.

For several years I had watched the campaigns in Bristol to rename Colston Hall and remove his statue, or least add a plaque to it describing the role of slavery in enabling his commercial and philanthropic largesse. But, as I understand it, a form of words could not be agreed. So nothing happened. Until this weekend, when neither tone nor direct action were policed.

I have not been comfortable with conflict. I avoid it. I minimise it. I believe it does not ‘help’. As a physicist I learned that every force is met by an equal and opposite force. Anger and hatred from one side induces anger and hatred from the other. No matter how righteous or justified the emotion is, it is unlikely to be helpful. That was perhaps the nature of my inner ‘tone police’.

And perhaps I am uncomfortable with conflict because I never really had to engage in it? Home was generally a calm and non-violent place. It wasn’t until I was well into my 20s that I witnessed police brutality at first hand and saw in the coal fields of Yorkshire what conflict really looked like. And this perhaps is a part of white privilege. For many of us, most of the time, not having to fight to be heard? To be fed. To be housed. Being ‘reasonable’ was enough. We had to work hard. But for black, asian and other minority ethnic communities working hard and being reasonable was nowhere near enough.

Much of my work these days, especially in the Reciprocal Mentoring for Inclusion Programme is about discomfort. The discomfort of learning things about the impacts of our white British history. Who paid the price for our libraries and concert halls. And who continue to pay the price.

Over the last couple of weeks I have listened to the horrific stories of three muslims and a Sikh. All work in the NHS. All with awful experiences of racism in the NHS and in the communities where they live. These stories were difficult to hear – because I too want to Love the NHS – and hearing how ill it makes some of those who work for it is tough. I came away from the first two of those conversations feeling ashamed, powerless, unclear about what to do next. Not knowing how to help. The privilege of thinking I might be able to help…

As the third story came to a close I shared how I was feeling and how I had felt after the other two conversations. The shame, the powerlessness, the helplessness. And I was told that I would never understand how much it helped just to listen to these stories. To let them be told and to hear them without judging or denying – just accepting. Can that really be enough?

And I took that into my fourth conversation…

Me and White Supremacy – part 1 – White Privilege

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The Basics – White Privilege

In what ways do I hold white privilege?

In many ways. If I am at a meeting, especially of senior leaders, then most of them will share my gender and ethnicity. When I see role models in the media many of them will be white. If I apply for a job or bid for work it is highly likely that those selecting will be from my ethnic groups. Since childhood to be white was to be ‘the norm’.

Growing up in the 60s in the rural home counties any skin colour but white was seen as a rarity. I had to choose whether to be racist or anti-racist. Arthur Ashe or Buster Mottram? National Front or Anti Nazi League and Rock against Racism? It was not a choice my black school mates had.

When I go through Peggy Macintosh’s list of the items that structure white privilege in a day to day and very practical way – yes they all apply. All the time. And they work differently in different contexts and at different times. Even when I lived in a rural village in The Gambia in sub-saharan Africa my white privilege was still with me.

The fact that I can afford to take my own skin colour for granted is an enormous white privilege. It was never a source of worry or fear. Or pride for that matter. I could safely ignore it. However by ignoring my skin colour I was also blinded to the power of whiteness. To my own white power.

I thought white power was a ridiculous, white supremacists’ chant rather than something that directly and unfairly benefitted me.

What negative experiences has white privilege protected me from throughout my life?

I have always had easy access to the culture of my own ethnic group. Even when I lived in sub-saharan Africa, while I physically did not see many white people in the village I could easily tune the radio to access my own culture. So I never felt that my culture was denied or absent in my life. It was always the dominant culture. The successful culture. It has only been in recent years that China has emerged as a global power to seriously threaten the dominance of Caucasians.

I was in The Gambia for just over a year, and for much of that time it was quite difficult to meet another white person. There were a couple of Peace Corps in the village and generally The Gambia was full of ex-pats, but generally I lived and socialised with Gambians; Mandinka, Wolof, Jola, Serahule and Fula. And I learned that Gambia is the shape it is because of the way Africa was divided post war, largely using rulers and compasses, ands how the imposition of borders in the Sahara had made apparently made very little difference to the day to day life in tribal West Africa. I remember walking one day up to the border with Senegal. Just sand. But even here my whiteness protected me from some of the racism that black Africans from other countries received from Gambians. I remember one teacher had walked from Cameroon to the The Gambia to take up a teaching post and he got a hard time because he was not of the Gambia or from one of the local tribes. I was protected from all that because of my association with power and money that came with my skin colour.

I don’t think I have ever been discriminated against unfairly because of my ethnicity – again even in West Africa to be white was seen to bestow power; education and access to networks and resources.

I have never been subjected to violence because of my skin colour. For my politics and football allegiances yes – but never skin colour.

In what ways have I wielded my white privilege over black, indigenous and people of colour?

I find this question hard to answer. I know I have often been invited to speak with BAME networks and feel guilty when I am the white man at the front of the room teaching the BAME networks about power and empowerment. I always feel conflicted in this work as historical power structures are re-created. I have always tried to name it and to talk about it – but even my choice to do that is an exercise in white privilege.

I don't like the acronym BAME but don't know what else might work.
Layla F Saad uses BIPOC meaning Black, indigenous and people of colour but again that does not feel appropriate for me to use.  Getting used to the inadequacy of words, their clumsiness and the vulnerability they bestow on the user who as at the edge is another thing that those of with white privilege, using our first language to explore our concepts of race,  perhaps don't experience that often.

In political processes I have always supported the candidates who most closely fit with my political beliefs rather than perhaps vote for the person or party most likely to pursue racial justice. I wold NEVER vote or someone who was overtly racist – but I perhaps have never gone deeply enough into the record of politicians on anti-racism.

I have competed with BAME people for jobs and tenders without ever really considering the privileges I enjoy in that competition.

What have I learned about my white privilege that makes me uncomfortable?

I think the thing that makes me most uncomfortable about it is that it is slippery, evasive, structural as well as personal and difficult for me to see. Whiteness is like an invisible superpower. I feel like a fish coming to terms with water.

I was involved to small degree back in the late 70s and early 80s with movements like Rock against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League. However I realise now that while that was helpful in uncovering and combatting overt racism it did little to explore and reveal the more subtle and structural racism that patterns our society. That pattern me. It was as simple as ‘good white people and their black allies’ against the ‘bad white people’.

Whenever I try to work in a way that I hope is ‘anti-racist’ it feels like an expression of privilege and hubris. Even writing as honestly as I can about the reflections prompted by the book I have this nagging sense of doubt. Doubting my own intentions in this exercise of privilege.

Who am I to think I can help? Especially uninvited…

But then who would I be to do nothing?