Impacts and resistance to racist action
We noted above that 77% of respondents have experienced or witnessed racism in the last five years. In this section, the emphasis is on the consequences of these experiences for Black and Minoritised Ethnic people, and acts of resistance undertaken by them in response. It is important to record both harms and responses, both as part of honouring people’s experiences and to inform efforts towards a more humane and life-affirming civil society.
The most immediate impact reflected in the survey was an overwhelming sense of the harm caused by racist action. Eighty-nine per cent[1] of respondents noted the negative impact on their mental and physical health, and a further 74%[2] felt that the experience had had detrimental effects on their career progress.
Respondents spoke about how these two types of impacts – on mental health and career – can work in tandem.
I experienced significant personal distress and was off sick due to stress during this period of time. I experienced acute anxiety and depression. Professionally I had to leave the sector and reframe my professional development … into a new sector. I am now redeveloping myself and feel like my progression in the charity sector was stalled and I have now fallen behind in terms of what I could have achieved.
Another person stated that:
The personal impact included loss of confidence, anxiety, and panic attacks. I had to leave the role, seek support through family and friends, and eventually found the confidence to go back into the job market at a lower role.
What comes through in these quotes is not only the real damage done at the time – including the additional burden of having to move out of a role. In addition, in both cases, respondents carried a sense of loss over what could have been.
In both of the examples above, self-preservation in the face of racist hostility required that the respondents left their role, and in one case, the sector. But elsewhere it may be that people stay and continue as best they can. In the words of one contributor:
Personal [impacts of racism] – trust issues, do not interact closely with many people around me; professional [impacts] – overachieving in my role, did not seek to progress into higher (e.g., management) roles.
This example shows how a competent individual impacted by racism may remain within an organisation but may, understandably, not really be present or have a sense of belonging or a feeling of being wanted there. The organisation retains an overperforming worker while the development of a Black or Minoritised Ethnic person is curtailed compared with white counterparts.
Staying in an organisation where one has experienced or witnessed racism and continuing to deliver can be an act of defiance. But it comes at a cost:
68% of respondents have felt the need to ‘tone down’ their behaviour or to be on their ‘best behaviour’ in order to fit into mainstream civil society.[3]
The same percentage of respondents have felt that they need to ‘outperform’ their white British counterparts to make comparable progress in mainstream civil society.
Both pressures – to tone down or to outperform – are forms of ‘covering’. Covering is the act of concealing who one is, e.g. by self-censoring or trying to be ‘flawless,’ in a setting to get by and get on. In the context of ‘race’ and racism, it can impose on Black and Minoritised Ethnic people a need to conform to white standards and ideas about professionalism and self-presentation.
While covering can enable a Black or Minoritised Ethnic individual to advance within mainstream civil society, it is a form of discrimination that does not look like discrimination. It prevents people from being who they are, to the detriment of physical and mental health.[4]
The need to cover places the burden of dealing with racism on Black or Minoritised Ethnic individuals. And it can lead to a sense of disillusionment about mainstream civil society. Indeed, 77% of survey respondents feel that mainstream civil society fails to live up to its stated values and principles in its treatment of Black and Minoritised Ethnic people. One survey participant described the sense of disappointment on realising that their organisation and its leaders were not all that they seemed:
I felt incredibly let down by an organisation whose values I believed in and who, until this point, I believed to have leadership who acted in accordance with those values.
In the face of racism, survey respondents have experienced harms and a sense of disappointment that mainstream civil society does not live up to its advertised standards and values. They have resisted either by exiting their organisation where possible or by staying put and performing. But through such unresolved experiences of racism, trust is breached and a connection between organisations and Black or Minoritised Ethnic individuals is lost.
The next section explores in more detail how leaders and organisations have, or have not, gone about trying to prevent problems of racism in the first place and attended to issues when they arise.
[1] 54 of 61 responses to the question.
[2] 45 of 61 responses to the question.
[3] 75 of 110 responses to the question.
[4] For example, see Yoshino, K. (2006) Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights, New York: Random House.
