Workplace hate speech and rendering Black and Native lives as if they do not matter: A nightmarish autoethnography

Abstract

The #BlackLivesMatter movement has been met with resistance and hostility by many whites who do not see the need for assertions regarding the value and worth of Black lives. Those who seek to disrupt this emerging discourse tend to regard instances of white violence against Black people as individual incidents that do not reflect larger societal patterns. This paper addresses these assertions by drawing on discussions of slurs and other racially abusive language in the workplace. Using autoethnography, I provide rich descriptions of how hateful language circulates in whitespaces through both interpersonal interactions and through group-level consumption of racially problematic mass media creating organizations that are hostile to people of color, even in their absence. Major implications of this study include that the devaluation of Black and Native lives is pervasive within many predominantly white organizations and that this reality negatively effects both the life chances and the personal safety of people of color.