Managing white women working in a team of non-white women in a time of white supremacy.
Another day, another White woman’s performance art… I’M BLUDCLARRRRRT TYAD AH IT!
The tears…the accusations… the defensiveness …the superiority…the faux outrage… the saviour complex…the unconscious bias.
I think that seeing everything through a racialised lens is absolutely necessary and never more so than in this climate of a “hostile environment ”. Racism’s back like it never left the UK and guess why that is? because it never actually left, so it’s no surprise to me that our parents and grandparents are being told “Time’s up! back on the f%&*@ banana boat for you…Thanks for your help building our NHS and driving our buses but yeah, you can f&** off back to Jamaica now, the immigration van’s waiting outside.”
The visibility of Black women is everything and I want white women to start DOING the work! You should all know by now that it is not enough to not be racist (first though, please go and do your research and find out what racism actually is because not enough of you know). You need to be ANTI- racist and call it out in your families, your friends group and in your workplaces! Tell your best friend that she can’t share that meme with the N word in it just because her boyfriend’s Black, tell your Nana we don’t say “darkie” anymore and the next time you go to The Entertainer with your child buy them a Black doll.
Know this, when you come to my nursery I WANT you to SEE my Blackness and before you attend this interview I want you to do the necessary research as you should before you enter into any prospective place of work and look at my nursery’s website. Look at the beautiful Black and Brown faces of the children you see on it and I beg, go to the ‘meet the team’ page and have a look there too… Is this the nursery for you? Come then.
At present, as I type this, I have three staff members who are racialised as white, all of whom are Spanish but unfortunately their whiteness hasn’t prevented them from feeling the wrath of the “hostile environment”. It is because of the thickness of their accents, the “funny tinge” of their complexions and the misinterpretations of their reactions and responses. Each have recounted times that they feel that their competency has been questioned, their respective qualifications challenged and they just couldn’t put their fingers on why, but they’d noticed a trend amongst the people who often make them feel as if they were not quite equal… and yes, they were…
They are obviously left upset, they are shocked and they lose confidence. Their communication with the children has been brought into question as well as other things, but I point out to them quite casually in the spirit of “welcome to my world” that unfortunately this is the attitude of some white women who assume superiority. It’s a sign of the times but we will always fight the good fight and I will be your advocate… However, this is not the oppression olympics … I digress…
Invariably, when I interview white women for the post of childcare practitioner, modern apprentice or student on placement I always probe the candidate about race and cultural awareness within the Early Years sector. I will see how knowledgeable they are on the topic in the same way I question their knowledge around safeguarding or the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). I have had these responses to the topic in my near 16 years:
“I mean, I love all children, doesn’t make a difference to me if theym yellow or purple” – Brummie accent, in case you couldn’t tell.
“My husband/boyfriend’s mixed race and plus I’m Irish! My family’s Irish! We love Black people!” – every single white woman of Irish heritage that I have ever interviewed.
“I did charity work in Ghana during my gap year” – student with a home counties accent who is studying at a local University.
*Candidate goes bright red at my mentioning the importance of cultural awareness and the racial make up of my setting* – A 17 year old modern apprentice.
*Candidate gives me a blank stare at my mentioning the importance of cultural awareness and the racial make up of my setting*- Qualified Practitioner who’s worked in a nursery round the corner for 5 years that’s attached to a private school.
None, not one of these responses is what I am looking for, but on the odd occasions where white women have responded without one of these stupidities they have been given a go and ultimately spent time working at the nursery. The longest a white woman has lasted thus far has been 13 years… and I say lasted because there is something interesting about how some of the white women who I have managed respond when they have become immersed within an Early Years setting where their line manager is a Black woman, their senior is a Black woman and the owner of the business is a Black woman. Not to mention that they are always the minority in a team of 15 non- white women and up until the point that they’ve been pulled up about some matter pertaining to their performance they’ve been quite happy in their job. As long as I don’t actively ‘manage’ them they’re ok. It’s always at that exact point of ‘managing’ them that I have seen these interesting reactions. I’ve experienced it all…harassment in emails from the mothers of white women – I will not infantilise them either because you’re not a little white girl to me, you’re a woman who I have employed. I’ve had to phone the police on the partners of White women who have come to the nursery demanding I speak to them, sorry hun, you’re not my employee your wife is, tell her to attend her disciplinary meeting. I’ve had the threat of employment tribunal because of race discrimination from a white woman… I mean, it’s all laughable and mad… truly, truly mad… funnily enough though I’ve never had this extremism of rebuttal from my ‘ethnic’ staff … never this outrage for simply being managed by me because alas, if you don’t wipe the child’s nose and snot is streaming from it i’m going to tell you to pay attention and wipe it. Fast.
Before I go any further I feel it’s only right I tell you that my team is composed of people who are Black and Brown. We’re Muslim and we’re Christian, we’re ‘hijabed’ and we’re ‘head scarved’ we chat the finest Patois, Spanish, Urdu, Queens English and Slang. We have beat faces, nails, gold teeth, tattoos, shapely bodies, big earrings and loud laugh. We kiss our teeth and we eat curry, oxtail, samosas, and spaghetti bolognese with a banana on the side on our lunch breaks.
If you’re a white woman and you’re reading this I want you to think about how many occasions in your life that you’ve worked in a staff team that sounds like this in the UK… tell me how many times in your professional career your line manager or the owner of the organisation or business that you‘ve worked for has been a Black woman and then I want you to ask yourself how you would feel working in an environment where you were the minority?
If you are a Black or Brown woman, if you are an East /Southeast Asian woman, if you define your heritage as being non-white and you’ve never worked for / been managed by or worked exclusively amongst people who look like you. If you’ve known how it feels to code switch when you’ve walked into work or answer questions about your “ever - changing hairstyle” or “what’s that smelly thing you’re eating for lunch?” for the millionth time … how does this feel?
Now imagine, how much of a luxury it would feel to go to work and not be challenged over some bullshit that you know you didn’t do or be the recipient of a white woman’s tears and accusations. Imagine you work in an environment which gets your cultural nuances, appreciates and acknowledges your lived experiences and doesn’t respond with “REALLY!! That happened to you?”…Can you tell I’m tired?
Part of my role, as I see it, is to create an environment for my team which is one of a real feel of “squad” not inclusion (because i’m fucking tired of how this word has been corporately co-opted along with “diversity”, or football’s “No room for racism” and all of the other BS… ) Throw it all in the tokenism bin.
White supremacy is alive and well in the workplace and I’m always finding myself navigating this and helping my practitioners to do the same when I throw white women in the mix of my team. There’s ALWAYS SOMETHING and I’m recognising it less as unconscious bias and more as straight up racism.
The micro - aggressions of whiteness are violent. They’re tiresome and they distract from the job of caring for children. You have to constantly coddle and tone police or explain that perfection in practice does not exist because in EVERY single nursery every single person will make mistakes when they are learning on the job. We know all too well that if we are non-white there is a super human standard expected of us to never fall below as it is attempted to be dictated to us by white women. Newsflash babes, I don’t work for you, you work for me and you should be here to work WITH us.
I can’t tell you how often my very direct style of leadership is met with tears from white women but surprisingly never from Black or Brown women. Our dear and beloved literary icon Zora puts it aptly: “all skinfolk ain’t kinfolk”. Remember, not all agents of white supremacy are white, operating within a framework of whiteness has less to do with the amount of melanin in ones skin and everything to do with power.
Anyway… I say all of this to say that the children and families that me and my team serve mean everything to us. I create an unapologetically cultured environment which leans comfortably into Blackness without explanation. We serve our community because the community serves us. Black and Brown families are the reason that the nursery is what it is today and those countless families have supported us for as long as my Black mother has owned the business (for over 25 years in case you’re wondering). I’ve been working in the family business for close to 16 years and I do not and will never pander to whiteness as the ‘norm’. Child rearing and care practices in an environment like this are nuanced. We acknowledge and are acutely aware of the home life of our children and we pride ourselves for that.
My team is your fussy and loving Desi Aunty, it’s your sharp-mouthed and quick witted Jamaican Mother, it’s your proud and boasty Ghanaian big sister, it’s your multi-tasking and determined Somali Mother-in -Law,it’s everything that my children love and what they need and not just because OFSTED say so or don’t say so … but that’s for another blog because when you OVERSTAND institutional racism you see that OFSTED amongst many other reasons is not fit for purpose, but I’m sure that all of your teacher friends will tell you this. In the meantime whilst we’re on the topic of race go to OFSTED’s website and look at their ‘our management’ page… it’ll make you weep.
Anywayyyyy, if you’re white and you want to come to this nursery’s BBQ all I ask is that you bring seasoning.
