Devaluation of Black Expertise: The Workplace as a Racial Battleground

Abstract

This chapter is the first of five data chapters presented in this book. It will draw on the three preceding contextual and theoretical chapters to give voice to the contemporary experiences of Black Africans in Australia. This chapter focuses on the experiences of Black Africans in the workplace. Our findings reveal that the often-accepted narrative of race-free or even race-neutral Australian workplaces is not supported by Black African experiences. Participants in this study reported constant, subtle and covert patterns of racial microaggressions in the workplace. Even though many participants spoke of the love of their jobs and occasional instances of support and belonging at the workplace, all but one spoke of the ways that subtle (and not so subtle) racial microaggressions dominated their experiences at work. These included experiences of social exclusion, gatekeeping of professional opportunities, accent discrimination, presumed incompetence, excessive scrutinisation and constant inferiorisation of Black knowledge and expertise in the workplace. To overcome these microaggressions and maintain their career development, many participants perceived that they had to work ‘twice as hard’ as their white colleagues do to ‘prove’ their competency and expertise.