Observing Whiteness and Black Resistance in a Midwestern Municipal Government: An Interracial Ethnography

Abstract

Racism continues to permeate American society and brings about social injustice as it privileges whites while marginalizing people of color. The endemic nature of racism identified by critical race theorists suggests that all American organizations are plagued by this social ill, yet very little research in human resource development explores racism in organizational settings. The purpose of this paper is to use participant observations of white and Black researchers to document how white–dominated leadership deploys procedural rules and microaggressions to marginalize Black participants in a small urban municipal government setting and the ways members of the Black community work to resist racial marginalization.