Appearance

In today's episode Race Reflections' Associate Disruptor Simone reflects on workplace issues surrounding people's appearance, how appearance is policed, and how that relates to respectability politics and white supremacy.

They first discuss how appearing Palestinian or showing solidarity with Palestine during the current genocide intersects with how people's appearances are policed in general, specifically looking at this issue from a US perspective.

Then they consider how dress-codes in school set up dress-codes in the workplace, reflecting on how multiply marginalised people are the most affected by these dress codes, and the ways that dress-codes serve dominant cultures, patriarchy and white supremacy.

They then discuss an essay by Aysa Gray called The Bias of ‘Professionalism’ Standards (https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_bias_of_professionalism_standards) which argues that the standards of professionalism are really just the standards of western white supremacy. They then challenge us to ask ourselves how we might be reinforcing white supremacy, xenophobia and other forms of systemic inequality and consider the role of hiring metrics in all this.

Simone ends with a series of questions from that essay by Gray that aim to help de-centre the standards of whiteness within the workplace.

Simone's website: https://www.simonekolysh.com/

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To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.co.uk