Conditional openness to racio-ethnic otherness: Exploring white employers’ ambivalent self-Other constructions in the everyday work of reproducing whiteness

Abstract

Aiming to add to existing knowledge on the everyday operation of whiteness in organizations, this article explores how white employers attempt to construct an open self while engaging in the reproduction of whiteness. We draw inspiration from the work of Bhabha to understand the ambivalences involved and to analyse interviews with employers in Belgium. Our analysis identifies three seemingly contradictory self-Other constructions through which white employers present themselves as open while engaging in different processes of reproducing whiteness. We propose that employers’ vacillation between these self-Other constructions enables the embrace of an openness that is conditional on otherness conforming to organizational whiteness characterized by an intertwinement of economic inequality and racio-ethnic inequality.