In today's episode Guilaine continues to look forwards towards Race Reflections path in 2024 and beyond. She announces a future book that will be coming from Race Reflections, our first book as an organisation.That book is Surviving Whiteness at Work: reflections on defiance, resistance and transformationIt will aim to describe the working of Whiteness in the workplace through the lived experience of our team and community members, and what ways they have found helpful to grow, to survive, to thrive despite working in an environment that might have been hostile, toxic, marginalising and discriminatory. It will look at theory and autoethnographic experience and will be solution focused.In this episode she discusses and reflects on that book and gives a flavour of the thinking and topics it may cover.For more on this exciting new project see here: https://racereflections.co.uk/title-surviving-whiteness-at-work-reflections-on-defiance-resistance-and-transformation/If you are a member of the Race Reflections community we are looking for contributions: https://racereflections.co.uk/call-for-contributions-whiteness-at-work/Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email [email protected]

In today's episode Guilaine looks forwards towards Race Reflections path in 2024.She starts by wishing everyone a Happy New Year, followed by a brief reflection on global violence, specifically in Gaza and Congo, a topic she will return to in more detail in a future podcast later this year.Then she outlines what is planned and being developed for Race Reflections over the next 12 months:As Guilaine’s training is as a specialist clinician she wants to use this skillset more and will be setting up a group analytic clinic within Race Reflections establishing 2 to 3 regular groups this year.Race Reflections will establish a physical office so we can put down roots, form in person community, and disrupt the reproduction of displacement that can happen within purely online spaces and groups. The office will be based in Milton Keynes (30 mins from London, 45 mins from Birmingham and Coventry).Because of these first two developments there will be an even greater focus on in-person training.Race Reflections will be launching a video channel this year.Within the next 6 weeks we will announce a new programme for courses and training and in terms of the organisation we are looking into development around management both for existing team members and potentially in terms of recruitment. Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email [email protected]

In this re-released episode first published  on 4th April 2022,  we explore the relationship between podcasting and power, both how podcasting has replicated and interacted with existing power systems, and how it offers a radical space for marginalised voices to create freely without gatekeepers. We think about how The Podcast Industry has developed into just another industry/workplace incorporating the issues inherent in those industries and workplaces. We look at the history and present of podcasting and ask you to consider adding your voice to its future. This episode is hosted by Race Reflection's Audio Wizard/Witch, Dave Pickering: http://davepickeringstoryteller.co.uk/LINKS: India.Arie on Joe Rogan/Spotify: https://www.nme.com/news/music/india-arie-says-she-left-spotify-because-of-its-treatment-of-artists-not-joe-rogan-3162696https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/india-arie-spotify-joe-rogan-interview-1299169/Why I’ve Decided to Take My Podcast Off Spotify by Roxane Gay: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/opinion/culture/joe-rogan-spotify-roxane-gay.htmlThe Test Kitchen: https://www.vulture.com/article/gimlet-reply-all-controversy-spotify-test-kitchen.htmlHidden in plain sight by CC Paschal: http://www.thechiquitachannel.com/criticism/2021/3/7/hidden-in-plain-sightGlass Walls by James T Green: https://www.jamestgreen.com/thoughts/115Another Round and The Nod:https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/30/21308074/the-nod-spotify-rss-feed-another-round-buzzfeed-podcast-ownershiphttps://hotpodnews.com/the-case-of-another-rounds-archives/Palace Shaw - Why I’m saying goodbye to PRX by Palace Shaw: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13j3H7BidesRD4zgz2aoZuwDcdocV7NpzNs3YqA5Rcg8/mobilebasic?urp=gmail_link“In response to Kerri Hoffman’s Letter”: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Uu1nOsqLsnZDXNJe04lJt3TQpt6-tvFhZnF4aQ_dwHc/edit https://www.vice.com/en/article/akdbbj/podcasters-are-reclaiming-storytelling-in-africa-and-becoming-celebrities-v28n1Rise and Shine: https://www.riseandshineaudio.comMultitrack Fellowship: https://www.multitrack.uk/Equality in Audio Pact: https://www.equalityinaudiopact.co.uk/How the Equality in Audio Pact came together by Renay Richardson: https://hotpodnews.com/how-the-equality-in-audio-pact-came-together-by-renay-richardson/To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email atwork@racereflections.

In this re-released episode first published  on 21st February 2022, Guilaine reflects on the particular dynamic where a person with power reacts to accusations of structural harm by saying that they feel unsafe. She considers how affect and feelings are conditioned and shaped by social context, histories and structures, and how feelings can play a role in protecting and enforcing social (dis)order and the status quo. She encourages us to consider how words and discourses can harm people, and to think critically about our feelings.Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email [email protected]

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/Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email [email protected]

In today's episode Guilaine takes us on a freeform reflection and roundup of her thinking and feeling in 2023.From the publication of her second book White Minds to the writing and collating of her third book Creative Disruption she shares her position as someone who doesn’t identify as an academic due to the violence she has experienced as a Black woman in academia and psychology (something she explores in both these books.)She then gives us an introduction to Creative Disruption beginning with its genesis at a conference that looked at creative disruption. The chapter she has written for that book also began at that conference in a talk she gave on Congolese music. Here she also makes links with Afrobeats (which she describes as the hybrid child of the African diaspora). She then expands on the reasons for highlighting and emphasising creativity and on the importance of thinking about feelings, and feeling about thinking. Thinking with the body or feeling with the mind. How these ‘things’ are split by Western society but are not split within us. For this she refers to Audre Lorde’s text Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.Then she asks some questions to you, the listeners: Do we do enough to engage with the creative in the work we do at Race Reflections? Are we playing into the splitting of the rational self and the erotic self, this splitting of the feeling self and the thinking self?She then talks about her latest piece (‘The world does not need more intelligent men’) which looks at the concept of intelligence and asks what intelligence is or might be. She explored these questions in relationship to the personal and the political overlapping and often being the same thing.She ends with another invitation or provocation to the audience: How do we find ways to reconnect body and mind, rationality and corporality, heart and head, as an organisation so that our dismantling, disruptive, anti-racist and anti-oppressive work continues to allow us to grow and be connected with the world and each other?Audre Lorde: Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power https://www.centraleurasia.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/audre_lorde_cool-beans.pdf‘The world does not need more intelligent men’ https://racereflections.co.uk/the-world-does-not-need-more-intelligent-men/Guilaine’s first book Living While Black is available to buy here:  https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442992/living-while-black-by-kinouani-guilaine/9781529109436Her new book White Minds is available to buy here: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/white-mindsHer third book co-edited with Hannah Reeves and Claudia Di Gianfrancesco is called Creative Disruption: https://creativedisruptioncouk.wordpress.com/about/Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email [email protected]

In this re-released episode first published  on 5th July 2021 Guilaine takes the Tiktok trend of "white women fake crying" as a jumping-off point to consider a slightly different take on intersectionality in relation to white womanhood. She reflects on the reasons why black people and people of colour find these videos disturbing or triggering, and explore "toxic femininity" which she define's as when white fragility meets the constructions of white femininity. More on the TikTok trend: https://www.nylon.com/life/white-women-crying-on-cue-tiktok-trendLiving While Black: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Racial Trauma is out: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/144/1442992/living-while-black/9781529109436.htmlSubscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email [email protected]

In today's episode Guilaine expands on her thinking around money which she has previously covered a little on the podcast and on the Race Reflections website. She specifically reflects on the relationship between money and attachment, considering internalised scarcity, social class and social deprivation, framing her thoughts around her own background and lived experience. This episode was inspired by the work she was doing for the Freud Museum Conference about the relationship between psychotherapy and money.She begins by going over attachment theory as it exists from initial work done by Bowlby which relates to maternal or parental attachment. She offers some critique and complications around these theories but generally doesn't dispute the ideas and evidence around this topic. She does however suggest that whilst a lot of time is given to maternal attachment theory not enough has been done around how material circumstances influence attachment, and that maternal and material are seldom considered together. She has done some work in this area when writing Living While Black, specifically considering attachment to and with place. We attach to spaces as well as to bodies, and anyway bodies and spaces are related to each other. And looking at places means looking at the influence of geopolitical factors such as borders and money. She then covers her own relationship with money and with scarcity thinking, looking at how growing up poor can create adaptive behaviours/internalised issues around things like experiencing injustice, a lack of familiarity with wealth, and difficulties navigating spaces without cultural capital.  She asks us to imagine a graph that cross references material and maternal/parental attachments and how that kind of thinking can help us understand our own relationship to attachment and to how we relate to money. She ends by linking all this back to the workplace.The article she mentions is on the Race Reflections website for members (and if you are not a member you are welcome to join):  Poverty, deprivation and internalised scarcityHer book Living While Black where she explores some of what she talks about today is available to buy here:  https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/442992/living-while-black-by-kinouani-guilaine/9781529109436Her new book White Minds has just been published and is available to buy here: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/white-mindsSubscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email [email protected]

This episode of Race Reflections at Work is about managing anxiety with the help of holistic/ alternative approaches while at work/ in employment, as well as some suggestionsTW: Admin, Comms and Engagement Lead Dionne talks about the triggers of anxiety while navigating spaces around her - often being the only minority.Resources to read: https://www.rtor.org/2019/02/21/mental-health-and-chiropractic-care/https://thehouseclinics.co.uk/learning-hub/stress-and-anxiety-how-chiropractic-can-help-youhttps://www.onechiropractic.co.uk/blogs/simple-tips-to-manage-stress-in-the-momentWhere to find alternative support in the UK:https://www.lsbu.ac.uk/stories/lsbu-chiropractic-clinichttps://www.gcc-uk.org/https://blamuk.org/zuri-therapy-racial-wellness/Dionne Anderson: http://dionneandersoncreative.com/Subscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email [email protected]

In today's episode Guilaine explore and defines the concept of proximal ambivalence and proximal dynamics. She begins with the recent incident covered in the news that highlighted issues of anti-blackness within communities of colour, specifically in this context south asian communities in the UK. She reflects that whilst it's important to avoid overgeneralising it's also important to draw parallels and see patterns when they occur. She goes on to talk about some of her experiences of these dynamics and examines the specific racialised and economic context and tensions around afro haircare shops in the UK and the long historical legacies of inter-"racial" conflicts and tensions that date back to colonial administration and the role south asian groups played in African colonies and the Caribbean.She then defines proximal ambivalence as a term that derives the ways that groups with proximity to power/Whiteness can have mixed feelings when it comes to justice, liberation and dismantling White Supremacy. This is because White Supremacy is a caste system or pyramid and everyone within its structures and strata can reproduce and enact racialised violence towards groups lower down the complex hierarchies. All groups including people racialised as white exist within these racialised hierarchies which is what creates these proximal dynamics.She then considers how these dynamics look within the workplace.Guilaine fully explores this subject in her upcoming book White Minds that you can pre-order here: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/white-mindsSubscribe, rate and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.To send us your queries, questions and dilemmas please email [email protected]