This response to Cortina, Cortina, and Cortina’s (Reference Cortina, Cortina and Cortina2019) focal article is a call to arms for my colleagues to purposefully engage in antiracist, antisexist, and otherwise antidiscriminatory language as a tool to increase inclusion and decrease microaggressions (Sue, Reference Sue2010) in our science. The Cortina siblings focus on the tension between freedom of speech inherent in academic freedom and the boundaries that expectations of civil behavior can put on free speech. Toward the end of their article, they specifically focus on how academic departments and institutions can encourage civil behavior without placing specific limits on free speech.
This response extends their work by discussing the ways that our language in our academic papers can cause a chilling effect for both people who might want to use our science and fellow industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists. I am specifically asking the I-O psychology community members to modify their language in order to engage in more civil scientific exchanges; I am also asking the I-O psychology community members to modify their scientific choices to create a more inclusive science. I will also briefly address how my position can be applied in I-O psychology practice. My response herein is inspired by L. Cortina’s (Reference Cortina2008) foundational and essential article on selective incivility—that is, how incivility can be a modern form of racism and sexism (etc.) by targeting minoritized and marginalized individuals more often than majority and powerful persons, thus subtly discriminating against them and perpetrating microaggressions. Selective incivility is especially insidious because there is plausible deniability about any one act (e.g., “What? I am busy and don’t have time for niceties with anyone!”). Individual acts are like sunburns, but in total such microaggressions become like skin cancer to those people who are frequently and more deeply burned.
This response focuses on race in particular, even though the ideas herein can be applied to any group of marginalized and minoritized persons. First, there are ample examples of racialized language being used in our science in ways that are not relevant to the work that we do (e.g., “the dark side of organizations”). This is because we are embedded in a culture that has fundamentally and foundationally mishandled race (see, for example, all of American history). This is also true in psychology (Adams & Salter, Reference Adams and Salter2011; Salter & Adams, Reference Salter and Adams2013). Our language, like our national society, has racism built in and it is so extensive and subtle (especially to White people) that we often do not notice it. Thus, I am directly addressing race in order to illuminate the problem, with the hope that readers will extend the ideas herein to other groups. Second, looking at the demographics of I-O psychology, it is clear that the sex distribution in I-O psychology is not radically different from the general population (Gardner, Ryan, & Snoeyink, Reference Gardner, Ryan and Snoeyink2018), but the racial distribution is woefully lacking. Thus, although it is clear that I-O psychology has a long way to go in resolving a number of discrepant outcomes (Gardner et al., Reference Gardner, Ryan and Snoeyink2018), race is a topic that needs to be directly addressed.Footnote 1 Finally, research shows that my arguments will be more believed when I make them about a group that I have no personal demographic stake in seeing succeed (Kaiser, Dyrenforth, & Hagiwara, Reference Kaiser, Dyrenforth and Hagiwara2006; Kaiser & Miller, Reference Kaiser and Miller2001).
Critical race theory
My argument begins by considering critical race theory (CRT; Crenshaw, Reference Crenshaw1989; Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller, & Thomas, Reference Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller and Thomas1995; Delgado & Stefancic, Reference Delgado and Stefancic2017). CRT developed as a critique of legal scholarship and theory that considered race only as a demographic factor or sociocultural phenomenon (Crenshaw, Reference Crenshaw1989; Crenshaw et al., Reference Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller and Thomas1995). CRT emphasized that race is also a lens through which to view the world in order to understand, explain, and improve phenomena. Foundational CRT research focused on the intersection of race, laws, and power (Crenshaw, Reference Crenshaw1989). For example, CRT addresses the concern that laws are often designed both to appear racially neutral and also to create racial disparities in practice. CRT also analyzes these laws from the perspective of race and its meaning in society (i.e., such laws both uphold the racial hierarchy and appear on their face to meet society’s expectations of treating people fairly and equally).
One of the fundamental tenets of CRT is that describing and explaining phenomena are important but insufficient. CRT posits that social science and humanities tools should be used to improve society by disrupting the relationship between society as it is and the sociohistorical contexts that led to the lack of liberation of people (whether some or all). Unsurprisingly, critical race scholars are also interested in disrupting the relationship between scholarship and race. This arises from a recognition that scientific endeavors are developed within an existing historio-social-cultural period and often do not question how that historio-social-cultural period affects our scholarly choices. CRT urges us to take on a new lens (i.e., race) to question why our scholarship produces both the questions and the answers that it does.
I draw from CRT to ground my position: As a field, we should start to explicitly espouse a new value—one that goes further than our values of equality and equity and vastly surpasses the notion of multiculturalism (Gillborn, Reference Gillborn2006). Our new value should be anti-racism (Derman-Sparks & Phillips, Reference Derman-Sparks and Phillips1997; Gillborn, Reference Gillborn2006): that it is not enough to be not racist in our everyday actions and to strive for equity and equality and to respect all cultures. Instead we should actively divest ourselves of racist and racialized practices, and we should actively reflect on our own and our community’s work and practices to remove racist and racialized components. Further, we should invest in solving problems of race and racism, with greater insights from minoritized and minority communities, whether within or outside I-O psychology. CRT tells us that we should do this not only because it is good science but also because it is good.
Action steps
Divest ourselves of racist language
A number of times, I have been either a reviewer or action editor for papers that use the phrase “the dark side” to indicate the negative experience of something that is generally seen as positive. When these situations arise, I tend to write something like the following (paraphrased from an actual review):
I recognize that these terms are common in our field and some of them are technical terms (like “the dark triad”). However, this language is racist, pinning lightness to goodness and darkness to badness. Even though these terms have been used previously, we should stop doing so. As social scientists, we have a responsibility to avoid using racialized language and perpetuating racist stereotypes.
When we use racialized language that has no direct relationship to the content of the work, then we are committing a racial microaggression that sends a chilling message to some people (Sue, Reference Sue2010), that is, minoritized and marginalized people. Racial microaggressions are small, race-based or -targeted indignities; they are often not recognized by White people, including the White people who commit them (Sue, Reference Sue2010). Racialized language is a racial microaggression. When we create metaphors that consistently and clearly link dark, black, and bad versus light, white, and good (Hill Reference Hill2009; Moore, Reference Moore and O’Brien1976/2006), we are subtly but certainly indicating a value about Black people and White people—even when this is unintentional (and unexamined). It is a small indignity that sends a message about what we perceive to be better and what we perceive to be worse. It is a tiny chilly message about and within our science. Such language is off-putting to Black people specifically and racial minorities generally, with each instance of racialized language making our science a little bit less welcoming to minority persons.
I propose a few modest action steps that every member of the I-O psychology community can engage in. First, you can stop using these terms. Some alternatives to “the dark side” include “the negative side” or “unintended negative consequences.” Second, if you must use these terms in order to adequately background your work, use them only to introduce the literature and then provide a footnote that explains specifically why you will not be using the term again (feel free to cite this article as justification when you do this). As an example, you could write a paper in which you refer to the triad, which is composed of Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, and then note that it is often called the “dark triad” (Paulhus & Williams, Reference Paulhus and Williams2002), but you will not use this term because of its racist connotations. Third, when you find these phrases while reviewing papers, call the wording out and insist on its removal from the paper (again, feel free to cite this paper).
This might seem uncomfortable to those of us who hold academic freedom in such high esteem. To actively ask someone to truncate their freedom of expression in the academic context is, as Cortina et al. (Reference Cortina, Cortina and Cortina2019) described, at odds with academic values and cuts to the core of the freedom of thought in the academic marketplace of ideas. But although all of these suggestions curtail freedom of speech and academic freedom, none of it materially changes anyone’s ability to express what they need to express. No one is going to read an article and ponder for days what the “negative side” of commitment or citizenship behaviors or conscientiousness could possibly mean. This is a small trade of freedom of speech for a much larger payoff of doing antiracist work and creating a more civil and inclusive science.
Becoming actively anti-racist and engaging CRT in our science
More broadly, using racialized language articulates a value that I believe I-O psychology and I-O psychologists do not intentionally hold. Such language perpetuates the relationship between psychology and race that has largely been negative and exclusionary for racial minorities, treating them as “other” relative to the “normal” White folks. It is a signal of larger, underlying problems regarding the treatment of race in I-O psychology in particular and psychology in general.
CRT urges us to examine the linkage between the scholarship in I-O psychology and race. CRT urges us to go further than ensuring that our sample is representative of populations. Instead, we must examine the choices we make in conducting our research, not only the methods we use but also the questions we ask and why. Anyone with passing familiarity with I-O psychology would know that we conduct research on marginalized and minoritized people. But we conduct research that asks “why are these people treated differently?” Such questions have an unstated assumption that they are different from some normal, properly treated group (i.e., the powerful, the majority). Instead, the questions should be more like “why does race play a role in the differential treatment of people?” and “what are the individual, group, organizational, and societal level factors that cause race to be an important social stratification and what can we do to stop it?”
For some of us, this seemingly subtle shift in wording these research questions is actually a radical tectonic change. Centering race as a societal, historical, cultural, and political—and not individual prejudice—factor is a fundamental transformation in how we think of race. It is not merely a demographic factor that puts some people at greater risk for mistreatment compared to other people. It is a foundation on which our entire contemporary society—and our science, as a part of that society—sits. CRT tells us that asking questions about race without asking about that foundation will never lead to the end of racism.
Some might claim that here again I am attempting to restrict academic freedom in regard to scientific choices. I disagree. Instead, I am describing a better research agenda—one that has a greater chance of altering race relations and stratification in our science and in our society. My suggestion here is not that you cannot do science on race absent CRT conceptions; my suggestion is that it will not be as good or as useful as it could be if you were to engage CRT.
Becoming actively anti-racist and engaging CRT in our practice
Although the overall aim of this response is to address how antiracism can increase civility and improve science, it is also important to acknowledge that CRT can also be applied to workplaces and I-O practices. Antiracist efforts by I-O psychologists in the workplace would require us to examine policies and practices to determine if there are unintended differential effects by race. The idea of differential effects across groups due to policies that appear to be neutral is nothing new to I-O psychology; it is the definition of adverse (aka disparate) impact.
A current example of this issue are expectations around personal grooming. California recently banned discrimination based on “natural hair” or other hairstyles associated with a particular ethnic group (Stack, Reference Stack2019). Although Title VII prohibits discrimination based on race or its proxy, dress codes that address hairstyles usually couch such expectations in cleanliness or professionalism so they seem neutral on their face. Yet such codes disproportionately affect people who wear hairstyles that are more common among African Americans than among other Americans and especially among White Americans (McGregor, Reference McGregor2019). Both the expectations of HR recruiters and organizational dress codes are likely to hold implicit biases about good grooming that reflect White American beauty standards (Thompson, Reference Thompson2009).
What could an antiracist approach to a dress code look like? First, if there is an existing dress code, it would be examined by a diverse set of people who would identify any part of the code that is unrelated to safety. Second, these parts of the code (or the new proposed dress code) would be discussed and the minority voices (both numerically in the organization and historically in society) would be listened to. Other members of the process would not challenge their perspectives; that is, majority members would accept that the minority voices are speaking about a reality that is not known to the majority persons because CRT tells us that race is a lens through which people understand and explain phenomena. Then, the group would iteratively and collaboratively create a new dress code, again specifically checking to ensure that new standards do not inappropriately rule out styles that are more common among minority and minoritized groups. Finally, these new standards would be clearly communicated to all organizational members, especially to decision-makers, and training deployed as needed.
Anticipated criticisms of my perspective
Language has multiple meanings
One anticipated criticism of my work is that terms like light versus dark or black versus white have meanings that pre-date the existence of the United States of America. Certainly that is true. This is a longstanding metaphor. The problem, however, is that the United States was founded and literally built through a literal black versus white distinction. It is enshrined in the Constitution (see: Three-Fifths compromise in Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution), although later repealed by a series of amendments (particularly, the 14th Amendment, which ends the Three-Fifths compromise, and the 13th Amendment, which ends slavery); these differences were continued through the Jim Crow era and ostensibly ended by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet, racial disparities still persist in the United States, in nearly every arena (Daly, Hobjin, & Pedtke, Reference Daly, Hobjin and Pedtke2017; National Center for Health Statistics, 2016; Wildeman & Wang, Reference Wildeman and Wang2017; Williams & Collins, Reference Williams and Collins2016). The literal use of Black people to build a White-privileging United States transformed the meaning of black versus white and light versus dark. In the United States—and really, in any society that has colonized and/or stolen and enslaved others who are darker than them and particularly the African continent (Jarosz, Reference Jarosz1992)—these terms have enmeshed their original meaning with race.
Colorblindness
A second anticipated criticism is that egalitarian values require us to be colorblind, that is, focusing on race is a racist act that creates difference. This is a red herring. Colorblindness ideology cloaks racist behavior in terms of racial justice and equality by arguing that attending to issues of race creates racial divides (Crenshaw, Reference Crenshaw2011). The structural and institutional differences by race in treatment and experience exist whether or not they are addressed directly. Overlooking disparities does not reduce them. Claims that we should do so is gaslighting at its finest.
Scientific neutrality
A third anticipated criticism is the idea that science should be neutral and not seek to do anything. The idea of science as a value-free enterprise has been discussed at length and discarded (Douglas, Reference Douglas2009). Sciences and scientists have values, from the choices we make in what to study, to who we study, to how we study it, to why we study it. There is nothing wrong with the goal of improving people’s lives. In fact, the American Psychological Association (APA) code of ethics requires us to do so. Beneficence and nonmalfeasance is the first guiding principle of the APA code of ethics (APA, 2017). This guiding principle exhorts us to not only avoid doing bad but also to actively do good.
Conclusion
In this article, I expanded on Cortina et al.’s (Reference Cortina, Cortina and Cortina2019) focal article by describing a way in which I-O psychology can become more inclusive, more civil, and more useful and that might also infringe in small ways on academic freedom and freedom of speech. I also argued that purposely and consciously engaging in antiracist practices will result in better science and better practice. We can begin with the small things, like disavowing racialized language and insisting on its removal when we see it. We can also begin with the large things, where we as a science rethink how race is a factor in our studies, moving from counting the race of our participants and controlling for it in our regressions and instead engaging with race as a valid and important frame of explanation. We can do these in the service of doing our part to disrupt the relationship between race and society as it is today, with the ultimate goal of greater freedom and well-being for all. Never mind that this is the right thing to do, although it is. It is good science and practice, and better science and practice than we have today.
You have
Access
This response to Cortina, Cortina, and Cortina’s (Reference Cortina, Cortina and Cortina2019) focal article is a call to arms for my colleagues to purposefully engage in antiracist, antisexist, and otherwise antidiscriminatory language as a tool to increase inclusion and decrease microaggressions (Sue, Reference Sue2010) in our science. The Cortina siblings focus on the tension between freedom of speech inherent in academic freedom and the boundaries that expectations of civil behavior can put on free speech. Toward the end of their article, they specifically focus on how academic departments and institutions can encourage civil behavior without placing specific limits on free speech.
This response extends their work by discussing the ways that our language in our academic papers can cause a chilling effect for both people who might want to use our science and fellow industrial and organizational (I-O) psychologists. I am specifically asking the I-O psychology community members to modify their language in order to engage in more civil scientific exchanges; I am also asking the I-O psychology community members to modify their scientific choices to create a more inclusive science. I will also briefly address how my position can be applied in I-O psychology practice. My response herein is inspired by L. Cortina’s (Reference Cortina2008) foundational and essential article on selective incivility—that is, how incivility can be a modern form of racism and sexism (etc.) by targeting minoritized and marginalized individuals more often than majority and powerful persons, thus subtly discriminating against them and perpetrating microaggressions. Selective incivility is especially insidious because there is plausible deniability about any one act (e.g., “What? I am busy and don’t have time for niceties with anyone!”). Individual acts are like sunburns, but in total such microaggressions become like skin cancer to those people who are frequently and more deeply burned.
This response focuses on race in particular, even though the ideas herein can be applied to any group of marginalized and minoritized persons. First, there are ample examples of racialized language being used in our science in ways that are not relevant to the work that we do (e.g., “the dark side of organizations”). This is because we are embedded in a culture that has fundamentally and foundationally mishandled race (see, for example, all of American history). This is also true in psychology (Adams & Salter, Reference Adams and Salter2011; Salter & Adams, Reference Salter and Adams2013). Our language, like our national society, has racism built in and it is so extensive and subtle (especially to White people) that we often do not notice it. Thus, I am directly addressing race in order to illuminate the problem, with the hope that readers will extend the ideas herein to other groups. Second, looking at the demographics of I-O psychology, it is clear that the sex distribution in I-O psychology is not radically different from the general population (Gardner, Ryan, & Snoeyink, Reference Gardner, Ryan and Snoeyink2018), but the racial distribution is woefully lacking. Thus, although it is clear that I-O psychology has a long way to go in resolving a number of discrepant outcomes (Gardner et al., Reference Gardner, Ryan and Snoeyink2018), race is a topic that needs to be directly addressed.Footnote 1 Finally, research shows that my arguments will be more believed when I make them about a group that I have no personal demographic stake in seeing succeed (Kaiser, Dyrenforth, & Hagiwara, Reference Kaiser, Dyrenforth and Hagiwara2006; Kaiser & Miller, Reference Kaiser and Miller2001).
Critical race theory
My argument begins by considering critical race theory (CRT; Crenshaw, Reference Crenshaw1989; Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller, & Thomas, Reference Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller and Thomas1995; Delgado & Stefancic, Reference Delgado and Stefancic2017). CRT developed as a critique of legal scholarship and theory that considered race only as a demographic factor or sociocultural phenomenon (Crenshaw, Reference Crenshaw1989; Crenshaw et al., Reference Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller and Thomas1995). CRT emphasized that race is also a lens through which to view the world in order to understand, explain, and improve phenomena. Foundational CRT research focused on the intersection of race, laws, and power (Crenshaw, Reference Crenshaw1989). For example, CRT addresses the concern that laws are often designed both to appear racially neutral and also to create racial disparities in practice. CRT also analyzes these laws from the perspective of race and its meaning in society (i.e., such laws both uphold the racial hierarchy and appear on their face to meet society’s expectations of treating people fairly and equally).
One of the fundamental tenets of CRT is that describing and explaining phenomena are important but insufficient. CRT posits that social science and humanities tools should be used to improve society by disrupting the relationship between society as it is and the sociohistorical contexts that led to the lack of liberation of people (whether some or all). Unsurprisingly, critical race scholars are also interested in disrupting the relationship between scholarship and race. This arises from a recognition that scientific endeavors are developed within an existing historio-social-cultural period and often do not question how that historio-social-cultural period affects our scholarly choices. CRT urges us to take on a new lens (i.e., race) to question why our scholarship produces both the questions and the answers that it does.
I draw from CRT to ground my position: As a field, we should start to explicitly espouse a new value—one that goes further than our values of equality and equity and vastly surpasses the notion of multiculturalism (Gillborn, Reference Gillborn2006). Our new value should be anti-racism (Derman-Sparks & Phillips, Reference Derman-Sparks and Phillips1997; Gillborn, Reference Gillborn2006): that it is not enough to be not racist in our everyday actions and to strive for equity and equality and to respect all cultures. Instead we should actively divest ourselves of racist and racialized practices, and we should actively reflect on our own and our community’s work and practices to remove racist and racialized components. Further, we should invest in solving problems of race and racism, with greater insights from minoritized and minority communities, whether within or outside I-O psychology. CRT tells us that we should do this not only because it is good science but also because it is good.
Action steps
Divest ourselves of racist language
A number of times, I have been either a reviewer or action editor for papers that use the phrase “the dark side” to indicate the negative experience of something that is generally seen as positive. When these situations arise, I tend to write something like the following (paraphrased from an actual review):
I recognize that these terms are common in our field and some of them are technical terms (like “the dark triad”). However, this language is racist, pinning lightness to goodness and darkness to badness. Even though these terms have been used previously, we should stop doing so. As social scientists, we have a responsibility to avoid using racialized language and perpetuating racist stereotypes.
When we use racialized language that has no direct relationship to the content of the work, then we are committing a racial microaggression that sends a chilling message to some people (Sue, Reference Sue2010), that is, minoritized and marginalized people. Racial microaggressions are small, race-based or -targeted indignities; they are often not recognized by White people, including the White people who commit them (Sue, Reference Sue2010). Racialized language is a racial microaggression. When we create metaphors that consistently and clearly link dark, black, and bad versus light, white, and good (Hill Reference Hill2009; Moore, Reference Moore and O’Brien1976/2006), we are subtly but certainly indicating a value about Black people and White people—even when this is unintentional (and unexamined). It is a small indignity that sends a message about what we perceive to be better and what we perceive to be worse. It is a tiny chilly message about and within our science. Such language is off-putting to Black people specifically and racial minorities generally, with each instance of racialized language making our science a little bit less welcoming to minority persons.
I propose a few modest action steps that every member of the I-O psychology community can engage in. First, you can stop using these terms. Some alternatives to “the dark side” include “the negative side” or “unintended negative consequences.” Second, if you must use these terms in order to adequately background your work, use them only to introduce the literature and then provide a footnote that explains specifically why you will not be using the term again (feel free to cite this article as justification when you do this). As an example, you could write a paper in which you refer to the triad, which is composed of Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, and then note that it is often called the “dark triad” (Paulhus & Williams, Reference Paulhus and Williams2002), but you will not use this term because of its racist connotations. Third, when you find these phrases while reviewing papers, call the wording out and insist on its removal from the paper (again, feel free to cite this paper).
This might seem uncomfortable to those of us who hold academic freedom in such high esteem. To actively ask someone to truncate their freedom of expression in the academic context is, as Cortina et al. (Reference Cortina, Cortina and Cortina2019) described, at odds with academic values and cuts to the core of the freedom of thought in the academic marketplace of ideas. But although all of these suggestions curtail freedom of speech and academic freedom, none of it materially changes anyone’s ability to express what they need to express. No one is going to read an article and ponder for days what the “negative side” of commitment or citizenship behaviors or conscientiousness could possibly mean. This is a small trade of freedom of speech for a much larger payoff of doing antiracist work and creating a more civil and inclusive science.
Becoming actively anti-racist and engaging CRT in our science
More broadly, using racialized language articulates a value that I believe I-O psychology and I-O psychologists do not intentionally hold. Such language perpetuates the relationship between psychology and race that has largely been negative and exclusionary for racial minorities, treating them as “other” relative to the “normal” White folks. It is a signal of larger, underlying problems regarding the treatment of race in I-O psychology in particular and psychology in general.
CRT urges us to examine the linkage between the scholarship in I-O psychology and race. CRT urges us to go further than ensuring that our sample is representative of populations. Instead, we must examine the choices we make in conducting our research, not only the methods we use but also the questions we ask and why. Anyone with passing familiarity with I-O psychology would know that we conduct research on marginalized and minoritized people. But we conduct research that asks “why are these people treated differently?” Such questions have an unstated assumption that they are different from some normal, properly treated group (i.e., the powerful, the majority). Instead, the questions should be more like “why does race play a role in the differential treatment of people?” and “what are the individual, group, organizational, and societal level factors that cause race to be an important social stratification and what can we do to stop it?”
For some of us, this seemingly subtle shift in wording these research questions is actually a radical tectonic change. Centering race as a societal, historical, cultural, and political—and not individual prejudice—factor is a fundamental transformation in how we think of race. It is not merely a demographic factor that puts some people at greater risk for mistreatment compared to other people. It is a foundation on which our entire contemporary society—and our science, as a part of that society—sits. CRT tells us that asking questions about race without asking about that foundation will never lead to the end of racism.
Some might claim that here again I am attempting to restrict academic freedom in regard to scientific choices. I disagree. Instead, I am describing a better research agenda—one that has a greater chance of altering race relations and stratification in our science and in our society. My suggestion here is not that you cannot do science on race absent CRT conceptions; my suggestion is that it will not be as good or as useful as it could be if you were to engage CRT.
Becoming actively anti-racist and engaging CRT in our practice
Although the overall aim of this response is to address how antiracism can increase civility and improve science, it is also important to acknowledge that CRT can also be applied to workplaces and I-O practices. Antiracist efforts by I-O psychologists in the workplace would require us to examine policies and practices to determine if there are unintended differential effects by race. The idea of differential effects across groups due to policies that appear to be neutral is nothing new to I-O psychology; it is the definition of adverse (aka disparate) impact.
A current example of this issue are expectations around personal grooming. California recently banned discrimination based on “natural hair” or other hairstyles associated with a particular ethnic group (Stack, Reference Stack2019). Although Title VII prohibits discrimination based on race or its proxy, dress codes that address hairstyles usually couch such expectations in cleanliness or professionalism so they seem neutral on their face. Yet such codes disproportionately affect people who wear hairstyles that are more common among African Americans than among other Americans and especially among White Americans (McGregor, Reference McGregor2019). Both the expectations of HR recruiters and organizational dress codes are likely to hold implicit biases about good grooming that reflect White American beauty standards (Thompson, Reference Thompson2009).
What could an antiracist approach to a dress code look like? First, if there is an existing dress code, it would be examined by a diverse set of people who would identify any part of the code that is unrelated to safety. Second, these parts of the code (or the new proposed dress code) would be discussed and the minority voices (both numerically in the organization and historically in society) would be listened to. Other members of the process would not challenge their perspectives; that is, majority members would accept that the minority voices are speaking about a reality that is not known to the majority persons because CRT tells us that race is a lens through which people understand and explain phenomena. Then, the group would iteratively and collaboratively create a new dress code, again specifically checking to ensure that new standards do not inappropriately rule out styles that are more common among minority and minoritized groups. Finally, these new standards would be clearly communicated to all organizational members, especially to decision-makers, and training deployed as needed.
Anticipated criticisms of my perspective
Language has multiple meanings
One anticipated criticism of my work is that terms like light versus dark or black versus white have meanings that pre-date the existence of the United States of America. Certainly that is true. This is a longstanding metaphor. The problem, however, is that the United States was founded and literally built through a literal black versus white distinction. It is enshrined in the Constitution (see: Three-Fifths compromise in Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution), although later repealed by a series of amendments (particularly, the 14th Amendment, which ends the Three-Fifths compromise, and the 13th Amendment, which ends slavery); these differences were continued through the Jim Crow era and ostensibly ended by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet, racial disparities still persist in the United States, in nearly every arena (Daly, Hobjin, & Pedtke, Reference Daly, Hobjin and Pedtke2017; National Center for Health Statistics, 2016; Wildeman & Wang, Reference Wildeman and Wang2017; Williams & Collins, Reference Williams and Collins2016). The literal use of Black people to build a White-privileging United States transformed the meaning of black versus white and light versus dark. In the United States—and really, in any society that has colonized and/or stolen and enslaved others who are darker than them and particularly the African continent (Jarosz, Reference Jarosz1992)—these terms have enmeshed their original meaning with race.
Colorblindness
A second anticipated criticism is that egalitarian values require us to be colorblind, that is, focusing on race is a racist act that creates difference. This is a red herring. Colorblindness ideology cloaks racist behavior in terms of racial justice and equality by arguing that attending to issues of race creates racial divides (Crenshaw, Reference Crenshaw2011). The structural and institutional differences by race in treatment and experience exist whether or not they are addressed directly. Overlooking disparities does not reduce them. Claims that we should do so is gaslighting at its finest.
Scientific neutrality
A third anticipated criticism is the idea that science should be neutral and not seek to do anything. The idea of science as a value-free enterprise has been discussed at length and discarded (Douglas, Reference Douglas2009). Sciences and scientists have values, from the choices we make in what to study, to who we study, to how we study it, to why we study it. There is nothing wrong with the goal of improving people’s lives. In fact, the American Psychological Association (APA) code of ethics requires us to do so. Beneficence and nonmalfeasance is the first guiding principle of the APA code of ethics (APA, 2017). This guiding principle exhorts us to not only avoid doing bad but also to actively do good.
Conclusion
In this article, I expanded on Cortina et al.’s (Reference Cortina, Cortina and Cortina2019) focal article by describing a way in which I-O psychology can become more inclusive, more civil, and more useful and that might also infringe in small ways on academic freedom and freedom of speech. I also argued that purposely and consciously engaging in antiracist practices will result in better science and better practice. We can begin with the small things, like disavowing racialized language and insisting on its removal when we see it. We can also begin with the large things, where we as a science rethink how race is a factor in our studies, moving from counting the race of our participants and controlling for it in our regressions and instead engaging with race as a valid and important frame of explanation. We can do these in the service of doing our part to disrupt the relationship between race and society as it is today, with the ultimate goal of greater freedom and well-being for all. Never mind that this is the right thing to do, although it is. It is good science and practice, and better science and practice than we have today.