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Date: 19 April 2016, At: 02:26
Ethnic and Racial Studies
ISSN: 0141-9870 (Print) 1466-4356 (Online) Journal homepage:
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The color bind: talking (and not talking) about raceat work
Eric Fong
To cite this article: Eric Fong (2016) The color bind:
talking (and not talking) about race at work,
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39:3, 509-510, DOI:
10.1080/01419870.2015.1093152
To link to this article:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1093152
Published online: 16 Oct 2015.
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I advise the book scholars, graduate students and researchers
who are interested in
ethnicity, immigration and racism.
Ramazan Erdağ
Department of International Relations, Eskisehir
Osmangazi University, Eskisehir, Turkey
[email protected]
© 2015 Ramazan Erdağ
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1095324
The color bind: talking (and not talking) about race at
work , by Erica
Gabrielle Foldy and Tamara R. Buckley, New York, NY, Russell
Sage
Foundation, 2014, xvi + 194pp., $37.5 (paperback), ISBN
978-0-87154-472-8
Foldy and Buckley wrote a very interesting book that challenges
the conventional
color blind practice in handling racial relations in the
workplace. They argued that
color blindness can lead to undesirable outcomes in the
workplace. Giving up
racial and ethnic identity implies abandoning an important
aspect of social iden-
tity that may be perceived as a threat by the minority. In
addition, by not acknowl-
edging the importance of race, the color blindness principle
suggests that race is a
problem. It also frames whites handling things as the norm or
standard. Thus,
people are expected to learn and follow the practices of whites
and to preservewhites as the privileged group.
Foldy and Buckley argued that a good racial-cultural practice in
the workplace
is that at least a few team members acknowledge color
cognizance.
Color cognizance explicitly recognizes the impact of race and
culture as well as
the presence … of racism. It is marked by our self-awareness of
our own racial
and ethnic categorization and identication and their
consequences, and is an
acknowledgement of race as a dening element of American society.
(20)
The advantage of color cognizance is that it can be a
source of strength and pridein one’s racial and ethnic group.
Recognizing group diversity leads to higher
group identication and generates greater trust and engagement
among
employees.
The authors found support for their arguments in an
in-depth study of teams in
a child welfare agency. They also found that not everyone has to
agree with the
practice of color cognizance in the workplace. Instead, it is
important to have a few
members, ideally with different racial backgrounds, committed to
the practice to
form cross-racial partnerships. To foster the practice of color
cognizance in the
workplace, it is important that employees feel safe to discuss
and argue withothers without any consequence. A safe environment,
according to Foldy and
Buckley, should include a sense of both psychological and
identity safety.
Second, it is critical that the working environment should
foster integration of
diverse ideas and opinion so that groups can move forward in new
directions.
BOOK REVIEWS 509
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The analysis focuses on two levels. The study rst
addressed interaction on the
individual level. The discussion carefully differentiates
cultural cognizance from
race cognizance. Cultural cognizance focuses on cultural
differences, while race
cognizance addresses racial differences. Such distinction is
important in order
to understand the practice of race cognizance in the workplace.
The discussion
then moved to the team level. Three teams were discussed. The
team with
color cognizance used racial and cultural perspectives to help
team members
handle issues and challenges effectively.
I found the major argument of the book very interesting. The
authors provide a
compelling case based on their observation of a child welfare
agency. The authors
surely and successfully forced the reader to rethink the color
blind practice in the
workplace. It is important to note that the study focuses on one
workplace setting,
a teamwork setting. I hope that the authors or other researchers
will explore
whether the arguments also apply to other workplace settings,
such as a strictly
hierarchical working environment, or a workplace environment
with less power
differentiation.
Eric Fong
Department of Sociology, University of Toronto and Chinese
University of Hong Kong
[email protected]
© 2015 Eric Fong
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2015.1093152
Work in transition: cultural capital and highly skilled
migrants’
passages into the labour market, by Arno-Michael Nohl, Karen
Schittenhelm, Oliver Schmidtke and Anja Weiß, Toronto,
University of
Toronto Press, 2014, xiii + 344 pp., £27.59 (paperback),
ISBN 978-
1442615687
Work in transition situates itself in the heart of the
debate of globalization where
transnational high professionals constitute a key component
within a paradox of
developed countries wanting them and a political
discourse rejecting them. Nohl
and colleagues take us into a journey through the life course of
many highly
skilled migrants navigating their ways where at one level they
are welcomed,
and in many cases invited, but at the more practical level are
faced with a continu-
ous set of hurdles including a public discourse that actively
discourages new
comers. Within such context migrant professionals sometimes
accept different
forms of racism through internalizing the public discourse that
attributes some
negative behaviours to certain cultures.
In their analysis, Nohl and colleagues reject the economic
concept of humancapital where skills are used as the main
parameters for success in the labour
market. They highlight how a human capital approach
‘fails to set the stage for
a “systematic” understanding of the
“structure of the differential chances of
prot”’ (41). Instead they further develop the concept of
cultural capital, rst
510 BOOK REVIEWS
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mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]
