1.1 Applying CRT to leadership theory and practice
All five of these tenets are relevant to leadership theory and practice, but most applicable are tenets one and two – the embeddedness of racism and the assumptions of ‘white over’.
In leadership, these tenets manifest through what Ladkin and Patrick (2022) call ‘assumed whiteness’, which is the assumption that ‘normal’ leadership is that practised by white people (and predominantly men). A salient example of assumed whiteness was evident in the debate concerning film and television adaptations of the fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien. When The Lord of the Rings was adapted into three feature films, its cast of heroes was dominated by white people. Later, when Amazon produced the Rings of Power television series (a prequel to the films), the cast was diverse. This was a welcome statement of openness and diversity within the fantasy genre. Strangely, however, a group of self-professed Tolkien fans criticised the diversity as inauthentic to Tolkien’s fiction (Thielman, 2022) – as if elves, humans, hobbits and dwarves can only be white. It is telling that some people assumed a fantasy world would be white.
Further evidence of assumed whiteness lies in the fact that leadership coming from anyone except white males is often prefaced by an additional descriptor, such as ‘women’s leadership’ and indeed ‘Black leadership’. Gender is something usually explored as a topic in relation to women, not men; race is explored in relation to people who are not white. We must remain vigilant when it comes to leadership theory, because it very often assumes the leader will be white, rich, non-disabled and male.
Activity 1 Assumed whiteness and its implications
Watch the following video of Lace Jackson, who did her PhD research on leadership and race in the UK. What is the key term Lace uses to describe assumed whiteness? What are the two key implications she highlights of this assumed whiteness?
Transcript: Video 1 Lace Jackson – assumed whiteness
Discussion
The name Lace Jackson adopts for assumed whiteness is ‘white solipsism’. This is an idea also explored by Ladkin and Patrick (2022) as:
the tendency for Whites to see the world through the lens of Whiteness, rather than to consider the world from other points of view…[It is] the exclusive reverence for a perspective moulded by White normalization – [which] creates psychic and cognitive barriers that impede the capacity of many White people to harbour empathetic ability.
The two implications Lace highlights are:
- Firstly, that assumed whiteness implies the ‘invisibility’ of whiteness. Assumed whiteness normalises whiteness, and leads to the labelling of others. Assumed whiteness bestows privilege, power and freedom to certain people, and denies them to the others.
- Secondly, that there’s expectation for ethnic minority leaders to lead and behave the same way as white leaders. As an example, Lace highlighted the expectation that Black female leaders should have straight hair, not affording them the option for alternative hairstyles. Ethnic minority leaders are also expected to lead like white leaders – whatever this means.
Expansionism has significant global and territorial significance in relation to who is assumed to have the right to travel, work and even militarily invade other countries. Yet it also has a more routine and everyday meaning, namely the tendency for white people (predominantly men) to assume positions of authority, with them owning the right to judge the correctness of various topics for which they may or may not have any expertise. These hierarchies prevail beyond the UK and other Western countries. For example, when white people go to Sub-Saharan Africa to visit or work, they are seen as either ‘tourists’ or ‘expatriates’. But the terminology changes dramatically when Black people move in the opposite direction – the words used then are ‘asylum seeker’, ‘refugee’, ‘economic migrant’, among others.
Now that you have learnt about CRT in relation to leadership, you will practise applying it to a real-life example.
Activity 2 Black Lives Matter and UK political leaders
Examine the following short case study of the response of UK political leaders to Black Lives Matter (BLM). As you proceed, analyse the case from the perspective of assumed whiteness. Can you find any examples of it at work?
Many of the UK’s political leaders were keen to lend their support to the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
The UK Prime Minister at the time, Boris Johnson, spoke of the ‘undeniable feeling of injustice, a feeling that people from black and minority ethnic groups do face discrimination: in education, in employment, in the application of the criminal law’, saying that these feelings could not be ignored because ‘in too many cases, I am afraid, they will be founded on a cold reality’ (Johnson, 2020). Johnson pointed to his record of appointing diverse government ministers and, in his time as Mayor of London, recruiting more Black people into policing ‘and other walks of life’. Addressing BLM protestors, he said ‘I hear you and I understand’.
He continued, however, by warning protestors not to violate pandemic social distancing requirements, and warning people against breaking the law. It’s now clear, however, that Johnson and his staff themselves broke the law during the pandemic.
Indeed, Johnson had been criticised in the past for making comments in relation to race that seemed ill-judged at best. When England’s football players took the knee in a statement of support for racial equality, he did not condemn England football supporters who booed. The then-Home Secretary, Priti Patel, went further and criticised the England players’ gesture.
The UK Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, also found himself in hot water in relation to BLM. Initially supporting BLM, Starmer and the party’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, released a photograph of themselves kneeling in solidarity.
Matters became more challenging for Starmer, however, when BLM started making demands regarding policing. Defunding the police is a demand made by BLM to divert funds away from policing and towards better interventions and support in areas that would reduce causes of crime – e.g., social services, community amenities, housing. In an interview on BBC Breakfast, Starmer was asked whether he supports defunding the police. His response is quoted below, and can be watched at the Twitter link in the References section. He created consternation by referring to BLM as a ‘moment’ rather than a ‘movement’.
That’s nonsense and nobody should be saying anything about defunding the police. I would have no truck with that. I was director of public prosecutions for five years, I worked with police forces across England and Wales, bringing thousands of people to court. So my support for the police is very, very strong and evidenced in the joint actions I’ve done with the police. There’s a broader issue here. The Black Lives Matter movement, or moment if you like, internationally is about reflecting something completely different, and it is about reflecting on what happened dreadfully in America just a few weeks ago, and showing or acknowledging that as a moment across the world. It’s a shame it’s getting tangled up with these organisational issues, with the organisation Black Lives Matter, but I wouldn’t have any truck with what the organisation is saying about defunding the police or anything else. That’s just nonsense.
Starmer was criticised by some of his Labour MP colleagues, including Florence Eshalomi, who said:
For the Year 12 students I spoke to last Friday at Lilian Baylis School, where a number of the boys (and one girl) mentioned they had been stopped and searched, Black Lives Matter isn’t a ‘moment’. The choice of words in the interview was wrong. I will continue to relay constituents’ views to Keir.
Starmer, talking to an audience of Black journalists later issued an ambiguous apology, saying:
If people have thought [I] meant something else, then of course I regret that. This is not a moment for not standing with the Black Lives Matter movement and the injustice that is being exposed.
He later offered The Voice a further clarification, saying that by ‘moment’ he had meant ‘defining moment’:
Now that many many more people across the world have actually recognised and acknowledged the injustice, we’ve got to do something about it, and I don’t think there’s anybody who hasn’t said we need a turning point, we need a moment, we need a defining moment, and it was in that sense that I meant it’s got to be a moment in which we come together, recognise things have got to change – and change them.
However, he then went on to reassert his wish for more funding to be given to the police.
Discussion
The first thing to note is that BLM seemed like a safer cause for the political leaders to support when it concerned a problem ‘over there’ in the US, and of course both party leaders expressed their support for racial equality in principle. They struggled when issues became more specific and came closer to home.
In terms of assumed whiteness, there is in Johnson’s words an assumption that he is the one who is allowed to decide what is an appropriate demonstration of anger. He assumed a leader identity regarding the law, and yet we now know that he and his staff broke these same laws. This could be perceived as a matter of white expansionism – he was allowed freedoms that he was denying Black protestors. Ultimately, he displays an unwillingness to empathise with Black experiences of living in a ‘normality’ where prominent slave traders are celebrated through monuments displayed in city centres. Worse still, he gives white people who disrespect football players a free pass.
Sir Keir Starmer certainly gets himself into a verbal tangle. The assumed whiteness on display is in relation to expecting a universally positive experience of the police and policing. Calling for more police officers is regarded as a positive, and the lived experiences of Black people at the hands of the police are not considered by him here as valid reference points. He shows a lack of empathy for Black experience by issuing a ‘non-apology apology’, and instead shifting responsibility onto his critics. Most controversial in his statements was his use of the word ‘moment’ over ‘movement’, a choice he later tried to reverse. This could be interpreted as an example of expansionism – a white man feeling that he is qualified to tell Black people what their movement is really about.
CRT has been subjected to significant attack from white people on the political right. Rather than viewing such resistance to CRT as a drawback, however, it could be interpreted as a strength – a sign that the theory has been effective at raising awareness of injustice and inequity. You will now move on to consider how conflict could be dialled up or down, with CRT being an important tool to achieve this.