3.1 Colonialism, racism and the mind

It is well known that colonialism works in ways that exploit a country’s natural resources and people for profits to be made elsewhere. Experiencing such relations of exploitation and oppression has significant repercussions for the mind (Fanon, 2021; wa Thiong’o, 1981) – for general mental health, as well as how leadership is thought about. The same can be said for any context where racism and prejudice are significant problems, whether the dynamics are explicitly those of colonialism or not. However, it is worth bearing in mind what the great OU academic and cultural theorist Stuart Hall (2018) said about the ‘post-colonial’. Hall argued that although British colonial rule had largely ended, its legacy in the form of traces of beliefs and attitudes lived on: ‘We continue to stand in its shadow’ (p. 23). The legacy of colonialism, for Hall, is corrosive, with its effects ‘unravelling’ in and on the present – creating a ‘disaster-littered, protracted, bloody and unfinished terrain’ (p. 24), within which we must build a more equitable and liveable future. You will now move on to consider how the legacy of colonialism on the mind may affect leadership practice in the present, and how some specific practices of decolonising the mind can be important for practising positive forms of leadership.

Activity 3 Decolonising the mind

Timing: Allow around 15 minutes for this activity

Watch the following video of OU PhD graduate Lace Jackson, an expert in race, colonialism and leadership. In the video, Dr Jackson talks about how the legacy of colonialism affects Black leadership. As you watch, try to identify two practices of decolonising the mind that Dr Jackson recommends for positive leadership practice.

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Transcript: Video 2 Lace Jackson – The legacy of colonialism and slavery on Black leadership

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LACE JACKSON

The legacy of colonialism, neocolonialism, and slavery on Black leadership in the UK has a long and lasting legacy. It has a lasting legacy in the sense that a lot of our human resource practices actually derived from slavery. There’s a recent book by Peter Bloom that talks about the practices of colonialism or slavery in the sense of reward and sanctions are what is used in human resource management.

And it derives from how they dealt with the slaves, and that has carried through and still abides in most organisations’ human resource practice. In respect of the legacy of neocolonialism and colonialism, what we find for global majority people is a legacy of what they call unbelonging. An inability to at first in terms of the Windrush era parents being able to get loans, and having to support themselves through what they call pardners. So that’s the kind of loan in each of the money in order to make ends meet so that they could buy houses because there was no mortgages that were given.

And what you then have is a kind of generational deficit in respect of children having generational wealth within families because their first generation parents who were Windrush here like 70 years ago aren’t able to leave kind of inheritances that their then children can draw on. So there is that legacy of unbelonging.

Sometimes some poverty we also have I guess the pioneering roles of leadership where we still see people are only just getting two positions and they’ve been the first one. And so that’s the kind of lasting legacy that slavery, colonialism, and neocolonialism still have and is still affecting generations to come.

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My tips would be on decolonising the mind of Black leaders is really to understand what I call a term in my research as the invisible force fields. So understanding what are the challenges and what are the obstacles, and understanding what is the organisational-induced trauma and stress because without knowing that you’re coming up against this force field, and you’re thinking it’s yourself. So you’re being self-critical. You’re losing self esteem because you don’t understand what’s happening to you.

So I think that decolonising their own mind, understanding some of the legacies of colonialism and slavery, i.e. the human resource practice that continue to in a sense try to enslaved people in that way if you understand that those are the practices that underpin these organisations you’re more likely to be able to operate in a more emancipatory way and navigate around them.

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End transcript: Video 2 Lace Jackson – The legacy of colonialism and slavery on Black leadership

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Video 2 Lace Jackson – The legacy of colonialism and slavery on Black leadership

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Lace share insights into how colonialism and post-colonialism has influenced human resources management historically. As a consequence, people from global majority backgrounds, according to Lace, may experience unbelonging in the workplace. Unbelonging may result in global majority workers being self-critical in the workplace instead of understanding the real causes of their experience. Lace concludes by suggesting that global majority workers should emancipate and frame understanding of their experience through the lens of racialisation.