Understanding and Managing Sophisticated and Everyday Racism: Implications for Education and Work

(Hardback)

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Sophisticated Racism: Understanding and Managing the Complexity of Everyday Racism adopts a fresh approach to the study of racism. Victoria Showunmi and Carol Tomlin identify the prevalence of sophisticated racism. They explore sophisticated and everyday racism and how it manifests itself in society, particularly in the workplace. Each chapter is self-contained yet relates to the whole book so the reader can focus on a particular area of interest.

The authors narrate examples of everyday racism from the lived experiences of Black women. They take the reader on a compelling journey from the sources of racism through narratives of disquieting racist events to the destination of affirming approaches to preserving a sense of self and individual identity in the face of sophisticated racism.

An analysis of the interplay between Black women and White women is integral to the book. The authors explain how this originates in historical patterns of behavior which emerged on the plantations during enslavement. The term White women syndrome has been coined to represent attempts to defend the limited space for female success by denigrating and excluding Black women. A unique feature of the book is that it reaches beyond the historical context to the provision of strategies for managing sophisticated and everyday racism in contemporary society.

Reviews

Sophisticated Racism is essential reading. At once confronting, tender and sophisticated, the book centers Black women's lived experiences in a manner that critiques both national policy and everyday racism. The book is beautifully written, with Victoria Showunmi and Carol Tomlin sharing personal trauma and triumph while at the same time offering insights that researchers, policy makers and everyday people seeking better understanding of race, racism and race relations will find helpful.

This book provides a much needed analysis, language and toolkit for the often unarticulated, unacknowledged, and invisible experiences of everyday racism, classism and sexism faced by Black women. This work "sees" Black women in western society that habitually conflates Blackness with maleness and puts a finger on our common experiences as Black women/girls while being particular about experience of Black British women and girls which has been missing from British feminist literature. The ideas in this book reach out beyond the UK borders and is a welcome addition to the Black feminist canon started by Anna Julia Cooper and progressed by bell hooks, Angela Davis, Patricia Hill Collins, and Alice Walker.

Author Bio

Dr. Victoria Showunmi is associate professor at University College London in the Faculty of Institute of Education.

Dr. Carol Tomlin is visiting fellow at the University Leeds.