We must stop ignoring racism in charity services
This piece explores the ways that racism operates within charity services, how racism often goes ignored, and advice for how to tackle systemic racism in your charity. This piece expands on a talk that Jon Cornejo gave at the Reimagining Services Summit in June 2025.
When I was asked to speak at the Reimagining Services Summit on racism in frontline services my first thought was of a conversation I had with a young Muslim woman working as a caseworker in the refugee sector. We were talking about her experiences of racism in her work - from racist comments from private contractors in the asylum system to home office staff assuming she was the client rather than the caseworker.
“These things happen as part of my work and I just get on with it, not expecting my manager to support me”.
Within this particular project and in others, this sentiment has come up from racially minoritised staff working in frontline service roles. This notion that as people of colour working in these roles we have to expect that racism will impact our work, that our organisations and managers won’t understand how to support us, and that we have to put up with racist incidents in order to deliver our work. Often well meaning white colleagues simply do not understand how systemic racial oppression impacts every aspect of our lives, or how they uphold those systems - whether by denying that racism is a problem or just through ignorance.
So when tasked with talking to people in positions of power and leadership within service delivery organisations about racism in frontline services racism in frontline services I wanted to give a broad overview of what racism is, explore the ways that white supremacy plays out in charities, and provide some recommendations on how to dismantle racism in services. This written piece serves as a follow up and expansion on that talk, and I hope that it sparks wider conversations in the sector on how to tackle racism in your organisations.
What is racism?
Race as we know it is a product of colonial exploitation and violence
Whiteness was created as part of a political project to justify colonialism
Racial power dynamics and histories operate differently in different parts of the world
But colonialism means that European ideals about race play out around the world
Whiteness is an exclusionary identity rooted in ideas of supremacy
White supremacy is a set of beliefs, politics, and behaviours that position white people as being superior to others and it plays out in every aspect of our daily lives
We exist in a world where racial power structures impact us daily
We all play a role in upholding these systems of racial injustice
White privilege doesn’t mean you do not struggle, but that those struggles do not stem from your race
What is white supremacy culture?
In my work as an activist and facilitator I have often found myself turning to the work of Tema Okun on White Supremacy Culture. This paper and framework looks at the ways that white supremacy shows up within the workplace. Whilst her work is informed by her experiences within academia, there is much that this framework can teach us on how our workplace cultures in the charity sector are built on white and Western European values.
White Supremacy Culture in charity services
In her work on White Supremacy Culture, Tema Okun identifies characteristics of white supremacy culture in the workplace. In this piece I want to look at what these characteristics mean for our sector and how they show up in charity services.
Fear
Fear manifests in many ways - from fear of speaking up against perceived injustice to fear of talking to your peers about problems. A culture of fear in the workplace serves to maintain existing systems and power structures.
In charity services, this can manifest as Black and Brown staff feeling that they can’t speak up about any racist incidents that they might face. Whether because they fear that managers or policies won’t be able to support them, or just because the desire to do right by service users means they feel they just need to put up with racist incidents. This fear of backlash keeps racialised staff from speaking out about their experiences or simply asking for help.
This culture of fear also impacts the communities you serve. Unequal and unjust power dynamics within our organisations and society as a whole may induce feelings of fear within minoritised communities. They may feel hesitant to challenge the ways you do things or critique the services you provide. Prevailing narratives that communities should feel lucky for charities providing for them, or show gratitude to charities for picking up the slack from overstretched public services. Fear tells us to be happy that charity services are there at all, and prevents us from asking for what we actually want or need.
One Right Way
The idea that there is one right way to do things in the workplace, and a resistance to working outside of these established correct ways of doing things. Staff that resist or try to do things differently may be punished.
In charity services, this may show up as seeing staff as challenging or critical for raising problems outside established processes or for talking about their shared experiences with other minoritised staff.
Either/Or
Presenting things as binary choices between one thing or another, which strips away the complexities and nuances that exist in the world. It can present things as either racist or not racist, whilst setting a very high bar on what counts as racism usually from the perspectives of white staff rather than people with lived experience or understanding of systemic racism.
In charity services this can show up as managers being able to look at sexism or racism, but failing to understand the ways that a Black woman can experience both of those forms of structural oppression.
More is More
A culture where success is defined by the idea of delivering more projects and more services for even more clients. Where success is seen through simplistic ideas of growth rather than quality of what we are delivering. This can create workplaces where staff are overworked and burned out, and are less able to process and challenge systemic racism or other problems.
Within charity services, this can mean that racialised staff are so overworked by increasing workloads that they do not have the time to process incidents of racism or organise effectively around how to deal with them.
Many charity services will feel the immense pressure that targets and growth metrics will put on your staff. Where the goal of expanding our “reach” can be valued more by leaders than delivering high quality, effective and meaningful services to your communities.
Avoid Conflict
Focusing on the emotional and psychological comfort of those with power, rather than what racialised staff are going through. Seeing conversations about racism or other forms of oppression as challenging that comfort, and therefore perceiving the victims of racism as an aggressor or trouble makers when they raise their experiences of racism with managers.
In charity services this can show up as managers that don’t understand racism as a systemic form of oppression trying to look at both sides of a perceived conflict, failing to understand what racialised staff are going through.
Urgency
Our sector seems to always be in crisis mode, with a sense of urgency to respond to pressing needs or events. Whilst there are many crises in the world at the moment, the framing of every project and task as urgent keeps us working at a frantic pace and prevents us from understanding the complexities of the current moment. This culture of urgency keeps us moving from crisis to crisis with little space to really explore the ways that systemic oppression are baked into our ways of working and into the systems that we engage with in our work.
When it comes to racism in frontline services, this sense of urgency over the work that staff do can mean that we are so focused on delivering work and responding to the latest crisis that we don’t make time to process and respond to incidents of racism in the work that we do. I have had staff tell me that they have experienced racist behaviours and comments in the workplace, but brushed them aside and dealt with them themselves because they did not have the time or capacity to respond to them through organisational systems.
Worship of the written word
Workplaces that put a lot of value on written documents and less importance on the ways we interact or the ways we build relationships. This creates workplaces where effectively if it isn’t written down then it didn’t happen.
This creates processes where the onus is on the victim of racism to prove that racism occurred, where evidence is only seen as valid if it is in writing. Which puts people who have experienced subtle forms of racism in a difficult position where they have to prove racism occurred to people that may not understand racism in such a complex and subtle way as is necessary.
Defensiveness
This is when those in positions of power or privilege respond to legitimate questions about racism in the workplace with defensive attitudes or outright denial. It is when staff say “I’m not racist”, deny that something happened, or even speak over racialised staff by saying that “this wasn’t racism” because it doesn’t align with their own narrow understandings of racial oppression.
In the context of racism in services, this can show up in many ways such as when managers question whether something that a person of colour says they experienced really happened or really was racism. Or when white staff see the very act of talking about racism as “challenging” or “aggressive” and so may see those staff as aggressors or trouble makers.
Individualism
Our society and our organisations focus heavily on the needs and feelings of the individual over the community. In the workplace this leads to processes that focus on the experiences of individuals and struggle to explore the shared experiences of staff of colour.
Individualism creates workplaces where conversations about racism focus on saying that “I am not racist” rather than more nuanced conversations about how “we benefit from racial power dynamics”
There is much more detail that I could go into when discussing these characteristics of white supremacy and how they show up in our workplaces. But my aim here is to give you a brief overview of the different ways it exists in our charities so you can reflect on the specific ways that racism and white supremacy shows up within your organisation. Think both about the relationships you have with your staff, the power dynamics across the organisation, and the people and systems that your frontline staff will come into contact with through their work.
Tackling racism in charity services
There is a lot to reflect on and dig into when talking about racism and white supremacy, and it can seem daunting to understand the ways this stuff plays out within our own work and in our own organisations. So I want to end this piece with some recommendations and points of reflection for anybody working in the sector that wants to do the work of rooting out racism in charity services. This list is certainly not conclusive, and there are many more conversations to be had on this topic. But I hope that these points spark some much needed conversations and change in our sector.
Accept and acknowledge that racism and systemic oppression exist within our society and in our organisation
Listen to the experiences of racialised staff and the communities you work with
The burden of proof that racism occurred should not be on the victims
Build processes that examine the ways that systemic racism could have affected the incident
Normalise having difficult conversations about racism and oppression in the workplace
Have regular conversations about how your services are upholding systems of racial oppression
Build systems for reporting incidents of racism in a safe way where people feel heard and supported
Have conversations at a senior level on how to deal with incidents of racism from partners or clients
Trust is hard to build and easy to lose. Work to earn it and to keep it.
