Privation of Inclusion: An Exploration of the Stealth and the Strategy that Sabotaged Racialized Public Servants’ Career Mobility in British Columbia, Canada

• Author: Farid Asey
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00953997211073742
• Published date: 01 November 2022
• Date: 01 November 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997211073742

Administration & Society

2022, Vol. 54(10) 1931 –1964

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DOI: 10.1177/00953997211073742

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Article

Privation of Inclusion:

An Exploration of

the Stealth and the

Strategy that Sabotaged

Racialized Public

Servants’ Career Mobility

in British Columbia,

Canada

Farid Asey1

Abstract

This paper qualitatively examines “privation of inclusion” at work in the

lived experiences of racialized participants hired in publicly funded places

of employment. Taking the position that the dualistic inclusion-exclusion

paradigm fails to capture their lived realities with inclusive exclusions and

exclusive inclusions, it presents privative inclusion as a third space, between

inclusion and exclusion, for a more robust framework in understanding

how racialized bodies were marked and targeted for differential treatment.

The paper then outlines and discusses findings as key indicators of privative

mechanisms that had undermined life chances by limiting career mobility of

racialized participants of this study. It concludes by emphasizing the need for

additional research in this area given the salience of racism at work as well

as the demographic changes that Canada is currently experiencing.

1Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, ON, Canada

Corresponding Author:

Farid Asey, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, 246 Bloor Street

West, Toronto, ON M5S 1V4, Canada.

Email: farid.asey@mail.utoronto.ca

1073742AAS0010.1177/00953997211073742Administration & SocietyAsey

research-article2022

1932 Administration & Society 54(10)

Keywords

workplace inclusion, public sector racism, employment discrimination,

racialization at work, racial inequalities

Introduction

The murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by a White police offi-

cer in Minneapolis has galvanized a series of racial solidarity events that have

put on display the full range of anguish that Black, Indigenous, and other

racialized communities have been feeling about longstanding racial justice

issues in Canada, in the United States and around the globe (Deliso, 2020;

Tasker, 2020; Xi, 2020). However, the tragedy has also, and ironically so,

ignited another debate north of the border, that of Canadian exceptionalism,

mobilizing defensive postures from influential White Canadians. On June

2nd, 2020, Mr. Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous

province, would go on record to say that racism in Canada is not systemic and

does not have deep roots here (Xi, 2020). At about the same time, yet another

powerful White man, Mr. François Legault, the Premier of Québec, Canada’s

second most populous province, would also assert that “. . . there’s no sys-

temic discrimination. There’s no system in Québec of discrimination”

(Lapierre, 2020). While Mr. Legault still maintains the view that there is no

systematic racism in his beloved Québec, Mr. Ford would retreat from his

initial position in the face of public backlash. Other examples of such denials

include assertions by the Commissioner of Royal Canadian Mounted Police

(RCMP), Canada’s federal national police service, and other senior officials

(Morin, 2020; Wakefield & Junker, 2020). Ultimately, the language of denial

and deflection combined with fossilized Canadian exceptionalism, ensconced

in colonial overtones, create an illusion that there is no racism in Canada,

thereby ensuring that systemic discrimination is swept under, and thriving

beneath, the proverbial carpet in the country.

Although overt acts of bigotry are no longer acceptable, research evidence

suggests that the privileging of White domination, in subtle and insidious

ways, continues to cement colonial White supremacy in Canada (Banting &

Thompson, 2021; Henry, 2017; Mensah & Williams, 2017; Patterson &

Veenstra, 2016; Ramraj et al., 2016; Thobani, 2007). In fact, colonial white-

ness reverberates in the day-to-day social life of Canadians, particularly those

living in BC (Hiebert, 2017; Massarutto, 2004; Mawani, 2009; Ward, 2002).

Moreover, whiteness’s powerful structural tentacles are institutionalized and

deeply embedded in daily practices in ways that create an illusion of inclu-

sion, a façade that makes it harder to identify sources and operations of power

(Das Gupta, 2008; Henry & Tator, 2010; Razack, 2010). These forces are also

behind the conflation of giving entry to the racialized with their inclusion in

Asey 1933

certain institutional environments-and the confusion of their presence with

their acceptance and tolerance in these contexts.

Objectives and Outline

This study offers an examination of highly sophisticated, subtle and insidious

mechanisms through which workplace racial discrimination in form of priva-

tion of inclusion persisted in hiring and promotional decision making. The

site for the study was publicly funded places of employment in British

Columba (BC), Canada, an institutional context that is significant consider-

ing the fact that workers for these employers offered services directly to the

general public. More importantly, these institutions were mostly led by

elected officials who, under Canada’s parliamentary democracy and the

Westminster model of representative government, were Members of the BC

Legislative Assembly and appointed as ministers of the government (Brooks,

2015). As such, the privation of inclusion that is outlined in this paper

occurred under the watchful eyes of the executive branch of the government,

the body that derives its legitimacy from the electoral process by virtue of

symbolizing not only the will of British Columbians but also the confidence

of the legislative body that they represented (Brooks, 2015).

Against this backdrop, the present article examines privation of inclusion

as an apparatus of racial discrimination that signifies the absence of meaning-

ful inclusion rather than an outright and blunt denial of it. As part of this

endeavour, it investigates the lived experiences of non-White participants to

understand how they were marked and targeted for differential treatment at

work. To this end, taking the position that everyday racism is not the inevi-

table outcome of human difference but of deliberate processes (Essed, 1991,

2007), the paper will then outline and discuss the study’s findings in form of

job description manipulation, benevolent preclusion, filtering out, cultural

deficit fallacy, and temporary assignment backchannel as key indicators of

how these mechanisms had undermined the life chances of participants by

limiting their career mobility and denying them access to workplace advance-

ment opportunities.

Privation of Inclusion: Utility of the Framework

and the Nexus With Other Theories

Privation of inclusion offers a conceptual framework to explain how racial-

ized employment discriminations occur in public institutional spheres. The

framework identifies specific mechanisms used to deny racialized workers

unfettered access to workplace mobility, inclusion, and enjoyment. It also