How Racial Inequality Impacts Mental Health at Work.
I’m just going to come straight out of the gate and say this: just because an organization doesn’t know how to address a community-specific trauma in the workplace because they don’t want to “say the wrong thing” doesn’t mean avoiding it is ok. It never was.
It’s equally disheartening when the opposite happens: when companies ask employees from a specifically-impacted community to become the “poster children” for their public statements, just to show "hey, we've done our part here." 1
When I was conducting interviews for my book, I knew it was absolutely critical to include a chapter on how continued global systemic racism impacts the mental health at work conversation. Having these conversations was a truly unforgettable experience.
I got to meet people from various communities and talked about their individual workplace experiences. What came to my attention was how they explained to me how they experienced that people of color in the workplace often feel abandoned by their employers, and what that looked like.
And that horrible feeling is fueled by an obvious lack of acknowledgment, or care, of what folks in these different communities experience outside of the workplace. It’s as if they are expected to “magically forget” what has happened in their lives when they “clock in for work that day”.
And that is just not right.
Acknowledging that racism exists isn’t enough. Taking action means creating space for conversations around what the mental health impact is too from encountering that trauma.
Let’s talk about how to do that, why, and what you can do as an individual to create the space for these conversations at work.
MENTAL HEALTH OUTCOMES OF RACIAL INEQUALITY AND TRAUMA
First, some stats.
There was a study from 2015 that discovered a stronger link between racism and mental health than racism and physical health.
Meanwhile, according to a 2021 study, the Covid-19 pandemic triggered an uptick of ethnic discrimination toward Asian American and Pacific Islander groups, causing bigger potential for depression, anxiety, self-injury, and suicidal ideation among students.
The pandemic was bad for all communities of color: they experienced a downturn in mental health and could not easily access mental health care. Unsurprisingly, suicide rates among people of color rose faster than among Caucasian people.
Furthermore, people between 18 and 28 who have experienced short-term or long-term discrimination are 25% more likely to have mental health issues.
The disparity is very real.
For people of color, experiencing race-based traumatic stress (RBTS) is an unfathomable chronic stressor that people who haven’t encountered it could ever imagine. Depression, anxiety, sleep troubles, hypervigilance, and low self-esteem merely scratch the surface of its negative impacts.
To take it even further, studies show that communities of color who experience racism are at risk emotionally and cognitively as the study showed that having these traumatic experiences are said to deteriorate brain circuits regulating emotions and cognition.
THE REASONS WHY WE'RE STILL NOT TALKING ABOUT IT AT WORK
The problem is enormous and unsustainable, but why are people still not talking about it? There are too many reasons to name, but let’s go with the most common reasons/excuses:
Fear of getting it wrong is the first reason for this "silence."
My book interviewee “L” said that people fear the discussion might “turn into a confrontation”, that they will say something offensive to "the other." 2 So, people would rather keep quiet and not try at all.
But saying nothing may be even worse than saying the wrong thing because silence equals complacency. It doesn't move the narrative forward or bring the problems to the surface for people to discuss. 3
A genuine lack of awareness may be another reason. People outside minority groups may feel racial inequalities don't exist because their realities are different.
Can they be in denial? Sure, some people who can’t look outside themselves and their own experiences may not realize racial discrimination can heavily affect mental health. But, not knowing is not an acceptable reason.
And finally, there's the company tactic of general avoidance. Some companies are scared of incurring liability (not that their avoidance makes this behavior excusable). They don't want to "poke the proverbial bear" by saying the wrong thing or giving more attention to one group than another. Instead, they turn a blind eye and pretend everything is peachy.
These tendencies are amongst some of the sad realities of why the discourse about the impact of racism on mental health is uncommon.
STEPS TO TAKE IN CREATING SPACE AT WORK TO DISCUSS THE MENTAL HEALTH IMPACT OF RACIAL INEQUALITY
Let’s look at how to create space for workplace conversations about how experiencing racism can impact mental health:
Educating yourself is your responsibility: don’t ask people from affected communities to be your teacher every time something happens. Just because something happens to a colleague’s community, and you want to understand the context behind it, doesn’t mean it’s that individual’s responsibility to educate you and retraumatize themselves to do it. Learning about how a community has been impacted historically is your responsibility to learn. How you support the individual in front of you and what they need is what matters. Yes, it’s ok to ask how someone is feeling about what is going on for them based on what happens in their community, but there has to be the individual responsibility for self-directed learning separate from those conversations.
Create space at work for people to learn and talk about trauma they’ve faced: But remember, this is about creating space for the individual, the option without the obligation to talk. And what that individual specifically needs, not what you “think they need”.
Suggest resources: They may be the ones that are available through your organization or elsewhere if they’re not available internally.
Specifically for employers: every conversation matters in every community, and they’re all equally important. This isn’t about prioritizing “which community is getting it worse”, because that comparative exercise is inappropriate and useless. When discussing the mental health impact of racial inequality in the workplace, it’s not about highlighting “who has it the worse”. Different communities have their own unique experiences, each of them individually unique and critical to discuss. I get that you don’t want your acknowledgements to seem performative, and they shouldn’t. This is why it’s so critical to work with your DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging) specialist (and I truly hope you have invested in having one) on the most authentic and impactful way to address these experiences for respective communities in your workplace.
That's why discussing the mental health impact of experiencing racial trauma touches all communities, and why it’s so critical to engage in best practices on what opening up that dialogue in a meaningful way looks like, as and when the need arises.
THE FIGHT FOR MENTAL HEALTH AND RACIAL EQUALITY CONTINUES
Experiencing different forms of racism will affect the mental health of various groups in the workplace. This is a common stressor that people bring into work and it needs to be treated as such. It’s absolutely imperative.
We still have a long way to go before conversations about racial inequality and mental health become the norm in the workplace, but it’s being actively worked on by countless DEIB professionals every single day.
What you can control as an individual is doing your part to create space for the conversation, drive your own learning, and listen. Creating change, one moment at a time, in the discourse.
Book a fireside interview session with Melissa to start the conversation.
Sources:
1,2,3: Doman, Melissa. Yes, You Can Talk about Mental Health at Work: Here's Why ... and How to Do It Really Well. Welbeck Publishing Group, 2021.
