Professionalism is a Racist Construct

As retail operations with frontline staff who regularly interact with the public, many bookstores have either stated or unstated but generally accepted standards of professionalism for how their employees represent the store or interact with customers.

It may be time to re-examine those standards of professionalism for their inherent biases. Last year the UCLA Law Review published an essay by Leah Goodridge "Professionalism as a Racial Construct" which examined how many of the assumptions underlying standards of professional behavior, far from being neutral or objective, work against people of color and people who are not members of the dominant culture:

"It is not merely that there is a double standard in how professionalism applies: It is that the standard itself is based on a set of beliefs grounded in racial subordination and white supremacy." -- Leah Goodman

A lawyer herself, Goodman looks at aspects of legal professionalism, but her analysis can be adapted and applied to other settings and scenarios, including customer service and retail. She looks at how people of color are expected to withstand microaggressions and bias with good grace -- that calling out such behavior is seen as being unprofessional when in point of fact is the person using those microaggressions who is really the one being unprofessional. "If attorneys on the receiving end of microaggressions, bias, and racism are considered sensitive for not laughing along," Goodman asks, "why are the attorneys who engage in harmful behavior not also considered sensitive for their inability to handle criticism about their conduct?"

In the retail world, "professionalism" is often associated with dress codes, with how a person looks, tone of voice, and a general calm demeanor. But these things may in themselves indicate racist, homophobic, ageist, sizeist, or ableist assumptions. For example, according to a 2023 Crown Workplace research study, more than half of Black women surveyed felt they had to wear their hair straight in a job interview to be successful. One fifth of Black women surveyed between the ages of 25 and 34 had been sent home from work because of their hair. "Texturism," discrimination based on how close or far your natural hair is to European hair, is insidiously prevalent in many of our standards of a "professional" appearance.

Some questions to ask yourself as your review your store's policies and expectations of professionalism for your staff:

Is your dress code gender neutral, unbiased, and most importantly enforced equitably? Does it take into account different spiritual practices and cultures, the needs of disabled employees who may have to contend with assistance like wheelchairs? Is is fair to people with larger body sizes? Does it accommodate nonbinary and gender non-conforming employees?

Are you allowing self expression or does your staff have to suppress who they are? Do your LGBTQ+ employees feel able to be out if they choose? Are neurodivergent staff able to work with their own natural movements and communication methods?

These are just a few of the considerations that must go into creating a new standard of professionalism in your store. Creating a workplace that actually works for everyone may mean throwing out some long standing assumptions of what it means to be "professional" but the result could be a happier, empathic workplace where everyone's humanity is celebrated.