Positionality and Limitations

My subject position as researcher was a constant variable in shaping this research. Blair (1998) argues: “No matter what our good intentions, we cannot guarantee neutrality in our interpretations and analyses. This is because our histories and memories are shot through with gendered, classed, racialized, and other excluding understandings which give us our particular perspectives on the world” (p. 13). A critical anti-racist framework, in conjunction with an interlocking analysis of power, demands that researchers interrogate how their own subjectivity shapes and forms any research project (Lather, 1991; Reinhartz, 1992; Weedon, 1997). I consider the historical, social, and material conditions that make possible my own role in this project given this focus on reflexivity (Frankenberg, 2004). As such, I am driven to ask the difficult question: What kind of person am I, to be able to ask questions about how racialized subjectivity shapes the lived experience of individuals who were attempting to procure work in and navigate the Canadian labour market?

I am the son of immigrants from Europe. My dad came from Italy and my mother came from Malta shortly after the end of the Second World War. They described many unjust hardships that they faced based on their ethnicity when they first came to Canada that related to the ways they spoke with an accent and some of the foods they would eat. My parents would tell me stories of how they faced many of these ethnically charged overt aggressions daily. As a second generation Canadian10 that passes as White, I have been able to benefit from my place of privilege as a White male that has allowed me to work and thrive in the private sector for 18 years. Before

10 _{I draw on the definition of second generation Canadian as children born of immigrant parents in Canada}

discussed in Breton, R., Isajiw, W. W., Kalbach, W. E., & Reitz, J. G. (Eds.). (1990). Ethnic identity and equality: Varieties of experience in a Canadian city. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

entering academia, I have held positions as upper management in the private sector. I was deeply involved and had much influence with much of the employment practices such as the hiring, training, promoting and firing or employees. Although I would consider myself to be socially conscious, there were many instances that I allowed both internal and external socially constructed biases to influence the many independent and group staffing decisions in these organizations that cut across racial, gender and class lines.

Stemming from an earlier research that I conducted where I asked members of the South Asian diaspora to share their experiences in navigating Canadian labour market, I was able to gain an understanding of the types of discrimination that were faced in places of employment. I needed to question my own positionality in relation to my respondents. Directly connected to the earlier question I posed, I contemplated how I can actually use my place of privilege to better understand why and how racialized individuals are still excluded from certain sectors of the labour market. Specifically, being positioned as a White male who was perceived as an insider within a corporate setting allowed me access to information that most women and researchers of colour would have not been privy to. I am not saying that anyone else would have been less successful in procuring information that divulges inequalities within the hiring methods, however my subject position allowed me to both procure specific higher profile informants and also put them more at ease to discuss more of the “behind the scenes” forms of racist practices that have been used when involving potential hiring candidates and current employees of colour. Especially if the organizational culture would be influenced by a culture of whiteness, I was in most part seen as “one of the boys”. Many people I interviewed in positions of power that heavily influence the employment practices for/in the organizations they represented were much more candid with me because I was able to fit the profile of someone with whom they were familiar. Not all of these

respondents were White and male, but not being seen as a person who may have been personally subjected to racist employment practices, or appeared as someone who would not judge them on their discriminating actions whether they be overt or covert, allowed them to be much more candid in the later parts of the interview. Even though my position allowed for access to these informants, I still needed the time during each interview to build a positive rapport so I would begin by sharing some of my personal experiences from my past where I was not the most socially conscious person in some of my hiring practices. For example, I would tell them of a time, as a district manager for a prominent retail chain, that I purposefully hired an Asian person out of the pool of candidates because that store was consistently having problems balancing their cash register and that I needed to hire someone that was “good with numbers”. This tactic was successful in further softening any barriers to information that allowed me to elicit their own experiences involving racism in employment practices that they have been personally and/or indirectly involved with. Initiating the interview with more indirect questions about themselves and the organization as well as sharing my own personal experiences regarding discrimination in the workplace offered an effective way to progress to more direct questions that would allow me to learn about the circulation of whiteness and experiences around race within their organization.

In the following chapter, I present the data and analysis of this research study. I outline the narratives of racialized workers and reveal how they have experienced multiple forms of racism in regards to entering and navigating in private for profit organizations in the metropolitan Toronto labour market. Specifically, drawing on the hiring practices of these organizations coupled with the narratives of racialized workers, I will later explore how the employment practices used by these organizations are fraught with what I term White Nepotism that is an organizational culture imbedded within a culture of institutional whiteness.