Does blame always shift? Examining the impact of workplace safety communication language on post-accident blame attributions for multiple entities

The under-researching of Latinx employees in the organizational diversity literature is of critical importance as extant research indicates that findings relevant to frequently studied minority employees may not be applicable to Latinx employees. One factor that differentiates Latinx employees in the U.S. from other racial and ethnic minorities is their use of, or perceived use of, language. In this research, we investigated how inclusion efforts that incorporated multiple languages into the workplace impacted employment outcomes for Latinx employees following a workplace accident. In three separate studies, we found that factors such as the language used to communicate a safety warning (Studies 1 & 2) and employee ethnicity (Studies 2 & 3) influenced blame attributed to a low-level leader (the job foreman), but they had no relationship with blame attributed toward the injured employee who was the target of communication. Consequently, these findings differ from attribution theory research which has posited that blame shifts from one entity to another. Additionally, extant research on employment discrimination has typically focused on differential outcomes for occupational minorities. Our findings, however, suggest that researchers should examine the conditions in which equal treatment (despite perceived differences in needs) could place traditionally marginalized populations at a systematic disadvantage and, consequently, may actually be indicative of workplace discrimination.

External observers' reactions to abusive supervision in the workplace: the impact of racial differences

This research examines external observers' reactions to abusive supervision in the workplace while accounting for the impact of the abusive supervisor's race and the abused employee's race. We conducted four different studies to examine differences in external observers' protective behavior across the four possible abusive supervisor–abused employee racial combinations. The focus of these studies is on the two largest racial groups in the US: White Americans and African Americans. Our findings reveal that external observers' willingness to protect an abused employee depends significantly on the abused employee's race and the abusive supervisor's race.

Workplace hate speech and rendering Black and Native lives as if they do not matter: A nightmarish autoethnography

The #BlackLivesMatter movement has been met with resistance and hostility by many whites who do not see the need for assertions regarding the value and worth of Black lives. Those who seek to disrupt this emerging discourse tend to regard instances of white violence against Black people as individual incidents that do not reflect larger societal patterns. This paper addresses these assertions by drawing on discussions of slurs and other racially abusive language in the workplace. Using autoethnography, I provide rich descriptions of how hateful language circulates in whitespaces through both interpersonal interactions and through group-level consumption of racially problematic mass media creating organizations that are hostile to people of color, even in their absence. Major implications of this study include that the devaluation of Black and Native lives is pervasive within many predominantly white organizations and that this reality negatively effects both the life chances and the personal safety of people of color.

Effects of sexual/gender minority- and race-based enacted stigma on mental health and substance use in female assigned at birth sexual minority youth

OBJECTIVE

People of color who are also sexual and gender minorities (SGM) experience forms of enacted stigma based on both their racial/ethnic identity and their SGM status. We set out to test the effects of enacted stigma specific to race/ethnicity and SGM identity on mental health and substance use problems among female assigned at birth (FAB) SGM of color.

METHOD

Data come from a community-based sample of FAB SGM who also identified as racial/ethnic minorities (N = 352). The effects of racial discrimination, SGM victimization, and sexual orientation microaggressions on depression symptoms, anxiety symptoms, alcohol-related problems, and marijuana-related problems were tested using linear regression and negative binomial models.

RESULTS

Enacted stigma based on both race/ethnicity and SGM status were significant predictors of mental health outcomes and alcohol-related problems within the same model, which suggested that both uniquely contributed to poorer health. There was little support for interactive effects between the multiple forms of enacted stigma. Marijuana-related problems were best explained by enacted stigma based on race/ethnicity only.

CONCLUSIONS

Racially diverse FAB SGM are at unique risk of experiencing multiple forms of discrimination and aggression based on their minority identities that each contribute negatively to their wellbeing. Consideration of the multiple forms of enacted stigma they face is necessary for understanding health disparities in these populations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Structural racism in the workplace: Does perception matter for health inequalities?

Structural racism has been linked to racial health inequalities and may operate through an unequal labor market that results in inequalities in psychosocial workplace environments (PWE). Experiences of the PWE may be a critical but understudied source of racial health disparities as most adults spend a large portion of their lives in the workplace, and work-related stress affects health outcomes. Further, it is not clear if the objective characteristics of the workplace are important for health inequalities or if these inequalities are driven by the perception of the workplace. Using data from the 2008 to 2012 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a probability-based sample of US adults 50 years of age and older and the Department of Labor's Occupational Information Network (O*NET), we examine the role of both standardized, objective (O*NET) and survey-based, subjective (as in HRS) measures of PWEs on health and Black-White health inequalities. We find that Blacks experience more stressful PWEs and have poorer health as measured by self-rated health, episodic memory function, and mean arterial pressure. Mediation analyses suggest that these objective O*NET ratings, but not the subjective perceptions, partially explain the relationship between race and health. We discuss these results within the extant literature on workplace and health and health inequalities. Furthermore, we discuss the use of standardized objective measures of the PWE to capture racial inequalities in workplace environment.