“‘I can’t believe what you say because I see what you do’. Museums’ equity rhetoric versus the experience of museum workers of colour”: emotional regulation and workplace solidarity

A few minutes of unguarded conversation with a museum worker of colour will often reveal their institution’s equity programs as ‘illusions of inclusion’ (Ballo et al., 2021, p. 34), elaborate mechanisms that protect institutional whiteness by using racialised workers diversity symbols. This paper examines the need for an intersectional perspective when evaluating whether museums’ diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) commitments match the lived experiences of their racialised workers. For example, the recent Museums Moving Forward (MMF) Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture in US Art Museums report (Benoit-Bryan et al., 2023) revealed that white museum workers have a far more positive view of diversity progress than do workers of colour. Given the fact that the majority of museum workers are white and female (Arts Council England, 2019; Sweeney et. al., 2022), this perceptual difference points to a persistent inability for white women to connect the racial and gender-based resistance faced by the women of color who work beside them Rosette et. al. 2018).

Perceptual gaps similar to those identified by the MMF study are borne out by my own comparative analysis of museums’ institutional documentation and racialised workers’ accounts of their experiences. Interviews with museum workers in Australia, the UK and the US expose an alarming disjuncture between museums’ positive equity rhetoric, white coworkers’ perceptions, and the negative experiences of Indigenous, Black and other workers of colour in these workplaces. If this disjuncture is not addressed, workers of colour will continue to be burnt-out by the museum sector, jeapardising the possibility for true progress and equity.