Emotional labour has several meanings, and inevitably some are context dependent. I use the term here to refer to a combination of ‘the process of managing and suppressing your feelings in order to do your job’. I also characterise emotional labour as the often-unacknowledged burden borne disproportionately by people of colour in the workplace. In this blog, my aim is to bring together a few exemplars of experiences by people of colour within academia. I use these to highlight the burden of experiencing racial micro-aggressions, being subjected to racial stereotypes and the precarity of employment.
When I reflect on experiences routinely experienced by people of colour in academia, what immediately comes to mind is the experience of racial microaggressions. These can be thought of as ‘everyday racial slights and degradations’ experienced by people of colour. They operate as an insidious and ‘invisible’ form of racism and are prevalent in wider society. Some instances of racial microaggressions in academia have been documented in various outlets, such as a Black female professor being mistaken for the coffee lady.
