The Racial Foundation of Organizational Communication

Abstract

Scholars of organizational communication have begun to focus diligently on organization as gendered, yet we continue to neglect the ways in which it is fundamentally raced. With this article, we seek to stimulate systematic attention to the racial dynamics of organizational communication. We argue that the field's most common ways of framing race ironically preserve its racial foundation. Specifically, our analysis of core organizational communication texts exposes 5 disciplined messages that disguise our field's participation in preserving the normative power of organized Whiteness. We conclude with specific suggestions for revising the racial subtext of our scholarship. The essay follows in the spirit of “a radical rethinking of the role we play in articulating accounts of organizational life” (Mumby, 1993, p. 21).