Racialized scripts of silence: how whiteness organizes silence as a response to social protest about racism in the United States

ABSTRACT

Communication research often sidelines and ignores racial dynamics in organizational practices and processes, even when considering social movements and protests over racism. The current interview-based project uses a critical lens to examine how a U.S. university employed a racialized script of silence in response to social protest about racism. We analyze how organizations maintain and promote whiteness through racialized discourses of bureaucracy, professionalism, and legality that coalesce into a seemingly neutral script of silence. We suggest attending to how racialized scripts are always already created and diffused through mechanisms that engage historically situated narratives and argue that organizational silence is best understood not as an absence but as a continuous presence of existing structures that limit and quiet dissent. The analysis has implications for connections among organizational silence, whiteness, and discourses, as well as research on organizational scripts and practices for organizational members.

KEYWORDS:

• Silence
• racial scripts
• bureaucracy
• whiteness
• race
• protests

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).