Invoking Black Athena and its debates: Insights for organization on diversity, race and culture

Abstract

Purpose

The authors use the debates instigated by Bernal's Black Athena to rethink the concepts of “race”, “culture” and “diversity” in organization and aim to examine their intersection with academic authority.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing on the works of Derrida and Hegel, the authors question the pursuit of origins and illustrate its role in essentializing race, culture and diversity. The paper examines these through binaries including white/black, nature/culture, purity/diversity and diversity/university.

Findings

First, both the Black Athena debates and the organizational literature turn to origins to ground concepts of difference. This attests to the power of narratives of descent in defining current interests. Second, organization studies have relied on images of a clear past which had eliminated racialization and its implications. Whereas culture is considered progressive, as a user‐friendly term it has served as a “surrogate” or “homologue” for race. Diversity, in turn, has been deployed both to harbour and to control difference in organization.

Research limitations/implications

The Black Athena debates alert people to the authority of scholars and practitioners in normalising identity categories in organization. They challenge people to develop theories and practices of organizational diversity that are open to ongoing difference rather than essence and origin.

Originality/value

Derrida's contribution has rarely been used in organizational history, particularly its implication with Hegel's legacy to the historical and cultural canon. The paper invites readers to rethink the notions of race, culture and diversity by examining their historical development and considering the history of their inclusion into the canons of management and organization. Historicising can unsettle entrenched assumptions, but the cautionary word is that it can also legitimate current practices by identifying their relevance since “the beginning”.

Citation

Riad, S. and Jones, D. (2013), "Invoking Black Athena and its debates: Insights for organization on diversity, race and culture", Journal of Management History, Vol. 19 No. 3, pp. 394-415. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMH-10-2011-0033