Subtle Racial Discrimination Post Viva Thesis 14 05 25 FINAL

This study was conducted to explore subtle racial discrimination or microaggressions (Sue et al., 2007b), its diverse types, reasons for them occurring, and if they occurred in the National Health Service (NHS) through the reflections of current and future NHS health and care professionals. Subtle racial discrimination has been shown to cause damage to the health and wellbeing of victims, a reduction in productivity of individuals, teams, and organisations, as well as loss of staff to sickness, absence, and increased recruitment costs (Nadal et al., 2014a; Ong et al., 2017; Sue et al., 2007b; Sue, Capodilupo, and Holder, 2008; Sue, 2010; Sue, 2013a). The study was conducted solely by the researcher and gained ethical approval from the University of Derby.
This study used a qualitative phenomenological approach (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, and Jackson, 2015) to gain insight into participants’ real-life experiences of subtle racial discrimination, also known as microaggressions. Following a focus group pilot, individual in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight participants who were current or future NHS health and/or care professionals. Grounded theory (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe and Jackson, 2015) was used to analyse the information gained, including a detailed critical review of literature on subtle racial discrimination. A microaggressions framework was created from the literature reviewed to compare against the primary data collected, which in turn examined the scope, relevance, and limit of the secondary data.
Through comparing the literature and the analysed primary data collected, it was apparent that subtle racial discrimination does exist. Participants stated in their own language how they encountered the events, how it had affected their health and wellbeing, and how these encounters changed the way they would interact with patients, colleagues, and the wider society in the future. Although microaggressions were encountered regularly by participants, they were complex, multi-layered, and did not come in a linear fashion, although the impact on participants remained the same in that it affected their health, wellbeing and future interactions.
There was widespread concurrence between the literature and the primary findings, with two additional themes found, which added to the body of evidence. These two were around the desire to ‘Not make a fuss,’ hence tacit assimilation into the White dominant worldview, and secondly of ‘Not being less than perfect’, as the expectations of Black, Asian and Minority Ethic (BAME) individuals by White individuals provided no allowance for mistakes or failure when compared to their White counterparts.
The study concludes by providing recommendations for individuals, teams, leaders, the NHS, and society on how subtle racial discrimination could be reduced, including using safe spaces to allow open non-confrontational discussions.