Before thinking about what anti-racism can involve at an organisational level, we will further consider how racism shows up in museums. In section 2, we thought about the relationship between racism and museums. Here we will consider the issue of institutional racism.
We previously discussed structural racism and its impact on all areas of society. Institutional racism is a way of describing how organisations participate in structural racism. It is a way of naming how an organisation’s policies, practices, culture and behaviours maintain racism. For many museums, institutional racism will be inherent in how they work. As Sheffield Museums Trust states in their June 2021 Anti-Racist Action update:
“…we recognised that we have a significant amount of work to do to dismantle the foundations of institutional racism on which museums are built.”
Institutional racism is often embedded and for many will feel like ‘business as usual’. For museums, institutional racism can be found in the makeup of our workforce, collections practices, visitor profiles, community engagement approaches and more.
As well as influencing internal ways of working, institutional racism has real impacts on how people experience museums. For Black people and people of colour, institutional racism can create museum experiences that are hostile, oppressive and exclusionary. As Culture& states in its Black Lives Matter Charter:
“Arts and heritage organisations must take steps to holistically protect the mental health, wellbeing, and lives of their Black workforce in relation to navigating and challenging racism and acknowledging stress and trauma where it has occurred.”
A lack of understanding of how institutional racism works within museums is part of what maintains institutional racism. To create change, we need to name and understand the problem. In the following exercises, we will continue to think about institutional racism and museums.