• Never outshine your white colleagues on their home ground as this will not be appreciated.
• Always accept your white colleagues’ transgressions, as protest will be used to damn you.
• Never put yourself in a position of privilege or advantage against your colleagues: even a larger chair than theirs may cause jealousy.
• Watch your back at all times.
• Never complain about being expected to behave in this way. At best it will be met with bewilderment and at worst hostility.
• If a confrontation does occur, always remember your white colleagues will find it far easier to sympathise with hurt experienced by the person you have confronted.
• When matters come to a head, do not expect the support of your white colleagues: those in denial will always discard unwelcome evidence.
• Do not be surprised if ethnic minority colleagues offer support in private, but avoid doing so in public.

The rules were derived by University of Manchester researchers from the experiences of professionals employed in a range of professions.

The researchers concluded that white professionals see racism as a ‘moral defect’ from which they do not suffer and anti-racist training commonly deployed in public sector organisations simply reinforces those assumptions, they say.

I think the problem may be that although white people do often see racism as a Bad Thing that they distance themselves from, there is also a deep underlying sense of superiority. Although these rules of engagement were taken from workplace experiences, they also seem to be applicable to life in general.

Many of these warnings seem to be about maintaining a low profile. My parents would probably agree with this, and I know that I do this consciously or unconsciously.  Keep your head down.  The nail that sticks up gets pounded.

Because I think that white people, even Good White People, have a hard time accepting that there are people of color who are smarter, richer, more talented, more educated, etc. Research bears this out. Remember the study about whites being asked to assess the intelligence of blacks vs. their own? Whites routinely declare themselves smarter.

The resentment is often palpable. Sometimes it’s overt. I remember one occasion when a friend was driving her very nice car and a white woman stuck her head in the driver’s side window to demand to know how it was that she owned that car. But the covert stuff pops up a lot too. You live where? You went to college?  Oh, you went to Name Brand College? The surprise is obvious.

This suggests to me that anti-racist training needs to address the underpinnings of white superiority.  Because this stuff goes deep.  First on the list would be an assumption that everybody is racist.  Without the admission, how can we start the work?