Co-Cultural Theory: Performing Emotional Labor from a Position of Exclusion

Sample

The quote above comes from an interview with Michelle, an academic administrator in a predominately White, private institution in Philadelphia. Michelle is a Black female who works with mostly White men. As demonstrated by her quote, Michelle sometimes suppresses her upset emotions at work due to being one of the only women of color in her work meetings and, instead, works to project a positive, unaffected demeanor. Co-Cultural Theory (Orbe, 1998) becomes a useful lens when seeking to understand the experiences of historically marginalized employees in a workplace. As demonstrated by Michelle’s quote above, being a Black female in a predominantly White, male workplace may cause lots of distress. To deal with such distress, Michelle, and other co-cultural group members, may find themselves practicing emotional labor. In this chapter, we explore emotional labor literature as a foreground for describing ways that historically marginalized groups manage their communication while at work. More specifically, we explore how marginalized people manage their emotions in workplaces that seek to intentionally or unintentionally create division between those who have power and those who do not. In this chapter we use Co-Cultural Theory and emotional labor to explore how and why marginalized people communicate in similar ways as Michelle in the excerpt above.