Interrupting Anti-Blackness:
An Imperative for South Asian Leadership
As South Asian leaders, many of us have worked extraordinarily hard to reach positions of influence in the business community. We know how it feels to be underestimated, stereotyped, and excluded. We understand what it is like to navigate systems that were not designed with us in mind. We work hard to overcome the inequitable blocks and barriers that are in our way.
And yet, alongside this reality, another truth exists.
Across industries, Black professionals are sharing that they are experiencing anti-Black racism and exclusion from their South Asian leaders and colleagues. Their stories are deeply troubling and demand our attention, respect, introspection, and action.
This is what this blog focuses on—how we, as South Asian leaders, can act with greater awareness, integrity, equity, and impact in interrupting anti-Blackness. We share some questions we often get asked in this regard, and we offer our insights on how South Asian leaders can strengthen our leadership in ways that build belonging rather than erode it—particularly in the context of addressing anti-Black racism.
1) Why Is Anti-Blackness So Prevalent Amongst South Asian Communities?
There are several, conflating factors that add complexity to why anti-Blackness is prevalent in South Asian communities—we offer a brief summary.
Across South Asia, we have a long history of engaging in casteism, not to mention colorism—social hierarchies that intersect and result in ranking human worth based on faith, lineage, class, proximity to power, and skin tone. These hierarchies existed before colonization, but were further perpetuated and bolstered during British colonial rule of the region.
When South Asians began to migrate to countries that were directly responsible or impacted by the enslavement of Black communities, we entered cultures where anti-Blackness was already deeply entrenched. On top of our existing social and cultural conditioning, over time many of us further absorbed—consciously and unconsciously—anti-Blackness from the societies we joined.
From this point onwards, we have continued to propagate anti-Black racism both knowingly and unknowingly across our familial, societal, and workplace interactions and experiences—which is why we must interrupt these intergenerational ideologies, beliefs, and behaviors.
2) How Do South Asian Leaders Perpetuate Anti-Blackness in the Workplace?
Based on our work in this area, anti-Blackness rarely appears as overt hostility at the hands of South Asian leaders. More often, it manifests through subtle and covert patterns of behavior that are rooted in racial bias and inequities. Here are examples that we often hear:
- Black professionals receive feedback from South Asian leaders and colleagues that is framed around their personality rather than performance—where they are described as “too assertive/aggressive,” “not sufficiently humble,” or “lacking executive presence,” without behavioral examples that substantiate this.
- Standards of “readiness” for career advancement often shift, requiring Black professionals to demonstrate a higher level of performance before accessing promotion opportunities.
- Black professionals struggle to receive high-visibility assignments, advocacy (like sponsorship and mentorship), and profile building experiences from South Asian leaders.
- South Asian leaders engage in likeness or affinity bias—the tendency to gravitate toward and offer preferential treatment to people from their own communities, including career advancement opportunities.
3) What Can South Asian Leaders Do to Interrupt Their Anti-Blackness?
As South Asian leaders, interrupting the anti-Blackness that lives within us requires deep self-reflection and deliberate behavioral change—all at an individual level. Here are a few recommendations that we’d like to offer based on the client work and self-growth work we do at bhasin consulting inc.
- Take Harvard’s Race Implicit Association Test (called the “Race IAT”) – this practical and evidence-based tool will essentially help identify if you have an unconscious preference for White people over Black people. If it does reveal this, your responsibility is to look for how anti-Blackness is manifesting in your behaviors—i.e. you’ll want to observe where your racial bias is surfacing in hiring decisions, feedback delivery, mentorship and sponsorship, work allocation, informal interactions, and more.
- Reflect on your social conditioning by asking yourself:
- Growing up, what messages did I hear about Black people—explicitly or implicitly?
- What was said about skin tone, marriage, friendship, or proximity to certain communities?
- How did faith, caste, class, religion, skin tone, and education influence how people were valued in my community?
- Which cultural communities were in my social circles growing up? Who’s in my social circles now?
- When I think of “executive presence,” whose image comes to mind?
- Do I associate professionalism with particular speech patterns, schools, or cultural cues?
- When a Black colleague challenges an idea, do I experience it differently than when someone else does?
- Identify your physical signal for anti-Blackness – Bias often manifests somatically before it becomes conscious. Or put another way, our bodies will signal to us that we’re engaging in biased behavior—i.e. experiencing discomfort in the presence of someone who is Black—before we hear the messages in our minds. A powerful practice for interrupting anti-Black racism is to learn to recognize your physical signal for engaging in anti-Blackness. For example, when interacting with a Black colleague, do you tense up, withdraw eye contact, feel agitation in your chest area? These are the types of cues that serve as invitations to pause to reflect, rather than proceed automatically (which often reinforces biased behavior).
- Commit to learning and contact – Given that anti-Blackness has been absorbed through generations of social conditioning, it won’t be interrupted through a single conversation or workshop. It requires an ongoing commitment to reflecting, learning, and engaging in meaningful positive interactions. As South Asian leaders, it’s critical that we study global history and the present-day reality of anti-Black racism—but we must also learn about and celebrate the myriad ways in which Black communities have contributed their excellence to the world. It’s also essential that we build personal and professional relationships with people from across Black communities that are rooted in authenticity, respect, reciprocity, equity, and love.
4) How Can South Asian Leaders Serve as Allies in Interrupting Anti-Blackness?
To call oneself an ally, you must use your voice and actions in meaningful ways to interrupt the inequities that Black communities experience.
Here are several ways in which South Asian leaders can serve as allies to Black colleagues, friends, and community members:
- Commit to self-education about Black experiences. (Don’t rely on Black friends and colleagues to do this for you.)
- Call out anti-Black comments, language, systems, and behaviors—including within your own family, circles, and community.
- Do not use the N-word yourself and interrupt when other South Asians do.
- Challenge your South Asian friends and family members who share racist language and beliefs about Black communities.
- Offer meaningful advocacy, sponsorship, and mentorship to Black team members.
- Examine hiring, feedback, promotion, retention patterns, and data within your organization relating to the experiences of Black professionals.
- Broadly sing the praises of your Black team members when they perform well and achieve milestones.
- Ensure that Black employees are represented in succession pipelines, not just entry-level roles.
- Measure belonging, not just representation, for Black team members and colleagues.
- Increase South Asian visibility and labor in advocating for inclusion within your workplace so that Black professionals are no longer overburdened with this responsibility.
- Engage Asian/AAPI ERGs to focus on anti-Black racism awareness building and allyship.
Our Final Words? Start Now!
As South Asian leaders, we have navigated complex systems to reach positions of influence—now it’s time that we use this authority to meaningfully address anti-Black racism within ourselves and the structures we are part of.
We have shared a few key recommendations on how we, as South Asian leaders, can make this happen. Our hope is that you will start by choosing one or two takeaways from this blog and immediately put them into action. This is the only way that we can disrupt anti-Blackness—both individually and collectively.
As we have been taught across our communities, meaningful change begins with transforming ourselves.
And this is what creating belonging is all about.
We’d love to hear from you, especially as it relates to the important insights we’ve shared here. Please send us a message through our Contact Us page, LinkedIn, or Instagram.
Reach out to the bci team here to learn more about our range of cutting-edge leadership, belonging, and inclusion programming.
To learn more about how to interrupt anti-Black racism, please check out the following resources:
- Blogs:
- Tip Sheet:
- Worksheet:
- Videos: