“You are a Little Too Brown, Young and Radical for Our Institution”: Unpacking Institutional Whiteness

This paper explores how institutional whiteness operates through everyday language, norms, and practices to marginalize and exclude racialized women from leadership and decision-making roles within professional settings. Using two autoethnographic vignettes as both method and narrative frame, I interrogate how socio-linguistic cues, racialized perceptions of professionalism, merit, excellence, and implicit hierarchies of trust and authority work in tandem to reinforce white institutional dominance. This paper poses the question if at all reimagining the institution is possible and offers some hope and ways to start thinking about it.