Joy as Resistance: Fugitive Organizational Practices Under Racial Capitalism

• In Event: Radical Love for Creative and Transformative Justice

Abstract

In recent decades, sociologists have documented how organizations reproduce racial inequality not only through overt exclusion but through ostensibly progressive commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Building on this literature, this paper theorizes the concept of the “white organization” as a racialized organizational form structured by white logics of knowledge, authority, and legitimacy—even in contexts marked by demographic diversity and explicit social justice missions. Drawing on 40 in-depth qualitative interviews with staff, volunteers, and leaders across nonprofit, advocacy, and voluntary organizations, this study examines how whiteness operates organizationally, how it is contested, and under what conditions it is partially disrupted. This paper argues that cultures of joy and care within resistance-oriented organizations are not merely coping mechanisms but critical tactics of survival and opposition. By foregrounding joy as an analytic lens, the paper contributes to sociological theories of organizations, race, and social movements, demonstrating how affective practices can both expose the limits of white organizational forms and prefigure more liberatory modes of collective resistance.

Author

• Marni Fritz, University of Illinois-Chicago