Racial Equity Resources

Mapping your power: A 35-minute reflective audit for practitioners

on this page
  1. A Note on Wellbeing
  2. Understanding Racialisation before you start
  3. Mapping your power

This exercise explores how your life experiences and identities shape your connections with others and your work. You will examine how power and privilege, including race, shape how we work in public engagement.

Our social identities, like race, gender, class, and where we come from, influence what we notice, who we listen to, and how at home we feel in different spaces.

In public engagement, practitioners often hold positions of authority, acting as “gatekeepers” to institutional resources, platforms, and decision-making. This activity helps you map your personal positionality, examine where racial privilege or minoritisation impacts your work, and take clear, reflexive steps toward racial equity.

updated on 27 Oct 2026
Estimated time: 35 minutes
8 minutes read

A Note on Wellbeing

You’re warmly invited to use this reflection in a way that feels right for you. Only write down what you’re comfortable with, and share as much or as little as you like. Thinking about power, inequality, and privilege can bring up many feelings: pride, discomfort, even guilt. All of these are natural. If you notice strong feelings, be kind to yourself, pause, and let your curiosity guide you.

More on how to support your wellbeing

Understanding Racialisation before you start

Before starting the exercise, we invite you to explore what racialisation means in practice.

Racialisation means that society puts people into different groups based on race, and gives those groups different levels of power and opportunity.

Everyone is part of this process, including white people. They are also seen through the lens of race, as the majority group in UK society.

Knowing whether you are seen as part of the majority or the minority can help you understand how power works in your day-to-day public engagement and relationships.

Racialised majority

When a group is racialised as the majority, places like universities, museums, or research centres treat their identity as the default, standard or neutral. Because it is treated as "normal," majority racialisation often operates invisibly to those who hold it.

Racialised minority

When individuals or groups are racialised as minorities, their identity is marked as "different," "other," or specialised. In public engagement settings, they often bear the burden of representing their entire racial group, navigating hyper-visibility, or facing assumptions about their knowledge and expertise.

Mapping your power

Work your way through these 4 Steps to better understand your own experiences in relation to others. 

Step #1: Grounding and transition (2 minutes)

Find a quiet and comfortable space and make sure you have something to take notes on.

Take a slow breath to help yourself feel present and calm.

Think of a recent public engagement event, project, or planning meeting you participated in.

Notice the emotions that come up when you recall that moment: comfort, slight hesitation, pride, defensiveness, anxiety or curiosity. Acknowledge the feelings, write them down and move to Step 2 when you feel ready.

Step #2: Examining your public engagement “Knapsack” (10 minutes)

This step is inspired by Peggy McIntosh’s White Privilege Knapsack activity (1989)

Read the statements below and reflect on your experiences in public engagement. For each statement, mark YES or NO. If you hesitate or find it difficult to answer a statement, take that hesitation as valuable information about your relationship with institutional power.

  1. Representation in leadership: When I attend high-level public engagement planning meetings, I can usually be confident that people of my racial background hold decision-making roles.

    YES / NO

  2. Cultural authority and knowledge: When I design public engagement content, I can assume my institution will recognise my racial background, values, and ways of knowing as legitimate, objective and rigorous.

    YES / NO

  3. Institutional safety and belonging: I can facilitate or participate in public engagement activities without worrying that I will experience racism, everyday racial harm, subtle racial attacks, patronisation, disrespect or surveillance from security, staff, or attendees.

    YES / NO

  4. Speech and critique: I can criticise institutional practices around racial equity without being labelled as “difficult,” “overly emotional,” “aggressive,” or an “outsider.”

    YES / NO

  5. Assumptions of competence: If a public engagement activity fails or encounters friction, I do not worry that people will attribute the failure to my racial background or assume I got my job through “tokenistic” diversity efforts.

    YES / NO

  6. Safety around severe friction: When public engagement discussions become tense or hostile, I feel confident that my organisation’s leadership will protect me from hostile abuse rather than expecting me to manage racial harm on my own.

    YES / NO

Count and reflect:

  • How many times did you answer YES, and how many times NO?
  • Were there specific questions that made you pause or feel uneasy before you answered?
  • For the statements where you responded "YES," think about whether that came from your personal efforts or if it was more about your position or privilege within the organisation.

Step #3: Mapping power and positionality (15 minutes)

Insight from the authors
In our public engagement research and experience, we've noticed a pattern. Often, people from racialised minority groups tend to answer "NO" to most, if not all, of these questions.

In contrast, white practitioners or those established within institutions usually find it easier to say "YES." 

Racialised minority practitioners and community partners often face challenges like:
  • Being highly visible but lacking real authority: They might be asked to share their perspectives but aren’t given the power to make decisions or control budgets.
  • Facing scepticism: Traditional academic settings often question their expertise and lived experiences.
Undertaking emotional labour without compensation: They are often expected to build trust with minoritised communities without the support or funding their institutions provide.

Understanding systemic patterns experienced by minoritised practitioners and partners

Racialised minority practitioners and community partners often face challenges like:

  • Being highly visible without authority: They might be asked to share their perspectives but aren’t given the power to make decisions or control budgets.
  • Being invisible and erased: Their contributions, ideas, and structural critiques are ignored or spoken over in planning meetings, only to hear the same points validated when repeated by a white colleague.
  • Facing scepticism: Traditional academic settings often question their expertise and lived experiences.
  • Uncompensated emotional labour: They are often expected to build trust with minoritised communities without the support or funding their institutions provide.

To understand why answers to the "Knapsack" exercise differ, we need to look at how institutional power works.

  • Illusions of equity: Organisations often adopt progressive language like "diversity," "decolonisation," or "inclusion". However, when institutions use this language without changing their budgets, hiring practices, or decision-making structures, it creates an illusion of inclusion. Minoritised people are often featured on brochures or invited into project panels to "check a box," without being given real authority or funding.
  • Double Consciousness and Racial Charge: For racialised minority colleagues, walking into institutional spaces often requires carrying a double focus—doing their actual job while constantly monitoring how the dominant culture perceives them. This mental tax (sometimes called the racial charge) involves constantly proving your expertise, watching your tone so you aren't labelled "aggressive," "unprofessional", "difficult", or translating racial harm for colleagues without making them uncomfortable.
  • Intersectionality: Identity is never one-dimensional. Coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, intersectionality reminds us that race always interacts with other parts of who we are—such as gender, social class, disability, migration background, or sexual orientation. For example, a Black working-class woman, a middle-class Asian man, and a disabled White practitioner navigate public
    engagement in vastly different ways. You might hold privilege in one area (like holding a senior job title or middle-class security) while facing systemic barriers in another (like race, gender, or disability).

Guided reflection

Think about your own background and experiences; answer the following questions. Remember, there are no wrong answers here.

  • If you answered mostly YES:
    ○ Where in your public engagement practice do you hold power, authority, safety or privilege?
    ○ Are there partners, public or community voices or experiences you might miss because they’re different from yours?
    ○ How can you actively use your institutional safety to support racialised colleagues or partners so they’re not left with extra risks or work?
     
  • If you answered mostly NO:
    ○ Where in your practice do you feel overlooked, pushed aside, powerless, or subject to institutional resistance?
    ○ How does this dynamic affect your energy, sense of safety, or desire to keep working for racial equity?
    ○ What boundaries or support do you need for your time and wellbeing?
     
  • For everyone:
    ○ How does your racialised identity and background differ from the people, partners and communities you want to work with?
    ○ How could those differences influence trust, communication, and sharing power? Are there moments when the most equitable choice is to step back so community partners hold direct authority?

Step #4: Navigating your positionality and writing your statement (8 minutes)

Before drafting your statement, use the appropriate guided reflection.

Guidance for racialised majority practitioners

  • Recognise that feeling safe, at home, and unquestioned in institutional settings often reflects structural privilege, not just personal effort.
  • Look closely at your projects. Are racialised minority partners being invited as tokens to make the institution look good, or do they have genuine control over the budget and agenda?
  • Racial equity is a shared responsibility, not extra labour for minority staff. Use your institutional safety to challenge exclusionary rules, absorb administrative friction, and advocate for direct funding for community partners.

Guidance for racialised minority practitioners

  • If pointing out harm or asking for fair treatment causes colleagues to label you as "difficult" or "unprofessional," remember: you are not the problem. That pushback is simply an institution trying to protect its comfort, its system of whiteness or racial inequities.
  • You do not have to burn out or sacrifice your well-being to fix an entire institution. You have full permission to say no to uncompensated emotional labour and protect your personal peace.
  • Recognise the deep insight you hold from navigating multiple spaces. Seek out supportive peer networks outside your institution where your lived experience is valued and cared for.
     

Drafting your positionality statement

Use this skeleton to articulate your social positioning:

My public engagement practice is shaped by my background as [insert social identities, heritage, class background, or professional role].

In my work, I recognise that I bring strengths such as [insert specific insights, relational skills, or community connections you hold].

However, I also acknowledge that my understanding can be limited regarding [insert areas outside your direct experience, e.g., specific regional histories, living with disabled access barriers, or local community dynamics].

To avoid reproducing racial inequalities, I will practice epistemic and cultural humility and equitable process choices by [insert concrete action, e.g., stepping back so community partners hold direct budget authority /
absorbing administrative paperwork to protect partners / using my role to challenge institutional gatekeeping]

How to use your statement in your daily practice:

A positionality statement helps you clarify the identities, privileges, and lived experiences you bring to a project or role.

  • Revisit your statement at the start of new projects, partnerships, or funding applications.
  • Use it to guide decisions when setting project timelines, agendas, and budget allocations.
  • Update it regularly to track the evolution of your practice and learning.

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