The Old School Lunch

“You sound black. Like your voice. Not like, you know, black like that but just your voice in general…it sounds black.” - coworker

[Oh. And then today I not-so-loudly said “god damnit” after a frustrating case and my office-mate very seriously told me “you can’t say that” and “you’re going to hell.” I seriously thought she was joking but she was not shitting me. She then suggested that I say “F” next time to which I said “you want me to drop the f bomb instead of ‘god damnit’?” to which she replied, no, just say “Efff!”]

I like my co-workers. I really do. With the exception of maybe one or two out of all that i’ve encountered so far, they’ve all been better than I could’ve imagined.

Except when you stumble onto a conversation that starts with that news article on American folks getting shorter (because that would be bad, you know) and then somehow getting into a discussion about “pure” white and black folks and “race mixing” and such. At one point, I heard the phrase “yea, more people are having mixed kids so I guess one of the good things is that it’ll solve racism.”

I guess parts 1 and 2 of the cultural competency training haven’t covered these issues yet. Ugh.

But did I say anything? No. I just waited until they were done with the discussion to change the topic. I think they knew I was a little uncomfortable with what they were saying. But in any case, I am going to wait a while before I say something if anything to my coworkers and/or boss and/or the admin folks.

To be continued.

Those two words pretty much say it all when you’re sitting in a training session with everyone at your workplace and you’re wondering how much they paid for this. The Heads at my job hired a local agency to do “cultural competency” training for our staff. It’s a 4 (or 5?) part series and since I wasn’t hired until after part one, I jumped right into 2 and that was to put it mildly, a really bad way at presenting terrific material and talking about important issues.

The good about the woman (and her agency) that they had speaking to us was that she tried to gear everything very much to the org’s mission. She wasn’t shoveling out general advice or reading some template because she did her homework and she knew what it was that we do and catered (or tried to) the presentation to that. But at the same time, she spoke only in general terms and repeatedly cited herself as an example for all of the “checking yourself” moments when it comes to racism, classism and gender bias (I don’t think she used the word “sexism” once). Actually, the only real interesting part that I got out of it was when she talked about herself because then she was actually being specific. She talked about being a TRA and stereotypes about Asian folks and such and at times, it was informative. The rest was just bland. There’s no point in attempting to do what is in essence anti-racist training when you’re not going to talk extensively about perceptions and reaching out to the communities that you’re trying to build relationships in (AND when the main problem your org has is in it’s perception from different communities). Instead, we had tapioca discussions and small group “workshops” about privilege and yet again “checking yourself” without any sort of real presentation or consult about the culture that created this perception and what we needed to do about it. At moments I felt like this entire thing was meant to just make the staffmembers feel better about themselves and think that they’d really made moves for themselves and the org to be anti-racist.

Each staff member was given a folder of different worksheets, books to check out and, of course, the old “white privilege” handout by our friend Peggy. I was a little stunned that she would just so casually put this in there without any explanation and when I asked a coworker if they’d gone over privilege and white privilege at training one, the answer was “we glossed over it” which to me says it all. Talking about privilege and namely white privilege is something you can spend two academic quarters talking about and you’d still have a ways to go. It’s an emotional topic that deserves more than just the “extra reading material” treatment and it’s pretty irresponsible to just throw it out there during a training without fully getting into it.

[Today in the shared kitchen/cafeteria.]

Jane: Oh yea, Janet always wore stilettos. This is a woman who would walk downtown on cobble roads in heels. But we can’t all do that. I gotta flat-foot it today.

Jamie: Yea, today for some reasons I just decided not to wear heels and Bob in accounting, the guy who never says anything, he goes “hey, you look shorter”! And I was like, “uhhhh, OK.”

Jane: Yea, that’s the thing…they make you look so tall and i’m already tall.

Jamie: I’m not even that tall, i’m about 5′10 and people still say that. My friend says that…but he’s short, like 5′8.

Jane: For my wedding, I had to find the shortest heels possible because my husband and I are the same height and I didn’t want to be taller than him, you know.

Jamie: Yea, it just looks weird otherwise.

[Now it’s just getting ridiculous.]

L: [Reading a case file] Oh god. Ugh.
Boss: ?
L: This poor kid, listen to this, he just moved to [city that’s far, far away from work] from [foreign nation].That place is a dump.
Boss: It’s not all bad, I grew up there!
L: […] OH! Yea, I know…but he talks about how there’s nothing to do there and the bus system there is terrible.
Boss: Yea.
L: I didn’t know you were from [city], I probably shouldn’t have said that!
Boss: [jokingly but perhaps sarcastically jokingly] You’re in trouble now!

One of my year-round resolutions is to not let one or two or three impressions/exchanges forever dictate what I think about a person. I too easily write people off in my personal and work life (and by “write off” in work life I don’t mean I ignore them because that’d be crazy) and I think it’s one of those things that I’ve always needed to work on. I shouldn’t allow this or that offensive comment to be the full picture of who someone is because god knows i’ve probably said some offensive things to people in and out of work that I didn’t know was offensive.

I bring it up because on a recent work visit trip with a co-worker, we were having what was otherwise a very good first conversation and she brought up a sensitive topic that she believes others are very callous about. This topic was about those who are incarcerated and she talked about how a loved one of hers was in jail and that not all people in jail are scumbags of the earth. Later, we got to talking about my old job and while I was describing some of the asshole characters at our shelter, I used the words “we had a lot of addicts, rapists, DV abusers, jail guys” to which she responded with a “…”

Yea. The conversation pretty much stopped right there.

But in my somewhat-defense, it’s the truth! Guys there, most of them have been in jail recently…many of them got there after being released from jail with nowhere to go!

I probably should have explained right after I said it.

[I know this is probably standard for most places, but it still burns my toast]

From the welcome letter, my italics:

Good: “Here at (the new workplace), we offer medical, dental, vision, group life insurance and long-term disability, as well as fifteen days paid vacation each year.”

Bad: “You will become eligible for these benefits, as outlined in our employee handbook, after you have successfully completed your 90 day initial employment period.”

Unemployment ends! Job offer accepted!

[Now I gotta buy some shirts, shoes and ties. New place has “casual Fridays” so i’m guessing the checkerboard Vans aren’t going to do anymore.]

Him: So…can you tell me a little about yourself? Maybe about what you studied in school?
L: I majored in American Ethnic Studies with a concentration in African American Studies and minored in Women Studies at the University of Washington.
Him: You know, if I were to go back to school, i’d want to major in Women Studies..
L: Oh yea?
Him: Yea.
L: That’s great, yea it’s–
Him: –You know, I figure that it’d be a great place to meet women right? Since it is Women Studies!
L: …
Him: That or nursing!

LGBTQ Project Coordinator.

Any interesting/cool/career-aligned job that i’ve found has all been in some “director” or “coordinator” position. I’m nowhere near ready for anything like that but I would be ready for an “assistant” type position or a general support/counselor deal that (with several years of steadily doing that) might actually put me on the road to being better qualified for stuff like the above.

But as a sidenote (and I don’t mean this to be a jab at the organization above) i’ve become increasingly suspicious when an org has to go so far as to promote the opening on CL and not fill the position within the organization. I know they have to do it most of the time for union and full disclosure reasons and whatnot, but from what i’ve seen, when a lot of coordinator/manager/director positions keep popping up and they promote it like bananas, it’s a bad sign.