Let’s be Honest, Your Non White Male CisHet Employees Are Not Okay
SOCIOLOGY INSIGHTS ON MINORITY STRESS
or What I Remember from my Sociology Degree and How it is Affecting How I Coach Bosses and Treat My Employees
2020 has been quite the year - the pandemic, the cultural revolution, virtual schooling - but I am here to tell you that your employees are not okay. Hopefully by now you as a manager have done some personal work to increase your knowledge about anti-racism and sore spots in your internal culture. Perhaps you have engaged a consultant to get to the root of the problem and begin with more than surface level changes. Local Consultant Dr. Tiffany Jana had a series of posts earlier this week about blackwashing which Jana says is, “a corporate strategy designed to paint a veneer of wokeness onto the institutional image.”
Folks - I think it is the veneer that is causing the problem for our employees of color and other employees who are not white, male, cisgender, able bodied and heterosexual. People who for whatever reason lack power in the world and workplace have collective trauma from all forms of discrimination and our present revolution is bringing it all to the front.
Take this example
A few weeks ago I got a teary call from a friend who works at a progressive company. They were having an all-staff meeting to create space for employees to say how they felt about equity issues. My friend is a white queer woman. During the all staff meeting someone misgendered another individual from outside of the organization and my friend spoke up to correct the issue and it was rejected. No one addressed it or pushed back and then the group just moved on. My friend was calling for advice. We talked through escalating to her manager and words to use. She was calmed. After several conversations she still doesn’t feel supported or listened to by her manager in addition to the company culture of complicity. The company has stated that they are currently working on a DEI strategy. They’ve taken some very high level steps forward but she still feels a total lack of support on a personal level. And folks, let’s not forget the landmark changes preventing employment discrimination for LGBT folks that just went into effect July 1 - despite legislative progress there are still major problems.
So, let me be clear - this is not an all lives matter post.
This is a post to let you know that your employees who are or who have family members who identify as a minority are having a rough time. I know the word minority has gotten deserved flack recently because POC are often referred to as minorities - but many times in instances where they are actually the majority (ie school aged population in Richmond Public Schools - here you can read a recent twitter thread from 2019 National Teacher of the Year Rodney Robinson). To be clear, I am pulling from my college sociology textbooks which define minority in terms of a cohesive group who lacks power. The social sciences define it as:
In case you didn’t know, your minority employees (those not part of a dominant group) are not okay and here’s why
The racial cultural revolution has everyone heightened - it is more commonly on the news, in public discourse, and being openly acknowledged. It is also setting people who are part of a dominant group on edge as they deal with their own biases and fragility around acknowledging or denying their position of power. This manifests for minorities in a heightened sense of awareness of their experiences on unconscious bias. Perhaps they have grown accustom to letting things slide and now they can’t or won’t.
Just like water will find any opening to flow through (ask my sunroom roof) stressful situations exacerbate an individual’s weak spots caused by previous trauma, discrimination, and biases experienced in the world around them on a daily basis.
What Can You Do?
Increase your awareness of power dynamics in your workforce through facilitated conversation with your employees. Know them better so you can be aware of their feelings and their “membership” in dominant or subordinate groups (dominant and subordinate here refer to more sociology terms)
Act out against complicity. This is a tough one. I just finished reading a brilliant essay from Laura Pilati on giving up complicity to be an anti-racist volunteer manager - she has so many valuable lessons for nonprofit employees in this piece but if we extend it to managing your employees I think most of us can find spaces of complicity that we need to work on.
Empathy Scans. When we teach kids about empathy we talk a lot of “putting ourselves in other’s shoes” it is a very elementary way to think about it but if you find yourself unable to understand where your employees are coming from its time to use their eyeballs to look around. Do not ask your minority employees to do this work - go podcast, read books, do some of the labor yourself!
Stand up, even when it makes you scared. Call out problematic behavior by supervisors, employees, customers, donors, volunteers. We recently got approached about doing a training for fundraisers on inclusion and philanthropy ethics - my first question was - But, do they have the support of supervisors to address it if it could possibly mean losing a donor? If not, then training may just make everyone feel worse.
Ultimately know that your employees who are members of non-dominate groups are not okay and they deserve your real support - not just your wokeness.