What if POC Got PTO Instead of Sitting Through White-centered Cultural Competence Training?
What if POC (people of color) got PTO (paid time off) instead of sitting through white-centered cultural competence training?
White higher-ups require it so assuredly & tacitly that we don’t even question it ourselves. Why do we have to go? Asking myself that simple question feels so liberating. What else am I being asked for that slips under my radar because I’ve never known any different?
While dissecting what cultural competence even means, I find online:
“Competence is the set of demonstrable characteristics & skills that enable, & improve the efficiency of, performance of a job.”
“A concept for performance motivation.”
Effectively, cultural competence is not about anyone’s character but specifically their job performance. White job performance, to be exact.
Therefore workplaces, educational institutions, etc. are actively investing in white job performance & not job performance of others when we talk about cultural competence trainings. They conduct these trainings while congratulating themselves & insisting this helps POC — when all I’ve ever learned in cultural competence training was I was right to be wary of so-&-so.
I’ve been asked, always on the spot, to do labor in these trainings but am not credited nor paid like others there are. The act of asking me on the spot simultaneously assumes my willingness to cooperate & their inarguable position as “good” whites with whom any POC would discourse.
Their last-minute demands ensure that I won’t have anything cohesive to share, that no POC appear more knowledgeable than the people leading the way to “competence”. By not involving POC in the planning of the training, they’re saying they’re better at it. They’re revealing their intention not to focus any of the training on what POC need. It’s also coercive, because my “no” in that space is treated the same as white folks’ “no” to attending altogether. If I don’t comply, I’m no longer the friendly Black coworker.
Yet if I do agree to speak, this exploitation of my identity forms me into a “supporter” of the typically white people leading these trainings, when they neither know nor respect me. And it serves as a template for my white coworkers to do the same- to expect my time, energy & expertise whenever they request it. These trainings serve to either morph me into the enemy or force me to acquiesce to the white vision of racial integration.
These experiences are actually how I got into organizing & leading related training sessions. I was tired of watching this work happen at my expense to for the benefit of white people I’m obligated to interact with daily.
Though I definitely believe cultural competence training is a sham certification program with the purpose of maintaining white persons in their current positions of influence & affluence, I do recognize the opportunity for improving the quality of life of POC working alongside them. If all I can do is show up & say the things POC have longed to say, or validate the statements they’ve already said, then I’ve done my work.
I’ve often wondered why we can’t have POC travelling, expenses paid, researching racism then authentically instructing white folks on their lived experiences & credible research. But you see, cultural competence training is the academic, usually white-washed version of what nearly all POC experientially know.
Many POC could conduct this training if we wanted to, & by asking us to sit as audience members- with no indication that you understand we could be leading the training ourselves- is a huge slap in the face to our experience & innate understanding.
By insinuating that we all need to attend these trainings, specifically as equal, color-evasive subordinates, we’re not acknowledging who these trainings are designed for. By not admitting there are some of us who do not need to be taught by travelling white capitalists how to be kinder to, well, ourselves- they’re getting to avoid the fact that some people need this while others do not. They’re opting out of admitting this is a white people problem.
By using blanket terms like “all staff” or “all students” they’re making sure white folks don’t feel “attacked” or singled out. And I have a difficult time understanding how white people are supposed to see white supremacy as an issue they must fix, when they pretend it’s everyone’s responsibility?
There’s this understanding, “If you are (or want to be) a good person, then you’ll attend this training.” But what if we don’t have anything to racially repent for? If you don’t have racial privilege, why should we be unnoticed collateral damage while Susan, for the 3rd time, is gently instructed to stop saying ethnic slurs. Yes, even if she didn’t know that term was a slur. And yes, it’s still a slur even if learning that fact made her cry.
Some would argue, POC can be discriminatory towards one another, but this is a result of white influence within a Eurocentric society. If white superiority in white people is obliterated, then all other issues will begin to heal themselves. Problematic POC don’t owe white people a handheld walk together on the bridge towards squashing their inner racial biases. And this phenomenon of POC being assimilated into being anti-POC doesn’t mean that those of us who are not under that spell need to answer as though we are a monolith.
All that grouping problematic POC & white people accomplishes is white people manipulatively posturing that all POC are similarly accepting of maltreatment, that white superiority isn’t the ugly regime we’re all operating under but rather universal fact. These people are all status quo maintainers but they aren’t racially & culturally indistinguishable.
Which brings me to my next point- there can be different cultural competency trainings, or even a separate concept entirely for what different identities need to do to become the optimal worker with the least problematic values. Remember, “cultural competence” was defined as training to improve job performance, & probably a touch of HR to protect companies from the backlash of what their workers might say on or off the clock. The mission of cultural competence training is not to protect or uplift POC.
For many POC, I would argue the ideal way to spend that same amount of time would be to sit in a safer space together with no white people present. Or to do whatever we want with PTO, as the title of this article suggests. Or to get a certification in something we actually could need, like training in First Aid, computer programming basics, data analysis, public speaking, to name a few. How about a training on how to navigate microaggressions as a POC (idea per my friend Timm Hearn), instead of how to supposedly avoid them altogether as a white person? Because there is one last point I’d like to make about cultural competence training…
For white people, cultural competence training goes in one ear, out the other & onto their bleached white resume. But what of POC?
The fact that cultural competence is assumed of POC & that our mere physical presence represents “diversity”, means we don’t gain anything in the training AND we don’t have anything to show for it.
White folks are competing to cancel out their own guilt, bolster their resumes & improve likeability with their white counterparts, while at the same time POC expend high amounts of emotional labor, center white feelings, make white people in the training feel good, & literally at the end of it you can’t put it on your resume or casually mention it while networking for kudos.
They insist, “You should come! It’ll be paid work hours.” Assuming this small “incentive” is even the same when we’re working for $0.70 average on their dollar, & that it’s necessarily the same opportunity regardless of your race or ethnicity. That you should attend whether you learn something at the training or not- which speaks volumes to the way they likely view these trainings for themselves.
So excuse me for commanding, please give your POC the time off & pat yourself on the back then, because the race & gender wage gaps are more than enough to pay you back for doing so. Just be glad that we aren’t asking for years back payment (yet) or for white people we work with to actually be held accountable the way you say will happen.
POC could be asking for equally valuable alternatives to what are essentially white racial bias trainings. Or asking for more pay in the absence of their workplaces having those trainings, as an acknowledgement that you understand these POC are now performing that labor for you. Likewise for students, if you’re putting up with racial bias & expending labor to negate it, why should you have to pay full tuition?
At the very least, quit that tired, color-evasive assumption that we should all attend the very same cultural competence training, as though it’s not specifically an investment in white people. If POC are supposed to learn how to navigate whiteness with zero trainings, retreats or seminars provided to support their experiences, why do white people have these things popularly offered (& paid for) at institutional levels? While you ponder that, give POC paid time off.
