An interview with a white Googler who went through Sojourn
Google offered the Sojourn diversity training program from 2015–2018. The program was cut for various reasons, as reported last month: for fear of lawsuits from perceived discrimination against white folks, or the curriculum not being a one-size-fits-all training for Googlers globally.
After hearing this news, I decided to interview a friend of mine at Google (of five+ years) who is white that took the training. I call it an interview, but most of what I did was listen to their experience and share it here.
I look forward to Google offering racial awareness education programs in the future that are as beneficial as Sojourn was. Race cannot be “fixed” with a change to corporate policy or other simplistic measures. We should be engaged with our coworkers in processing the experience of race, identifying our own privilege, and considering behavior thoughtfully in and out of the workplace.
When did you hear about the Sojourn program?
It was sometime around 2016. I think it was spoken about in one of the DEI mailing lists that I was on.
The first module was a few hours. It was a basic, dip-your-toe-in kind of thing and covered stuff like how color-blind policies don’t help people of color, and how racism causes cognitive load for people of color. It set the stage for later sessions and gave a good heads up that we’re going to be talking about really hard stuff that’s structured to be stressful to talk about.
White Fragility, the essay that became the book, was recommended reading for the first module, which is how I got exposed to that idea. And there was a lot of recognition of white fragility in the program, well it’s kind of getting into the second and third modules.
Yeah, what was the second module like?
It was a while between the first and the second module. It was hard to get a space in the class, which made it seem like there were either a ton of people trying to schedule them or not enough of the classes scheduled. The second one was over two days.
We explored the reasons why race is so hard to talk about. We spoke about white fragility, and how our brain psychology is wired to avoid talking about hard things like race. We talked about ways power operates in society, and who has the ability to dictate norms. I feel like a lot of this was hard for white people to hear, but the whole point is to get white people to hear this and change how they act.
There was an interesting metaphor they used of a “pier over water,” which represented structural forces in our society that hold up the current situation, but we don’t think about them because they’re so obscured from where we stand.
And then there’s another metaphor of “the water in which we swim.” Racism is so embedded in our society it is like the water we grow up in. It just seems like air. There’s a joke where one fish asks another fish “How’s the water today?” and the other fish says “What’s water?” which was pretty apt.
We were asked to think back on our experiences like “When was the first time you had a teacher who was the same race as you?” For white people it’s usually a predictable answer. But for some people of color, all of their teachers were white. Having a non-white teacher was a big thing for some people, like “Wow, look at this person who is given the authority of the teacher, who is also black.”
How were you affected by this sort of shift in perspective when you returned to work?
Before I went through Sojourn, I had an uncomfortableness that I couldn’t articulate, but now I can. The fact that the majority of the people doing jobs at Google we would label as service: people cleaning bathrooms, the building, cafes, people working in the cafes, people doing reception, security guards — almost all these workers are people of color.
But those jobs are also considered not as elite as software engineering and generally devalued, but also expected to be done for much less pay.
Every now and then I’d talk to people who weren’t full-time employees and the separation made me super uncomfortable and I didn’t understand why. But this training helped me understand it was breaking down along these historical lines of power and perception of value and generally just segregation. And this comes back to the thing of why this is. There’s this unexamined aspect to it like why are these separations here.
Why do you think Sojourn was cancelled?
A lot of white people were so uncomfortable with what the training brought up for them, and sitting with the uncomfortableness of problems that are not going to be immediately fixed. And no matter how much you want to fix them, you may not be able to fix it immediately. Or ever, right? And having to acknowledge there is a problem and doing what you can, but also knowing you’re not gonna fix it. And so much of what we’re taught and indoctrinated into is that we fix problems, and problems that can’t be fixed are set aside as universal constants and that is how it is, and we will mitigate best we can, but if we can’t fix it right now it’s never gonna go away.
I think a lot of people were unable to sit with that, or unable to sit with their complicity in the system.
Understanding how what you are doing is doing harm. It’s caused a lot of anxiety in me and something I’m still working through in understanding what impacts I have.
In the workplace or…?
Everywhere but very much in the workplace. I think about an action like asking a person of color to take notes, or telling a person of color that they’re articulate. It seems like a compliment but there’s so much history behind it, as if they are more articulate than a regular black person. Which is in itself its own problem because you are saying something about an immutable fact in who they are.
A lot of times this sort of compliment and smile which is part of whiteness is its own problem because it’s the implication of “I’m giving you this because you’re special” or only because I see you as something more than just this generic. Or, even trying to humanize is dehumanizing in itself because it reminds this other person of this mindset. Who counts as valuable.
Were there any behaviors the training suggested for more awareness in your work or in general?
We talked about and practiced addressing harm that has been done. Part of that was this acknowledgement that white people are going to do harm by what they say or do. Not intentionally but just because they are going to perpetuate these patterns that exist in our society. And it’s not a comment on who they are in a good-bad binary. We are complicit in these systems and our job is to understand and address the harm that is done.
Basically it was apologizing when you have said something that offends someone, something that is racist, something that makes someone feel dehumanized. Imagining that you are reaching out to someone in this context, you could say “Hi, it’s been brought to my attention something I said offended you or caused you harm. I was wondering if we could talk about that and apologize.”
It’s key that you’re acknowledging harm has been done, that you want to address it, but most importantly you leave the permission to the person who was harmed. They have the power and decide if they want an apology from you. Giving back the agency being a very key part of this. If they say “I’d rather not talk about it” it’s important you respect that and not be weird to them because of it.
But if they want to talk about it, ask how they experienced it and how they felt about it. This helps you understand how it affected the person, and helps it not to happen again. All this is very difficult, it’s very vulnerable, and we are taught to just ignore things about race because that’s what is easiest for white society.
That was a very good practice to learn. I did that a few times with coworkers and I found it to be very helpful. I hope it addressed the harm that had been done and allowed all of us to move on. I feel that’s missing from our current approach talking about race and harm.
Did you have any other reflections on how Sojourn impacted how you think about race?
These are the most important trainings that I’ve ever taken at Google. I have thought about them ever since. It has changed the way that I see the world and understand whiteness — my whiteness. What whiteness has done for me, and how that affects the way in which I walk through the world. And understanding privilege on a very personal level but also on a much wider level.
But then also humanizing it and bringing it back to people in the same room I am in, who are going through these things that are kind of stories that show up in articles about diversity and inclusion, and having very real world impacts that are not just isolated incidents.
