The Banality of Small Talk
You walk into the office on Monday and have to answer the question: How was your weekend?
Quite often I have to wonder, how honest I have to be. How much cultural sensitivity does this person, how much will they accept my social excursions as normal, and how often will I have to defend ‘a lifestyle’ choice. A seemingly boring question actually requires a lot of mental calculus to figure out the answer.
Each time we build a wall in our brain and edit our stories about our identities, our lived experiences and who we are there is an exhausting calculus that is completed to build that wall. That wall gets denser and you let less of yourself show over time — because the more you show of who you are, the more you validate the process of otherring that is occurring to you. This process can be life threatening, or career limiting depending on the situation.
Engaging in, or sometimes not engaging at all, in small talk becomes a practice of observing your words with a stealth precision.
In predominantly white, able-bodies, straight, and westernized spaces there is also an expectation to disclose what you do on the weekend to identify exactly what class you are. You can signal to others your class-wealth-status simply by identifying what you did on the weekend: did you build a pool in your background? pine over your new couch? go skiing? pick up a new outfit for your dog?
Small talk turns into a weapon to pointedly apply micro-aggression [seemingly innocuous comments, gestures or actions that invalidate, and further oppress someone’s identity].
“You could pass as white” my coworker said. Although I rebuffed them, there was something so deeply infuriating about someone having no consciousness of how their words impacted others. For that matter, the privilege this kind of free-talking-not-thinking-jokey-toned comment demonstrated. I had to stop and think about whether I want to have an education smack-down with this person, or just let it go. I chose to avoid the confrontation and build a wall.
That’s the thing, eventually you stop talking to avoid these conversations and judgmental gazes into your identity.
Small talk is boring — but building inclusion through human connections isn’t.
These conversations are a good example of how we can use our ability to disrupt our thinking to move beyond othering people, and genuinely accepting others as they are. These simple moments can also be furtile ground to build really wonderful human connections — little by little.
A Mantra for Inclusive Small Talk:
If someone tells you about themselves, listen and don’t judge them. Rejoice in their joy. Empathize with that and use it to enliven your connection. Don’t add in your judgement about who should or what should that person do/have done instead. Be active but not over-active. Sometimes you can just google stuff instead of asking small-talk partner to explain every detail. Don’t argue with their version of the truth — let them be themselves. Listening is a powerful form of loving someone and healing yourself. Goodluck.
