“The Other Side of Diversity”
“The prevailing narrative surrounding minorities in tech relates to how beneficial employing minorities can be for a company and/or how detrimental the lack of diverse perspectives can be. I’ve searched for, and have been disappointed to find that few studies have been done on the psychological effects of being a minority in a mostly homogeneous workplace for an extended period of time…
I was the only black woman, the only black person, on the entire floor. I immediately did not fit in, because I didn’t look the part. My coworkers walked on eggshells in my presence, so I did my best to make them feel comfortable around me so that I would be included. I laughed at their terribly racist and sexist jokes, I co-opted their negative attitudes, I began to dress as they did, I brushed it off when they made passes at me…
[At Google] Things between my teammate and I were strained, to say the least. It felt like he had some ideas about me that were based on really terrible stereotypes and wasn’t shy about sharing them. This was the only time I’ve ever experienced overt harassment from a coworker. He’d say things like “Did you get that bruise from your boyfriend beating you?” or “I bet your parents abused you as a child.”…
It was decided that the best way to deal with the “tension” between that coworker and I was for me to transfer to New York, despite my not wanting to move there. I don’t believe my manager ever engaged HR about the problems and neither did I. I didn’t want to make waves and isolate myself further from the team. I didn’t want to be that stereotype, the black woman with a chip on her shoulder. I didn’t want to make the rest of my team uncomfortable….
I am working on re-establishing my authentic self. This process is scary and difficult and will take some time and work. I have to search through myself and figure out what characteristics I’ve dropped in order to fit in. I have to sift through my personality and pick out the bits that aren’t really me.”
This gave me so many feelings. I’m so, so glad that she wrote down her experiences — I hope that people are reading and learning, or (like me) reading and getting to see their stories being validated. “I feel like there isn’t anyone who can identify with my story, so I don’t tell it.” is so, so real.
I really, really want to highlight how she starts her post — diversity initiatives are always framed as a benefit for the company, for the existing [racist] [patriarchal] system. And there definitely isn’t thought about how to benefit those of us who are that “diverse element”, come to provide all those glossy photos in brochures. And I often feel as though I am being demanding and entitled to want companies and institutions to do work to be a good environment for me… but, that’s the fucking internalized racism talking, and really if you want to feel good about having hired me and if you want to use my picture to present an image of your company then you should invest in my emotional safety from all the things that have historically made the workplace to homogeneous.
It really, really feels like these companies feel alienated from that work and are hoping to hire all these non-white people so that they will not only do the job they are hired to, but also magically make the environment more inclusive (but in a manner that doesn’t step on any toes)
Related: “Women and Minorities Are Penalized for Promoting Diversity” (HBR study); “You deplete me: The cognitive costs of colorblindness on ethnic minorities”
