It's 2am in the morning and I can't sleep. I'm unable to let go of the ruminations rolling around in my brain, I'm thinking constantly about my job, the people and my place in it. I've been in tears every night for the last 2 weeks. It's because the company I once believed in, has changed in character and leadership, with the voices being heard, dominated by a few individuals. This has changed the skin, flesh and bones of the company and my role has been marginalized. Part of that feeling of marginalization is that my discipline isn't considered as a driver of the science. We are there to support or enable the scientists meaning that we need to make sure they're all happy. And anytime they complain, which is frankly all the fucking time, I have to put out that fire. It's created this functional caste system of importance and value. can't remember the last time anyone said 'thank you' to me. A thousand small cuts.
Many months back, immediately after George Floyd, I raised my voice via slack and spoke about my experience as a brown woman and the importance of recognizing systemic racism. In our leadership channel, I recommended several podcasts which I thought dealt with the issues exceedingly well (Shout out to TenPercentHappier!). Crickets. Not a one responded.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, and a white male colleague wrote a slack message proclaiming that we should have a cultural audit on our biases in the workplace. Five people responded, congratulating him for pointing that out. It was like I was physically watching all my colleagues pat him on the back - wait to take it over the finish line bro! Wow isn't he so awesome that he's thinking about this. HippieHusband calls it virtue signaling. I call it bullshit. And our company has DEI committee run by a well-intentioned white woman, who as a result of leading this committee, is getting kudos from the entire executive leadership team and the company. I am glad that she sees this as important and she is completely blind to her own privilege. Because I wasn't feeling super included and positive about the company's integrity around these issues, I left the committee and suggested that she ask AwesomeWhiteMan to take my place. And guess what? Oh ya, he did. Un-fucking-believable.
The hardest part in all this is that I experience my voice in that space as a liability. If I speak from that brown skinned place, expressing how as an organization we should reflect on the company biases, it creates a fight, flight or freeze response in the senior leadership. The no response response indicates freeze. These folks just don't know what and how to answer because they're afraid they'll make it worse or they really don't know what to say. In the fight response any comments from an employee charging bias has to be taken seriously - and so it raises the HR flag of discrimination, anti-harassment and the potential of liability to the company. Why's she raising this here? She reports to the CEO what does that mean about their interactions? Does she experience discrimination? Do we have to worry about liability to the company? And the flight response comes from some folks running in the opposite direction - and labeling me as trouble.
I'm so angry because its like I'm taking a pillow and suffocating myself. I've since censored myself to avoid creating any issues, or losing my job. And the internal medieval tyrant who lives in my head, constantly reminds me it's not like I'm physically dying as a result of the racism.
Everyone in this situation loses.
And now most recently, I have the added complexity of a personnel situation. This situation has added enormous stress because the nature of the unskillful communication arose from a feeling like they don't matter, that we are the janitors in the company, that we are at the beck and call of the company, and the CEO can't even get the name of my department right. It's a mirror to the unspoken truth. I feel it. I know other members of the team feel it. And in all this time, neither the CEO nor CSO have asked me how I really am. All this is going on amidst a pandemic, a contested election, repeated George Floyd incidents, and my physical health continues to be a challenge.
The context of my work situation and the subtlety of racism creates a feeling of isolation that cuts deep. It unearths and triggers memories from my childhood of school yard bullies and the frontal assault of name-calling that created a sense of difference, disconnection, and a longing for belonging.
As I move through this painful time, I dig into my bag of buddhist tricks and hope that I find the compassion to hold my pain and suffering. And that of my colleagues, whose deep habits of mind create a grand delusion of workplace equity.
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