'And suddenly I began having to repeat myself in planning meetings for anyone to notice I had spoken.'
Did this happen How do we improve diversity statistics at ? Let’s start with the most obvious problem here. All of these questions ask us, the individuals holding a marginalized identity, to explain and usually defend our lived experience.
There are so many reasons this shouldn’t happen, but the most pressing is that this doubles the amount of work it takes for us to even exist in this space. Queer black women in tech already experience countless that come from being visibly different in the workplace. Ask us any of the questions above and then we also have to argue that our differences are valid and perform an incredible amount of emotional labor of responding to these questions or pushing back against the fact that we’re being asked these questions at all. These questions are not word-for-word, but they capture the essence of questions that I have received from folks in and out of the tech industry, from friends to co-workers, to managers, and far beyond.My experience as a woman on an all-male team lasted about 15 months. It wasn’t all that bad at first. Folks were excited to listen to my technical ideas, hear my personal stories, teach me how we do things here. Then I passed the six-month mark, the point at this particular tech company where you’re expected to know roughly what you’re doing and be able to contribute at the same level as your co-workers. And suddenly I began having to repeat myself in planning meetings for anyone to notice I had spoken. At lunch, it was blindingly clear by that point that I didn’t have anything to contribute to conversations about racing cars and destination weddings, so my co-workers stopped inviting me to meals. I resorted entirely to online methods of communicating about technical problems because every word I said out loud would be hyperscrutinized by every individual within earshot. At some point, my manager asked me how things were going, and I let him know the difficulties I was having. I pointed out that I was the only woman, and one of the youngest people on the team. I explained how my co-workers did not trust my knowledge, despite extensive proof that I knew exactly what I was doing. And he asked, “Are you speaking up enough? I notice you are often quiet in group conversations; maybe you need to insert yourself more so folks know they can have conversations with you as well.” All of these questions ask us, the individuals holding a marginalized identity, to explain and usually defend our lived experience. The person who had been in nearly every group conversation where I had been spoken over, whose job it was to pay attention to my experience, and make sure I could contribute at the fullest capacity possible, who had time and time again said he understood the struggles of being other his first question put the onus of change squarely on my shoulders. Perhaps all of this was because I am a woman; perhaps none of it is. My point is that it is an experience that is not at all unique to me. Rather, it is one that many folks in tech have when they are not 2. Did this happen because you are Black or is it just that you’re Black and this happened? Over the course of my life — slightly shorter than a quarter-century — I’ve asked myself countless times: Did this happen because I’m Black? Mixed-race? Darker than white folks? Lighter than Black folks? Was I just treated differently because I’m with a group of white folks? Would this have happened differently if I wasn’t alone in my Blackness? Tech has been no different. And in bringing up The Race Question with co-workers and managers in several companies — folks who are, themselves, Black and white and several other races — I’ve been surprised at the responses. Almost universally, regardless of the race of the person I’m speaking with, I’m asked “‘Are you sure? Are you sure this has to do with race?” Even other Black folks, other Black women in and out of tech, have flinched away from my presentation of race as part of the reason I struggle in ways my non-Black co-workers do not. Since it is challenging to identify the exact reason I may have been criticized at a higher rate than my co-workers, let’s not even focus on that. Rather, let’s focus on why folks push back on my assertion of my racial identity affecting how I’m treated in the workplace. Of course, my race affects my work — because humans are primarily visual creatures, our visual presentation is one of the primary ways we are categorized. Why pretend otherwise? The only answer I can think of is that pretending that Blackness doesn’t factor into my experience in the workplace means that my co-workers, managers, and beyond don’t have to consider how to change a pervasive, difficult-to-tackle culture that allows for racially-motivated differences in treatment. Race-based mistreatment or inequality is, in my opinion, one of the hardest cultural problems to admit to and then change. It’s the easiest to ignore when you’re not the target, the most uncomfortable to accept on a personal level, especially if this acceptance would hold you personally accountable to change. It usually requires such a drastic cultural change that the easiest solution is to pretend race simply doesn’t affect anything. Queer black women in tech already experience countless daily microaggressions that come from being visibly different in the workplace. — and with it, the clear hope that my Blackness doesn’t have to do with the issue at hand, lets me know right away that I will have to fight to have my concerns even acknowledged as legitimate. It tells me that I do not have an ally who believes in the words I say. Again, whether or not I am right in the end is not really the issue. The issue is more that I have to fight to have my experience believed in a way that other folks simply don’t — and that this is a part of my daily experience in the workplace as much as are any of the engineering problems I face.Are you, midlevel manager or , going to your white male employees and asking them how we improve diversity statistics? No? Well, then, don’t ask me how we can improve diversity unless you are going to pay me to answer this question. That’s unpaid labor, and you can learn more about that by reading “
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