How To Impress Your Boss, An Intersectional Guide
Pogonip steers us to the pages of Everyday Feminism, where Sophia Stephens, a freelance writer and self-described “educator,” informs white employers of how to “ensure the safety of the black people and people of colour who work with and for you.” Not safety in the sense of fire regulations, of course, or loose stair carpeting, but with regard to the exquisitely delicate emotional state of All Brown-Skinned People Everywhere. Due to this perilous and inherent instability of mood, there are “questions to interrogate as you engage with people of colour and their labour.” Among which,
Are you asking or demanding? Many white people who approach Black and non-Black people of colour for labour do not ask for our labour — they demand it from us. Asking someone to do something leaves it open-ended with space for the person to say no… If you are exhausting and hurting Black and non-Black people of colour around you because you won’t take “no” for an answer when you request labour from us… it’s time to check your privilege.
If that’s not catnip for employers with tight deadlines, I don’t know what is. Oh, there’s more:
The most common opening for a demand that most white people don’t even realise is a demand is, “I need.” Of course you have needs, but is it necessary that you consistently go to people of colour, who also have needs that are systematically denied to them, to help you?
Yes, white employers must avoid using the phrase “I need such-and-such by the end of the week,” as this inflicts cruel and unusual hardship on those possessed of brown skin. And as an employer, a white employer, you must always remember to ask yourself, ‘Could I give this person’s work – which I hired them to do, and am paying them to do – to someone else – ideally, someone whiter?’ Or as Ms Stephens puts it,
It is important to reflect on how generations of access and entitlement to our labour does not mean you automatically get it from us now.
Needless to say, there are many other terms and conditions for white employers to observe, including parsing your requests for signs that they may be “inherently racist” or contain unspecified “microaggressions” and “triggering” language; and this:
Take a peek at our social media (if you have access and permission), or go on Google and do some research before you ask us for labour.
Presumably, this is in order to perform a daily, perhaps hourly, check on the current moods of every single brownish employee, and thereby discern whether or not they may be willing to consider doing whatever it is you’re paying them to do.
And finally, at the end of the list, there’s this:
White people: why is it so important for us to always be nice to you? Being nice to a white person means acting and behaving like a white person. In case you forgot, we are not white.
In short, then, having hired a minority employee, you shouldn’t expect too much, or indeed much of anything. Except an awful lot of conditions and mannered agonising, and endless excuses for why things can’t be done, or can’t be done on time. It’s the intersectional way, apparently. And a long and rewarding career will surely follow.
Ms Stephens, who fashionably oscillates between the pronouns she and they, claims to seethe righteously, not only about “social justice,” or even “intersectional social justice,” but “radical intersectional social justice.”
The most social-justicey-justice of all.
And Ms Stephens’ Twitter feed is pretty much what you’d imagine. Lots of like-minded people telling each other how emotionally fatigued they are, and how many mental health issues they have. And complaining about how hard it is to “find a job within your field of study,” i.e., when your field of study is some variant of “radical intersectional social justice.” One young woman, a bisexual art student with depression, is complaining about how hard it is to find a job in which she gets paid to draw unremarkable cartoons about what it’s like to be a bisexual art student with depression.
Yes, the titans of tomorrow.
By the way, in the last Small Appliance Report I forgot to mention our new toaster has Advanced Toasting Technology!
…what personal and business interactions sound like in a Workplace Of Color.
A friend and former colleague of mine, a delightful, personable, easy-going, emotionally stable woman of pallor with grown-up children, was seconded a few years ago to an ostentatiously Black ‘community project’ to provide expertise that was evidently lacking. She was bemused (and discomfited) by the general atmosphere of the workplace, and after a couple of days was taken to one side by the manager and instructed to desist from greeting or attempting to exchange pleasantries with the other staff when she arrived in the morning as this was considered disruptive to their ‘very important’ work which needed a ‘professional and serious’ approach at all times. (British readers will be familiar with any number of these publicly-funded make-work schemes and form their own judgements as to how ‘very important’ their activities might be.)
In the 1990s I was briefly employed at a local authority-funded facility that was supposedly available to the general public but was (very) effectively restricted to what is known euphemistically as ‘the community’. Leaving aside the staggering (but not unexpected) incompetence, inefficiency, ineptitude, indifference, corruption and blatant theft committed by the staff, the overall impression was of over-sized children play-acting being at work. In retrospect I should at least be grateful I didn’t have to endure the po-faced pretension. Small mercies, eh?
It’s a strange thing, the degree to which, and the speed with which, a very large and influential chunk of the left has become fixated by race…
This is, in part, a consequence of the failure of traditional leftist ideas: Just as, after WWI, fascism arose as a leftist response to the failure of the workers to reject patriotism and embrace internationalism, so today the left has embraced racial (and other) identity politics to compensate for the decline in the reputation of socialist economics: It does not matter that such racist politics is antithetical to what the old left professed; all that matters is that it is a route to power.
pst314: Wisdom. Let us be attentive. The “fascism is of the right” nonsense is still too common.
Take a peek at our social media (if you have access and permission), or go on Google and do some research before you ask us for labour
Does this idiot have any idea at all how being employed works?
Does this idiot have any idea at all how being employed works?
So far as I can tell, her experience of employment is rather limited. And given her attitude, that seems unlikely to change.
I’ll just leave this here, I think.
We learn more and more here every day about the sort of “employment application” questions that would best enable us to filter out such idiots right up front, before they can infect and destroy from within.
E.G. “Do you think our company should institute a pronoun policy to force usage of preferred pronouns? Yes or no. Justify your answer.”
If you wanted to start a consulting business, David, helping companies to avoid tragic hiring mistakes such as Miss Stephens (ooh, that felt good), the world is your oyster, sir.
My empathy is a super power.
I have decided that empathy, the actual feeling of another’s emotions, is a mental disease. Sympathy, caring and understanding for the suffering of others, on the other hand, is a normal and useful trait in society. This is my current Pet Peeve (replacing irritation at the misuses of “hone vs. home” and “factoid”).
Of the two the male of the duo got a BFA in Navel Gazing Art, the female of the duo a BS in Commercial Art.
This reminded me (since I am going to be at UC Berkeley tonight, for an unabashedly Capitalist endeavour in the I-am-sure-it-is-fascist Boalt Law School) of a trivial encounter I had on campus last year.
I am sauntering up Bancroft Ave. next to campus, when I pass a 30-ish looking gent with that maybe I’m homeless or maybe I’ve just spent too much time in a college town look. As I pass, I clearly hear him mutter, in a tone that indicates this is not the first time he’s had this thought, “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be artists.”
See? Truth and enlightenment is still to be found at UCB, if only by happenstance.
gaslighting
The thing is, gaslighting is a common tactic used by people with BPD/Complex PTSD. Since awareness of gaslighting has increased, it’s now become common for such people to accuse anyone who demurs from their self-flattering version of history of gaslighting them. It’s projection all the way down.
everyday feminists lead far more interesting and dramatic lives than the rest of us
I’m skeptical of those accounts. Most people with real BPD will react like that not to being gaslit, but to being caught in a lie (admittedly, BPDs interpret the latter as the former). But they won’t publicize it. They’ll say it to people they’re trying to emotionally blackmail or that they’re trying to elicit sympathy from because in a one-on-one conversation they can better control the narrative and there are fewer witnesses. These read like someone who listened to a real BPD describing their reactions to a cognitive dissonance confrontation, and appropriated the description for clickbait.
the left has embraced racial (and other) identity politics to compensate for the decline in the reputation of socialist economics
Yes, it’s called Cultural Marxism. Economic Marxism doesn’t hold up to scrutiny because it’s too obvious to the proles that economic class is not immutable – in a society founded on economic liberty, you can work your way out of the “oppressed” working class. It’s hard to convince people the only route out of their oppressed status is glorious revolution when they see people all around them working up to nice cars and houses.
So Marxism changed to fixating on immutable biological characteristics like skin colour and sex, since you can’t work hard to change either of those (shut up, Caitlyn. You too, Rachel) and therefore it’s easier to stoke class resentment against people of some other, presumed-privileged class.
I’ll just leave this here, I think.
This is my shocked face.
You deserve Advanced Toasting Technology.
Another manifestation of white supremacy.
I am going to be at UC Berkeley tonight,
We just shipped stepson, now officially an L2 at Boalt Law, back up there last weekend.
If you thought the Baby Boomers were selfish & self-centered . . .
There’s a reason Stephens is freelance.
We have a response to the waving of pillows.
Man Vs Chair.
You can tell the response is the better one, it only runs for 2:21 instead of 28:32 for the pillow waving.
…….their ‘very important’ work which needed a ‘professional and serious’ approach at all times. ……
=========
Speaking from the newer side of the pond, and always eager to refine my knowledge of the British vernacular ,would the proper descriptor here be ‘self-important tw*ts’ (no, the missing letter is not ‘i’), or ‘self-important gits’?
Either of those would work, fnord!
Darleen,
Congratulations. I think 🙂
Our son is in his last undergrad year, doing Applied Math / Stats
“Are you asking or demanding? Many white people who approach Black and non-Black people of colour for labour do not ask for our labour — they demand it from us. Asking someone to do something leaves it open-ended with space for the person to say no…”
Thinking back, when I was working in the oilpatch, we’d get asked to do stuff out on the lease. Of course, whether we went out the next day or not depended upon if we did what we were asked, or said, “no”. So, I pretty much took a request for a demand. Call me stuffy and old-fashioned, I liked having an income.
“If you are exhausting and hurting Black and non-Black people of colour around you because you won’t take “no” for an answer when you request labour from us… it’s time to check your privilege.”
We take and take and take from Black and non-Black people of colour–I say it’s time to give. Give them their check, and give them five minutes to get their vehicle and get off the property.
I said, I have ADVANCED TOASTING TECHNOLOGY, and since you oiks are too uncouth to be properly awed, I have no choice but to curl into a ball on the floor.
Which, I might add, is getting disgracefully crowded lately.
On the other hand, everyday feminists lead far more interesting and dramatic lives than the rest of us.
Anyone who has seen real gaslighting and the damage it does might be inclined to kick these mental toddlers down the nearest flight of stairs.
It’s projection all the way down.
That.
See the bizarre usage in recent years of the terms “my truth”, “your truth”, and “their truth”.
Ok Pogonip, I’ll bite. Wtf is ATT? Blue lights? Electronic shit tends to have a blue light somewhere to demonstrate its quantum transmodulation.
Sophia Stephens, prospective employee: “Hire me, or else!”
Hiring Manager, Bartlesby’s Scriveners, Inc.: “I would prefer not to.”
Whether you’re interested in learning how to decolonize your feminism, transform white guilt into anti-racist action, or even unlock the wisdom of tarot , we’ve got you covered.
Playing poker with a tarot deck.
Prm, you guessed it! Blue lights! 😁
Rightte. Whatte Hale saide.
I think Farnsworth is taking up more than his allotted share of floor-tile squares. 😠
I think Farnsworth is taking up more than his allotted share of floor-tile squares.
Say again all after hello ? Are you channeling Hal ?
Move over!
Playing poker with a tarot deck
You could just play tarocchi, which is what the decks were originally designed for. It’s more like hearts than poker, admittedly.
Why are the other colours proper nouns, but white is lower case?? Am I not a proper noun – like “White”?
Move over!
Me ? You are the one carting the damn crew served diesel powered toaster with you.
It is not a diesel. Diesel is old school. This is Advanced Toaster Technology, powered by unobtanium.
It is not a diesel.
Sure as if you didn’t have this sitting next to you you shooting bread like a Katyusha launcher on steroids.
I know that ain’t no toaster but something inside me really, reeaaallly wants it to be a siren.
You could just play tarocchi, which is what the decks were originally designed for. It’s more like hearts than poker, admittedly.
Correct. The idea with majors poker is to do poker, but mix in a tarot deck instead of a regular deck.
The prototype fired pickled “eggs,” a thousand “eggs” a minute.
It was horrible. “I am become pickled ‘egg,” said David, “the destroyer of worlds. No refunds. Credit note only.”
It’s a Soviet coffee maker, right, Farnsworth?
Every time I look at Farnsworth’s artistic depiction of Advanced Toaster Technology
i start giggling madly. 🤪
Of course David will never leave us alone again after this.
The terminology is a bit of a tell, Mr. Farnsworth.
I hope that you don’t tell me that I am [..] coming in broken and stupid.
I think the answer to your question Adele is, no.
Sometimes the pettiness does descend so far that to destroy White privilege we are denied caps. Whatever. “White” covers such a large — and shifting — area that it has no solid meaning anyway.
I once had a man say that he refused to wear a tie because he was an eighth Maori, so it ran against his mana to do so. I was so close to asking him why the other seven-eighths of his heritage was unimportant that I literally bit my tongue.
<\i> Ooops.
my phone auto corrects my slashes, I am just discovering.
Ches my man, you in a heap a trouble, boy.
Ches my man, you in a heap a trouble, boy.
You see how I just jumped in there, though, and fixed it? Like a ninja.
I hope that you don’t tell me that I am [..] coming in broken and stupid.
Negative, you are lima charlie, but not a squid, so not a Mister, thank you very much…
Wait, what?
I once had a man say that he refused to wear a tie because he was an eighth Maori, so it ran against his mana to do so. I was so close to asking him why the other seven-eighths of his heritage was unimportant . . .
Clearly the other seven eighths simply had better taste than to wear a tie . . .