Refreshing Ideologies - Dear White Bosses

Briefly: Industrial-Organizational Psychology is a branch of psychology which incorporates ad applies psychological theory to social systems in the workplace. It is the study of workforces, productivity, diversity, global integration, personnel training, and leadership development. Most I/O Psychologists attempt to make working environments cohesive to overall growth of the employees and organization.

I first was interested in I/O Psychology after seeing people I loved hate their jobs, drink because of their jobs, cry because of their jobs, and thought ‘there has to be a better way’. The second passion I had was considering leadership/followship attitudes among particular individuals, as well as the interactions and cultures which develop with certain organization. Regardless, here I am, working on a PhD in I/O Psychology.

In studying the various facets of I/O Psychology, the topic of diversity and cultural sensitivity are given a lot of thought, especially considering cultural differences. In example, in certain Asian cultures taking naps at work is considered respectable (this employee has worked so hard for me they are exhausted). In certain western European cultures, great encouragement is given to tend to work-life balance. In the Pacific Island culture, there is a laissez-faire approach to work as so long as expectations are met with an emphasis on creating near familial bonds with peers. As an American boss having a Japanese employee nap on the job while a Swedish employee leaves early for the 5th time this month, and the Hawaiian is continually hugging and inviting everyone for drinks, may be unnerving. Understanding, navigating, and coaching through these stark differences can help a business leader thrive or die.

Recently I was asked to write a 9 page paper on the diversity needs of African-Americans. I was given articles to reference and critically think about one of which was entitled: Dear White Boss, published by the Harvard Review in 2002. What first disturbed me about this article was there are absolutely no academic citations or references. The entire article is based off the feelings of an African-American executive. Secondly the article is now 15 years old, which if not foundational, is not acceptable to use in current theoretical research.

I became apprehensive. I am a Hispanic/white woman with centrist with slight liberal leftist leanings, though independent views on some a few subjects swing either very right or very left. Continually throughout my “University Experience” I have noted a distinct trend to form perspective on a more left, and authoritarian mindset. The impending feeling if you dare to disagree with an established narrative your academic career is over. I have dredged through books which are more interested in placing blame for perceived injustices than actually resolving the issue.

In example, the wage-gap. As a female I have never once, ever, experienced this phenomenon. Just like a man, I have earned every penny in my pocket. I have usually outperformed many of my peers. I have never known any woman to experience being paid 73 cents for every dollar a man makes based on being a woman. It made no sense to me. It still makes no sense to me. As a business owner if I could get away with that, I’d just hire all women! There should be no men left in the workforce. Discussing the four main contributing factors (career field, career choice, work/life balance that is to say the choice to have children and hours worked, and relationship status) to the wage gap is out rightly taboo in my academic setting. I am usually met with eye-rolls and claims of ‘internalized misogyny’. I feel there is a continual shut-down of people who want to explore issues in terms of what is ‘decided talking points’. Instead of looking at cultural norms (e.g. mothers taking time off work to tend to sick children instead of the father, resulting in less time worked and therefore harsher critique upon promotional review to the man who is at work every day), there’s some huge cone of silence around most ‘politicalized’ subjects. Race, gender, sexual orientation, the gambit.

Again. I was apprehensive. After 7 years I am so tired of indoctrination.

Yet reading this work was, in a word, amazing. The article discusses the very issues that a dichotomous racial society produces in the attempt at ‘compensation’. How ‘white guilt’ can backfire. In this article, it follows the career of an African-American executive who was not promoted and exalted by merit, but by tokenism. He was not considered a company strategist, but a master on race relations. He notes an inherent drive of white people to lower standards and expectations woven through the narrative demonstrates a sense of ‘so you think I can’t do this because I’m black’. Internal unspoken quota systems to promote unqualified persons up the chain based not on the content of their character, but the color of their skin. The expectation of productivity to drop and people offering to take more complex work away from the cases cited here all in a misguided attempt to seem ‘racially proactive’.

The situation then grows more complex. The ‘white fear’ of reprimanding and lay-offs prevented individuals from being hired into positions they were qualified.

…he was afraid to hire black leaders because, he said, “If I fire them, they will sue me.” Do you think people hired under such circumstances are really given the opportunity to succeed? I don’t. Do you think our white counterparts are scrutinized for positions based on the preconceived idea that they will fail? No, I don’t think so either. How can we possibly succeed in an environment where our new bosses have already thought about what’s going to happen when they have to fire us? I think stereotypes based on fear that have festered into “fact” are what’s behind this behavior.

The article speaks to several layers of areas I have wanted to speak out on. To shout out and go ‘Can you all not see by holding individuals to different grouped standards, you are telling them they are not good enough on their own to succeed? You set them up to fail?’. In a desperate search to ‘appear’ diverse without actually embracing the strengths and weaknesses of the individual, the pendulum can swing exactly in the opposite direction. These are the dialogues I think society needs to be having, and I wanted to share with you my experiences, my insights, and my excitement at being assigned it!

I encourage you all to take time to read and start some of that good discussion on how to approach these issues as a person, online community, and society. Do the political issues we face today with antifa, alt-right, snowflake, kek, blm, lbgt pull us to a point where we end up just throwing up our hands, thus causing more harm?

TL : DR – I/O Psychologists try to make work suck less for everyone. I study I/O Psychology and feel the University tends to discourage counter-narratives on 'hot button' topics. I was happily surprised by an article giving heartfelt insight to culture at the workplace and wanted to share it with you all for consideration.

flat out if a person is incapable of doing the job that I hired them to do their useless ass is fired and theyre replaced by someone who can do the job .

Doesnt matter what damn race or sex they are .

Ive got businesses to run not a damn daycare for slackers and idiots .

Dont need a shrink or government to tell me who can or cant hire in my company . Dont like it then go apply someplace else where theyll put up with that # .

This is a very thought provoking thread

I always get offended when somebody holds the notion that "you can't be racist to white people" because it's implying that being white is superior to all others in the same way that you can't insult someone for being rich or being attractive.

I have dredged through books which are more interested in placing blame for perceived injustices than actually resolving the issue.

There was an ad that ran in Australia for the past couple of years by the Mental Health charity; Beyondblue. It was based around the idea that white people needed to check their "perceived racism" against Aboriginals. It depicted a white woman choosing to stand on a bus instead of sit next to an Aboriginal man and a young Aboriginal girl at a job interview being told she wasn't right for the job. These are everyday occurrences that happen to everyone regardless of skin colour but the message of this ad was: "This IS racism and these racists have taken these actions because of your skin colour, you are a victim". Instead of building Aboriginals up as having a beautiful heritage and being valued members of society it flashed the victim card.

Interesting.

I just re-watched "A Time To Kill" yesterday.

It was also interesting to watch it with a different set of eyes this time around.

I read the book shortly after it came out. I remember being angry with myself after finishing the book, and realizing it was time to get ready for work, and I had spent the entire night reading the book. I also remember thinking, after reading the book, that "this is one book that they will never make into a movie". I was happy that I was wrong and couldn't wait to see what they did with it as a movie.

I thought the movie was very well done, but for some reason I never got the chance to watch it again until yesterday. I still thought it was a good movie, but it struck me in a completely different way.

So much we don't think about as individuals when interacting with others. It is not just how our culture affects how we process our thoughts and actions, but society, personal experiences, upbringing and vicarious experiences, play a huge part in what we think, say and do.

I think we are wrong to make decisions based on how we perceive people as a group. Everyone is an individual and when treated as such, I feel there is more room for amiable and beneficial interactions. I find this approach effective when dealing with customer and with employees.

A person is a package that can not be accurately described by just the wrapper.

In my personal opinion.

Great read thank you!

I will be tuning into this conversation, hopefully it evolves.

a reply to: KaDeCo

Excellent thread.

Yes, the bigotry of low expectations.

It amazes me how people think they are champions of equality by claiming they need to help the poor minorities.

How can they not see the bigotry in such an idea; the superiority that is inherit in want to treat an entire race like children.

And yet this though process is so pervasive, that to be against it and to desire to treat everyone as equals is considered racist.

Imagine being a successful black professional. You know that many people wonder if you deserved your position, or if it was given to you. You know that people walk on pins and needles around you, because they are afraid to be accused of racism. It would be terrible.

And yet, all of that is caused by "well meaning" people that claim to be fighting racism.

Its absolutely despicable.

a reply to: Grambler

It amazes me how people think they are champions of equality by claiming they need to help the poor minorities. How can they not see the bigotry in such an idea; the superiority that is inherit in want to treat an entire race like children.

Omeleto has a video that does a good job of showing how people frequently deceive themselves when they deny their prejudices.

Double post.
I don't know how that happened.
No delay, no processing your post scripting. Just boom. 2 posts??

a reply to: KaDeCo

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Think Morgan Freeman hit the nail on the head in his 60 minutes interview. When asked how do we end racism he answers " Stop Talking about it".

a reply to: KaDeCo

originally posted by: NightSkyeB4Dawn
a reply to: Grambler

It amazes me how people think they are champions of equality by claiming they need to help the poor minorities. How can they not see the bigotry in such an idea; the superiority that is inherit in want to treat an entire race like children.

Omeleto has a video that does a good job of showing how people frequently deceive themselves when they deny their prejudices.

Its a great video. I have personally dealt with situations like this many times in my life.

For one example, I was a collegiate debater. This community is as far left as could be. I was routinely told to shut up as a white man, and even that white men should be killed, etc. This is common and accepted in debate.

The clamoring for how we need to help minority communities, and how my style of debate was bad for minorities was used over and over. I was called racist for talking fast, using evidence, pointing out my opponents were not arguing the topic or breaking some other rules, etc.

I remember one school making these arguments, and they won. I was lectured about how racist I was by the judge for arguing we should focus on the topic (renewable energy I believe) instead of bashing white people.

We all were staying at the same hotel (in DC). We got back and me and another guy on my team were hanging out outside the hotel. Two black guys came up and asked for a cigarette which my friend gave them. We started talking football (they were Redskins fans, uck) and ended up joking around and hanging out for ten minutes or so. They told us a couple of good bars to go to and headed out.

It was a perfectly normal situation.

Later in the room, our coach came in. He asks if everything is ok and we say sure. He then tells us that the school we just lost to saw us out their window and told him that they thought we were being accosted by homeless guys. Later, the judge of that round asked our coach if we were buying drugs from those guys.

You see, these racial champions that found my wanting to focus on the topic as racist, but in the real world, tehey assume black guys on the street must either be gangsters or drug dealers.

It seemed quite often the people that beat their chest the loudest about how racially awesome they were were the ones that in practice were the most offensive. This happened over and over again.

Just like in this video, virtue signalling about racists jokes is more important than actually treating a black person with respect.

a reply to: Grambler
It must come from a place of insecurity and fear, because why else would someone go through life looking at how much melanin a person has in their skin. The crazy thing is the amount of melanin in one's skin is truly a poor indicator or the race of a person. It is not even a good indicator of whether a person is a member of the human race.

I was never so proud as I was when a group of my co-workers couldn't answer a question about a conference we had attended together. We went to a conference and we took a picture with the some of the presenters. When the pictures were put on Facebook someone made the comment they were surprised to see some of the presenters were Black and asked how many Blacks presented at the conference.

We all looked at each other puzzled because we hadn't noticed and couldn't honestly answer that question. Even when we went over the brochure that had names of the presenters without pictures, none of us could remember if they were Black or White. As it should be. We didn't go to see Black presenters or White presenters, we went to learn from their experiences and their professional abilities.

It was after that experience that I learned I am normally color blind. I don't pay attention to stuff like that and it is probably why I am so bad at remembering people's names and am always meeting people for the second and third time as if it were my first. I am truly lousy with that.

a reply to: norhoc
Hope this helps.

a reply to: norhoc
Double post.
Darn happened again. I am starting to get paranoid.

a reply to: Grambler

I'm guessing they didn't think it was racist at all. I'm cynically going to say they knew they could use the technique to their advantage and did.

Because, let's be honest, if they really thought you were racist, why would they have cared about what was happening to you outside enough to report it?

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: Grambler

I'm guessing they didn't think it was racist at all. I'm cynically going to say they knew they could use the technique to their advantage and did.

Because, let's be honest, if they really thought you were racist, why would they have cared about what was happening to you outside enough to report it?

You could be right.

But I think there is something more going on.

There is some sort of psychological disconnect.

For example, many on the left think anyone against gay marriage is a monster that is evil.

And yet they defend Islam tooth and nail. They know what Islam says about homosexuality, and they know that studies show that even moderate Muslims feel gay marriage should be outlawed. And yet they truly seem to want to stick up for these people.

In my situation, I think they truly do think I am racist. They probably just found me to be racist out of ignorance.

They truly believe that black people "learn" differently. They will honestly tell you that arguing with facts and evidence is a eurocentric model of debate, and that we should instead focus on "organic intellectuals" which are people with life experience, and we should use poetry and rap because that is how black people communicate and learn, and they are disadvantaged with reading.

This is accepted as the truth in policy debate, and to question it is racist. I questioned it, so I am racist.

However, they disconnect from that and when they thought I was in danger, they worried. Just like how the girl in the video probably really thought the guys joke was racist, but when placed in a real world situation, she revealed her true racial stereotypes.

a reply to: Grambler

They truly believe that black people "learn" differently. They will honestly tell you that arguing with facts and evidence is a eurocentric model of debate, and that we should instead focus on "organic intellectuals" which are people with life experience, and we should use poetry and rap because that is how black people communicate and learn, and they are disadvantaged with reading.

And they were supposed to be educated people with the ability to think critically?

Sounds like they were a bunch of empty minded people that were conditioned to believe a well navigated narrative.

I was blessed to grow up in a very diverse small country town that was too poor to afford destructive racism. And blessed to be a member of a large awesome Heinz 57 family. Though I think it would be difficult today to find many people that aren't of mixed heritage, so I have no idea how so many hold on to those ridiculous racist beliefs.

a reply to: Grambler

Of course, if your version of debate was anything at all like what I recall from when I was doing it, you relied heavily on briefs which were cut out of scholarly articles and other places. There is a heavy amount of scholarly tripe that promotes those ideas these days. I don't recall us questioning much of what we strung together to attack and counter-attack. We mainly regurgitated. All we really had to do was understand it well enough to navigate our way through a cross-examination.

a reply to: KaDeCo

I have never known any woman to experience being paid 73 cents for every dollar a man makes based on being a woman. It made no sense to me. It still makes no sense to me. As a business owner if I could get away with that, I’d just hire all women!

Until half of your staff decides to get pregnant and your business suffers from the lack of working force. Which is why many small business owners would rather hire two moronic males than one capable female btw. Some people would argue that the income gap compensates this effect, which is probably the reason why it's here to stay. Inequality at it's finest...

Implemented in an effort to support individuals who choose to have children in the face of a drastically shrinking German population, German social law also has the unfortunate side-effect of preventing many women from pursuing professional careers.

Women in the German workplace

Solutions? We could subsidize every business owner with female working force in "Elternzeit". An unconditional basic income would suffice as well, probably the easy solution here.

Do the political issues we face today with antifa, alt-right, snowflake, kek, blm, lbgt pull us to a point where we end up just throwing up our hands, thus causing more harm?

That's probably the intent with many facets of mass-psychology.