It’s Not Racist To Have Opinions About Your Competence
Stop being a self-made victim and just get better at your job
When life leads you up shit creek, it doesn’t care whether you come back whole or hobble back battered and bloodied. So long as you come back.
Some people don’t know this. They think life leads them up shit creek for a special reason. They get there, set up base and wait for their good reward. No matter how dirty and dank it gets, they become one with all the crap and refuse to paddle their way out.
“Out? Why out?” they say. “We didn’t ask to be dumped here in Raceshit Creek! We’re not moving until someone comes and lays down a gold-brick path for us!”
My first day at work
A couple of the old-timers invite me to lunch on my first day in my first job and I’m well happy. I need some workplace intel!
Over a jacket potato and a coke, the women — one black, one brown — educate me on who’s who and what’s what.
I’m horrified to discover I’m working in racist central.
They tell me how none of the white people will talk to an ethnic unless it’s to bark out an order. Also, the whities all disappear to the pub on Friday afternoons too, leaving the ethnics to do all the work. As for promotion, forget it. These two hard-working ladies have been overlooked for promotion for four straight years all because of their overly shaded skin.
I was a bit dumb in those days because I believed them. Why would they lie? But the weeks went by and it became clear they were self-made victims talking total bollocks.
This company was walking the talk of diversity long before wokies created a demand for mission statement copywriters.
- The head of accounts was a black woman
- The head of legal was an Indian woman
- The head of IT was a black man
- My job came about because my predecessor, a Filipino, got promoted
The people in the company were normal people too! Whether that meant helpful, incompetent, bored, whiny or 90's-lech, they were all too busy being their thing to worry about somebody else’s skin colour.
If there were any racists there, they were too busy keeping quiet about it.
These two ladies were up Raceshit Creek, tossing their paddles far out into the rancid water, waiting for someone to come get them through all the abuse they’re hurling.
I was with that company for five years. Five years, five promotions. Brown face and all.
Winnie the Pooh has good advice for those ladies:
You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.
— Winnie the Pooh
Unless prejudice, bias and bitter bile is tagging along.
Then Piglet saw what a Foolish Piglet he had been, and he was so ashamed of himself that he ran straight off home and went to bed with a headache
— Winnie the Pooh
Everyone’s a product of their upbringing and influences. ME TOO!
My dad’s experienced racism at work and could have taught us about the evil ways of the white man. But then he’d have had to teach us the evil ways of the brown man and the black man too.
Because it wasn’t a white face holding the guns that forced my grandparents to flee with nothing during partition in India. It wasn’t a white face forcing the exodus of Asians from Kenya.
There are things I wish my parents had taught me when I was little. How to colour-in people in colouring books isn’t one of them because I managed that perfectly well on my own. I see skin colour. I see cultural differences. I see what people have done to others and had done to them.
I see grudges and the pain people are holding and I see they run deep enough to hide the absurdities.
Absurdities like people teaching their children to maintain racial differences — in the name of diversity and inclusion!
I wrote in a comment here that my friend’s teen is white/asian. She looks white. She used to wear cornrows but stopped recently when she started getting bullied at school for cultural appropriation….. by the teacher!
Kids don’t become idiots until the adults teach them.
Like a lot of women, I’ve experienced getting paid less than my male counterparts. I left one high profile job because they wouldn’t increase my pay after I found out.
A colleague said I was a victim of a double-whammy prejudice (being female and Indian) and advised me to sue for a nice big compensation payout.
Poor guy. He was always being picked on by his boss for missing deadlines and poor output… his “racist” boss, of course.
What gets me is there I am, peeved over getting paid a “woman’s rate” and take steps to correct it. The poor self-made victim colleague insists it’s racism too!
For those who see racism in every shadow… shine a light, people!
It only took a week or two to find a new job with better pay. Being female and Indian too.
Some people get taught how to be a victim. Others stumble into a situation and find a victim’s life too much of an easy fit.
They hold other people responsible for their life but no-one can ever do enough to help a self-made victim because they NEED their problems to stay someone else’s fault. It’s their entire identity.
Even when the evidence around them SCREAMS there’s no racism going on, they’re so mired in the stench of Raceshit Creek, they blame it anyway.
- Easier to blame racism than to get better doing their job
- Easier to blame racism than to get some social skills
- Easier to blame racism than to admit they’re a bad fit
People become victims when they get an underdog narrative inside their head that’s practically a religious experience, it’s that all-consuming.
Racism exists in the workplace. Yes it does.
There are established avenues to deal with it and people take it seriously.
Having your feelings hurt because you’re bad at your job IS NOT RACISM. Stop pretending it is. Companies are supposed to protect their customers and staff from people who can’t do their job and can’t be arsed to learn.
But the ferocity of this “blame everything on racists (or any ist for that matter)” narrative is creating marshmallow hearts making companies too scared to fire shoddy workers, and as a result, some of these outfits are a nightmare to deal with.
You know what the irony is. Self-made victims who fling the R-word around willy-nilly want to belong. They want more opportunities. They want a happy life. They don’t know how to work it and that knowledge will never come if blame-culture is their default response.
It’s time self-made victims dropped the victim and reinvented the self-made.
Read this too: It’s Not Racist To Have Opinions About Your Culture
It’s Not Racist To Want A Better Job
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