Personal Essay
Wait a Minute…I’m the Face of Diversity for Y’all?
Something has surely gone terribly wrong here
This writing is in response to my own prompt located here.
I’ve never exactly considered myself “diverse”.
Last time I checked, I am a white dude. I’m the last person I ever would have expected to be a token diversity hire to fill a quota. I certainly wouldn’t have thought to find myself getting congratulated for creating great diversity questions for a job interview where I was the official “diverse” person in a handful of other white people interviewing another white person.
I absolutely should never have been the only face of diversity in an interviewing panel representing a staff that was about 25% POC, especially after an equity team advised leadership that there was not a single non-white person in our leadership. The leadership in my job shouldn’t have needed an outside equity assessment to notice this, but apparently, they did need this reminder to ignore.
I wouldn’t have nominated myself to prepare an hour-long free lesson on how to help my people, with more upcoming free lessons requested. It was also surprising to receive encouragement to perform for free at a conference representing marginalized identities in my field. The trouble is that I feel obligated to educate because there’s no one quite like me at my work. If I don’t help, my people might be harmed.
Ohh, right! I forgot to mention that I’m a trans guy.
I’m also Demisexual, non-binary, and queer, so I’ve got a significant portion of the LGBTQIA+ acronym covered for you, if you want a very white “intersectional” person to champion while checking off boxes on a grant form.
Thanks to my last name, there are sometimes awkward moments in job interviews or other introductions where everyone has to adjust for a minute to the fact that I’m undeniably white. A line of weird questions tends to come up as everyone tries to figure out how this could have happened.
Since I was either a really good feminist or a closeted trans guy, I took my wife’s last name.
People rarely think of this possibility first. I sometimes just sit and wait for them to work up the courage to ask as they try to decide what HR would want them to say here.
Thanks to my last name, I’ve also often been the preferred white person to answer wildly inappropriate questions from coworkers about POC who often have no direct connection to my wife’s heritage. Even if the question was about my wife’s heritage, I’m not really qualified to answer. I’m the person you go to for education if your unconscious racism has prevented you from just listening to POC directly while unpacking your blind spots.
Though I’m highly unqualified to educate, I still feel obligated to do so in this situation because I never know if the person asking me that ridiculous question might be the one to witness my wife experiencing a racist incident someday. If so, I don’t want them to stand by and do nothing. This prompts me to spend a lot of time researching to prepare for the weird diversity questions. That said, I’m not going to tell anyone the best local place to get Thai food, even if I do know the correct answer to that question. I’m not a human Google machine.
However, I would suggest that anyone with a diversity question provoked by my last name watch this helpful music video that is both informative and educational for all who desire to learn more about the Asian diaspora. My wife highly recommends it to any who wants to know more about their culture. It’s probably the best resource that I have to offer as your resident unqualified diversity expert.
Interested in signing up for the Medium to access all of our writers’ fantastic articles for only $5/month? If you would like part of your membership fees to support me at no additional cost to you, sign up here or click on the membership link of your favorite writer to support them!
