This Week's Opening Thought: March 20, 2023

This week's opening thought: if someone calls you in regarding your actions and behaviors, actions and behaviors that uphold or amplify hate, racism, anti-Blackness, transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, and all the intersections of oppression, and your apology is less of an apology and more of an excuse as to why you did or said what you did or said or a way to posit yourself as a victim guess what?

It's not a proper apology.

Try again.

This time with feeling.

On Crappy Supervisors and the Workplace Cultures That Protect Them

I've seen a lot of posts on social media throughout 2022 about people leaving companies because of toxic supervisors. This is a valid and legitimate reason why people leave jobs and organizations. With that said, let's not leave out the fact that if you had a crappy supervisor, it's because the company's culture and workplace norms are designed to prop up and protect crappy people who espouse the company's "values."

Patriarchal white supremacist workplace culture norms and practices are why your former supervisor can be abusive, hateful, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, and ableist, yet face no repercussions for their words and actions.

Patriarchal white supremacist workplace culture norms and practices are why your former supervisor still has a job at your former employer and will stay employed for as long as they want. In contrast, people in your former role will cycle in and out of the organization like a revolving door. They, too, will seek help but soon realize it's just best for them to find another job.

Your former supervisor? They are long overdue for being held accountable for the harm they've caused you and countless others during their tenure at your former employer. But don’t let your former employer off the hook.

They prioritized norms, comfort, and fear of changing and evolving over keeping you as an employee and treating you like a person.

There’s enough accountability to go around. Trust me.

This Week's Opening Thought: November 7, 2022

This week's opening thought, especially for those with power, privilege, and positionality in the United States: Vote.

Take the time to understand the measures and politicians in your area that could harm Global Majority and marginalized communities and vote against them.

If you haven't gleaned anything else from this country's past few election cycles, you have hopefully learned that your vote has legitimate weight. Making informed decisions that factor in human and environmental impact has weight. Voting not just for yourself and your best interests based on your class and socioeconomic status but as a voice for others who have been oppressed and harmed for centuries has weight.

I don't have any fancy slogans or stickers to motivate you to vote and care about your community and communities that are your friends, neighbors, and co-workers. I'm operating on the hope that you'll learn from history and respond accordingly, a hope full of swiss cheese-sized holes that I cling onto because the alternative is depressing. I'm expecting y'all to be decent citizens, to be the "good people" y'all claim to be. I'm hoping that some of y'all will live up to those "good white people" personas some of y'all gleefully tote around and vote outside of your ego and wants. I hope many of you will do better than using voting as a social media gold sticker participation award selfie. I hope you'll vote with empathy instead of for likes and retweets.

Hope.

There's that word again.

Hope is all many people in this country have left to hold on to. And some of y'all don't realize how your vote has eroded the hopes of so many.

I want to believe that people can be better than the images they show me daily. I need to think people can be better because, well, hope. Even with it in tatters, I wear it like a blanket against the elements.

I'm not the only one.

Vote like there will be no hope left to hold onto.

Because there might not be.

This Week's Opening Thought: October 31, 2022

Image description: A picture of Kool-Aid Man, a cartoonish human-sized pitcher of instant fruit punch with a stenciled-on smiley face, breaking through a wall. The words "Oh Yeah!" can be seen above him as the wall crumbles from the force.

This week's opening thought: if you see critiques of your industry from people, Global Majority folx, Black folx who work in your industry with ideas and solutions about how to repair these issues and the first thing that comes to mind is, "if you don't like [insert industry here] then you should get out?" Perhaps you're a part of the problem.

And please refrain from the whole "you're dividing our industry" jargon that people tend to trot out when they feel the need to defend their white supremacy ideology-driven professions. That's the response of someone who felt the words hit the nail on the head like a stake through the heart and don't want to sit with the discomfort of an honest evaluation.

If you've dedicated a part of your life to a career in an industry and you're not calling that industry to task for its lack of evolution and innovation or its lack of career progression and opportunities for marginalized, Black, Brown, and Indigenous folx, and Global Majority folx unless they prescribe to the throes of white supremacy?

You are drinking the Kool-Aid. It's not even good, Kool-Aid. It's Kool-Aid made with Sweet 'N Low. But you're comfortable conforming and toeing the line, so you're guzzling it like plants seeking water in the middle of a drought.

You might as well pour yourself another cup, continue sitting on the sidelines, and keep your opinion to yourself while the rest of us move our industries forward.

[Image description: A picture of Kool-Aid Man, a cartoonish human-sized pitcher of instant fruit punch with a stenciled-on smiley face, breaking through a wall. The words "Oh Yeah!" can be seen above him as the wall crumbles from the force.]

Monday's Opening Thought: May 2, 2022

Image description: An image from "The Bachelor." A white man, facing away from the viewer while wearing a Black suit, is handing a rose to a white woman in a black and white-striped evening gown.

This week's opening thought: There's a swath of white adult "professionals" out here dealing with the consequences of their hateful actions, many for the first time. They decided to go online and harass Black women, Brown women, and queer folx and found themselves unemployed after those they attacked sent their employer the screenshots. Some have been bullying and harming people in their workplaces for years and are finally being held accountable for their actions and are currently one step away from being unemployed. Some are being recorded saying and doing harmful things in public places and finding out that the companies they work for don’t want to be associated with their toxicity, leaving them to apply for unemployment. I don’t wish unemployment on anyone.

But it couldn’t happen to a nicer set of folx.

That lack of accountability for their actions that permeates whiteness hits hard when their chickens finally come home to roost, and they have to pay the price. We’re seeing more and more white “professionals” having to pay up, and their world is legitimately rocked. We’re seeing their victimhood come to the surface, their unwillingness to digest that if you harm others, you have to take responsibility for that harm and the consequences that come with it. It’s wild to watch. It’s something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime, and I am here for it. Don't want to lose your job for harassing and harming Black women and people of color? Then don't harass and harm Black women and people of color. Not "don't get caught," like the "good old days," but don’t start at all because it's so easy to gather the receipts and return your ass to the store for a refund.

Legitimate accountability and the consequences of their actions are shaking white “professionals” to their core. Of course, they think they are victims of all of this as they lose their jobs and fracture their networks because people don’t want to be associated with them. That’s what generations of no accountability and no consequences will do to you. I can't imagine how insulating and infantilizing never having to take responsibility for your actions can be and how invincible it makes many white people feel. They can't stomach losing their cloak of invincibility, y’all, and it’s guilty pleasure-level, popcorn-worthy viewing. And I don't even feel guilty about watching it.

Is this how watching “The Bachelor” feels?