I'm ashamed. I was just given an opportunity to confront racism, and did absolutely nothing. Just typing that sentence gnaws at me. So, for the small group of people that read the internets, here is my confession and my lame rationalizations.
At my shitty, windowless job, we've been using our professional degrees to type lists of employee names into spreadsheets. I don't really mind. It's about as useful as anything else they pay us to do. One guy complained to another about how much harder it was to type these "weird names" than it was to type "regular American names." The other guy agreed, saying it was "... like on the SATs or something, when they start the question with, 'Patel has six apples.' It just throws you off, y'know?"
That's it. No racial epithets. No burning crosses. No hate-driven violence. Just your typical, everyday, fucking privileged white asshole, ignorant bigotry. That's the first of my rationalizations, that it wasn't that bad. It was "just" ignorance.
Also, We're a small group of temps, working in a small space. A confrontation would make the remainder of the project uncomfortable. And in a couple of weeks, I'll never see these pricks again.
Mainly, I don't really like these people. I don't feel like talking to them or making them less ignorant in any way. One of them had already shown his prejudice when discussing the "30 Days" episode that featured a man who had legally immigrated from Cuba as a child and now lived in a large house with his white wife. This guy speculated loudly that the man must have married rich, assuming I suppose that a Cuban man couldn't earn enough money to live as they did, despite being raised in the US since infancy. Earning his sexist cred, he also proclaimed the wife, who barely appeared on the episode, to be a shrew because he "knew her type" and had "seen women like her before."
The real reason for my silence? Cowardice. And because it was easier to hate them in silence and not say anything.
In the future, when these dicks offend someone else with their David Brent/Michael Scott obliviousness, or pass over for promotion a woman or person of color, then I will be partially responsible, in some perhaps not insignificant way.
I feel like a fucking asshole. But only because I am a fucking asshole.
Back to work.
At my shitty, windowless job, we've been using our professional degrees to type lists of employee names into spreadsheets. I don't really mind. It's about as useful as anything else they pay us to do. One guy complained to another about how much harder it was to type these "weird names" than it was to type "regular American names." The other guy agreed, saying it was "... like on the SATs or something, when they start the question with, 'Patel has six apples.' It just throws you off, y'know?"
That's it. No racial epithets. No burning crosses. No hate-driven violence. Just your typical, everyday, fucking privileged white asshole, ignorant bigotry. That's the first of my rationalizations, that it wasn't that bad. It was "just" ignorance.
Also, We're a small group of temps, working in a small space. A confrontation would make the remainder of the project uncomfortable. And in a couple of weeks, I'll never see these pricks again.
Mainly, I don't really like these people. I don't feel like talking to them or making them less ignorant in any way. One of them had already shown his prejudice when discussing the "30 Days" episode that featured a man who had legally immigrated from Cuba as a child and now lived in a large house with his white wife. This guy speculated loudly that the man must have married rich, assuming I suppose that a Cuban man couldn't earn enough money to live as they did, despite being raised in the US since infancy. Earning his sexist cred, he also proclaimed the wife, who barely appeared on the episode, to be a shrew because he "knew her type" and had "seen women like her before."
The real reason for my silence? Cowardice. And because it was easier to hate them in silence and not say anything.
In the future, when these dicks offend someone else with their David Brent/Michael Scott obliviousness, or pass over for promotion a woman or person of color, then I will be partially responsible, in some perhaps not insignificant way.
I feel like a fucking asshole. But only because I am a fucking asshole.
Back to work.
