Yesterday I was given the opportunity to attend training on “unconscious bias”. I eagerly snapped it up, for two reasons:
What did I hope to gain? I sought the opportunity to reflect on the way I view the people in my workplace. I wanted to think about some of the factors that might be influencing my reactions (both positive and negative) and explore what I might do with that information. Instead, due to time constraints, we never made it anywhere near that depth. Instead we skimmed the surface, sticking to the already well-trodden paths, focussing mostly on gender bias in the workplace. Interesting, but repetitive and hardly earth-shattering or conducive to genuine self reflection.
Or was it? In fact, I probably learned more in one morning than I ever thought was possible. Even as we discussed how to call out inappropriate behaviour, I became aware of a growing sense of discomfort. Within a largely female group of participants, all talking gender bias, discussion soon headed south in the direction of male-bashing. Of course it was good-humoured, but still very real. I quickly identified the epicentre of the new framework for our discussion. And I agonised. If not in this context, then in what situation would I ever find the courage to discuss the problem of a dominant but harmful point of view, when the speakers are comfortably secure and confident in the “rightness” of their opinion?
Again and again I started to open the conversation within my own small group. Just as often, I hesitated, unsure how to raise the topic in a way that the person could hear, understand and also not perceive as a personal attack. Every single time I failed and the conversation moved back to a place I was finding increasingly hot and sticky. I decided to instead raise the subject more generally and less pointedly, within the larger group. But we were rushed for time; the opportunity never arose. And I remained silent.
Only after the session concluded did I quietly mention my challenge to someone and learn that I was not the only one to experience it. Even the facilitator was aware and, for reasons of her own, chose only to offer a quiet, private apology to the men in the room. For whatever reason, she chose not to draw attention to our behaviour as a group.
In the break between sessions, someone shared a story of bullying in which it later transpired that everyone knew, no one spoke. Until finally more people, and possibly the “right” people, got hurt, and it became politically impossible to continue to ignore the problem. When I heard that story I wondered if I’d been approaching my own dilemma in entirely the wrong way. What if my responsibility was never to magically change the view of the person talking, but instead to point to the elephant in the room and give it a name, for the benefit of all?
Sounds great, but there’s a problem. I now better understand my hesitancy of the moment. What might have resulted if I had spoken up within the larger group? One possibility is that I would have been figuratively shouted down and excluded. Told I was “over-reacting” or “misinterpreting”. In other words, trivialised and marginalised. Clearly not fun. But a potentially worse outcome might have been the opposite. What if I had spoken up and actually succeeded in swaying popular opinion – against the leader of the “female power” discourse? In one way I would have achieved something positive, but at the great cost of excluding and shutting down the original speaker. In an environment like that, where the talk centres on our “responsibility” and on “social justice”, to be outside the dominant discourse is to be unsafe. It is a place of censure, a place of being morally “wrong”. We talk about condemning the behaviour and not the person, but in practice, it is very hard to separate the two, at least at the level of perception. The leader of what I thought of as the “male-bashing” discourse was sincere, considerate and passionate about embracing diversity. She no doubt has very good reasons, firmly grounded in experience, for her views. Certainly, whatever her motivations, they are none of my business. I am more concerned with not setting up an either / or dialogue. As a group we had moved scarily far towards creating an “in” and an “out” group based on moral righteousness. I would love to consider how I might have entered that debate without risking a swing of the pendulum, reversing the position of who was “in” and who was “out”. I would love to have indeed created a safe place for genuine debate.
Yesterday I witnessed derogatory discussion. I was hurt. Others were hurt. I said nothing.
- For reasons of self-protection, I long ago developed a tendency towards snobbishness and what I call “moral superiority”. It never hurts to cast more sunshine on things like that.
- Canadian psychologist, Jordan Peterson, has created a fascinatingly delicious scandal out of the whole idea of unconscious bias training in the workplace. I definitely wanted in on that debate.
What did I hope to gain? I sought the opportunity to reflect on the way I view the people in my workplace. I wanted to think about some of the factors that might be influencing my reactions (both positive and negative) and explore what I might do with that information. Instead, due to time constraints, we never made it anywhere near that depth. Instead we skimmed the surface, sticking to the already well-trodden paths, focussing mostly on gender bias in the workplace. Interesting, but repetitive and hardly earth-shattering or conducive to genuine self reflection.
Or was it? In fact, I probably learned more in one morning than I ever thought was possible. Even as we discussed how to call out inappropriate behaviour, I became aware of a growing sense of discomfort. Within a largely female group of participants, all talking gender bias, discussion soon headed south in the direction of male-bashing. Of course it was good-humoured, but still very real. I quickly identified the epicentre of the new framework for our discussion. And I agonised. If not in this context, then in what situation would I ever find the courage to discuss the problem of a dominant but harmful point of view, when the speakers are comfortably secure and confident in the “rightness” of their opinion?
Again and again I started to open the conversation within my own small group. Just as often, I hesitated, unsure how to raise the topic in a way that the person could hear, understand and also not perceive as a personal attack. Every single time I failed and the conversation moved back to a place I was finding increasingly hot and sticky. I decided to instead raise the subject more generally and less pointedly, within the larger group. But we were rushed for time; the opportunity never arose. And I remained silent.
Only after the session concluded did I quietly mention my challenge to someone and learn that I was not the only one to experience it. Even the facilitator was aware and, for reasons of her own, chose only to offer a quiet, private apology to the men in the room. For whatever reason, she chose not to draw attention to our behaviour as a group.
In the break between sessions, someone shared a story of bullying in which it later transpired that everyone knew, no one spoke. Until finally more people, and possibly the “right” people, got hurt, and it became politically impossible to continue to ignore the problem. When I heard that story I wondered if I’d been approaching my own dilemma in entirely the wrong way. What if my responsibility was never to magically change the view of the person talking, but instead to point to the elephant in the room and give it a name, for the benefit of all?
Sounds great, but there’s a problem. I now better understand my hesitancy of the moment. What might have resulted if I had spoken up within the larger group? One possibility is that I would have been figuratively shouted down and excluded. Told I was “over-reacting” or “misinterpreting”. In other words, trivialised and marginalised. Clearly not fun. But a potentially worse outcome might have been the opposite. What if I had spoken up and actually succeeded in swaying popular opinion – against the leader of the “female power” discourse? In one way I would have achieved something positive, but at the great cost of excluding and shutting down the original speaker. In an environment like that, where the talk centres on our “responsibility” and on “social justice”, to be outside the dominant discourse is to be unsafe. It is a place of censure, a place of being morally “wrong”. We talk about condemning the behaviour and not the person, but in practice, it is very hard to separate the two, at least at the level of perception. The leader of what I thought of as the “male-bashing” discourse was sincere, considerate and passionate about embracing diversity. She no doubt has very good reasons, firmly grounded in experience, for her views. Certainly, whatever her motivations, they are none of my business. I am more concerned with not setting up an either / or dialogue. As a group we had moved scarily far towards creating an “in” and an “out” group based on moral righteousness. I would love to consider how I might have entered that debate without risking a swing of the pendulum, reversing the position of who was “in” and who was “out”. I would love to have indeed created a safe place for genuine debate.
Yesterday I witnessed derogatory discussion. I was hurt. Others were hurt. I said nothing.