I'm a nice person but that any comment is potentially a landmine to me professionally, I'd just rather not expose myself like that. I can't count on anyone assuming good intent with me because everyone is so fired up on their crusader trains.
I'll give a personal example: when I was a Buddhist renunciate--this was right at the beginning of cancel culture--someone I thought to be a close friend posted a negative experience she had with a man. It didn't stop there: she proceeded to blast all men for not immediately talking to every man they knew about their inherent violence. I commented that from the perspective of peace, her exhortation would result in more anger, more rage in the world, not less.
My last name on Facebook at that time was my own creation, for the sake of my privacy. Immediately after my call for calm, I was doxxed and Facebook locked me out of my account until I could prove my last name.
In hindsight, she did me a great favor as I never returned to Facebook, which I now see as poison to the human mind.
How is this not sexism?
The exact reason I don't have a Twitter
Life is about calculated risk, and in my estimation, the rewards of friendship outweigh the risks of alienation, especially if you open up incrementally and judiciously.
We don't have enough information on the actual exchange, or the context from this article.
"a colleague told them that their skin was much darker than she expected."
That might be benign, or hostile, or just candid and clumsy. It's hard to tell.
It's also not clear whether Google was asked to put forward a defence to the accusations made in the article.
"Google said in a statement that the company is committed to supporting employees who raise concerns about workplace treatment."
Again, the article doesn't provide enough context for us to know. Was the statement in response to a request to answer the allegations in the article, or was it a generic statement made without the context of these specific allegations?
If there is context that makes this clearly malicious then the article should provide it. It's not reasonable to assume that context exists though. While it is reasonable to acknowledge it might exist - there's no evidence of it. Perhaps a teapot is in space orbiting the sun by itself.
Assuming good intent at first doesn't mean you're infinitely gullible or a doormat for people to walk on. It just means not being a landmine that is going to try to get people in trouble.
Unfortunately in big groups you will have both of those types and HR is not good at managing finer-grained inter-personal issues. Without all of the context it's hard to judge group dynamics.
It's painfully obvious you haven't been exposed to Bay Area/West Coast start-up culture (I envy your lack of exposure).
I've seen people getting reported to HR for the following things:
- Using a photo of a Sherpa (an actual photo, not a character or drawing) in a presentation to describe the concept of guiding people and systems to their desired outcome and state. They were reported for using racist caricatures of marginalized minorities
- Discussing shooting sports in a thread about hobbies. They were reported for making people feel unsafe
- Someone posted a screen shot of a Tweet in support of BLM, but the screen shot was from Blacktivist, a Twitter account that was part of a Russian propaganda campaign. Someone replied to the screen shot that maybe it should be taken down since it was literally created and pushed from a propaganda account. They were reported for being insensitive to PoC employees
These are just a few out of the dozens upon dozens. I'm sure many others here on HN could provide examples.
That’s probably because you can afford to.
Imagine you’re someone who had to file a grave complaint but the person got off the hook because “it was a one time thing, it’s his first offense”.
It’s important to document all microagression if you really want something to happen out of these complaints.
The accuser maybe felt the perp would likely be a repeating offender and is not open to feedback, so the effort to pile up complaints got initiated. This is how it’s done. I’d be happy to work with this person.
The concept of microagressions is backwards and pernicious. People are imperfect communicators. Getting offended at cryptic, imagined, or unintended slights is something that children and crazy people do. Adults, especially in the workplace, should be able to understand people have different ways of expressing themselves and that's not bad and you don't need to get HR involved.
One example comes to mind - I had a coworker who frequently wrote "..." After messages on our instant messenger. Once I asked him a question and he just replied "..." And then 20 minutes later told me the answer. I read this as kind of a sarcastic thing, like an exasperated sigh that he'd have to explain something so obvious. I thought this guy was a real jerk.
One day after he sent me a "..." I asked him what it meant. I said "What does '...' signify?" And the guy answered that it meant "More to follow" and I realized that he wasn't being a jerk, he was just trying to signal to me that he couldn't complete the answer at the moment, but would send more to follow.
The point of my little story is that it just doesn't make sense to assume hostile motives. Lots of times people just communicate differently. Trying to document all the times you can interpret someone as being negative is just a bad idea in addition to being unfair and unproductive. It's also way more likely to make people genuinely aggressive and hostile towards you.
"a statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority"
That is consistent with the definition I had in mind when I wrote my comment. I do think trying to document unintended offenses is a bad idea. The recipient of the microagression should instead learn not to dwell on minor slights, ignore them, and/or assume good intent instead. It seems very toxic to live as if the people you talk to are secretly hurting you. Better to think of them as nice people with different methods of communication until they prove otherwise.
You keep saying “imaginary”, but microagression is about what has been said, not relevant to dwell on what the person might have wanted to mean.
You keep coming back to this perceived paranoia: “as if people are secretly trying to hurt you”. This is not what this is about. This is people that got hurt, and no matter what others are trying, secretly or not, that hurt is better be documented.
It doesn’t mean that someone ought to be punished right away for each comment deemed offensive by anyone. It’s just that these occurrences might be relevant later on and if they’re not documented, it’s gone.
Documenting all offenses is a good idea for people who are at risk of finding themselves needing that later. And if you don’t think this happens frequently enough, you haven’t been paying attention.
Microaggressions do exactly what you say: force people to feel as if they're walking on eggshells. And telling them "Oh, just shake it off" gets exactly the same response as if I told you to just shake off the accusations of microaggressions.
The downward spiral already exists: people do exhibit a range of racist, sexist, etc. behavior on a spectrum every day, from outright asshole behavior to small, incidental assumptions about people that make them feel unwanted and singled out. It afflicts some people more than others. So you can take this as a thought experiment to see why it's a problem for them, and if "just ignore it" doesn't work for you, then maybe we can find a better answer.
Your entire argument is based on this pretence that is demonstrably false.
Getting reported to HR by these neurotic professional victims is not something you can "just shake off", you literally can't "just ignore it".
It's asymmetrical warfare, and the externalities are all on you, the microagressor.
All of this reminds me of the 90s when Evangelicals wanted schools to ban students from talking about, wearing clothing with, or playing anything related to Pokemon, because it was an affront and a "microagression" to their religion.
Here we are, just a few decades later and leftists and SJWs are now the ones playing the victims, being "microagressed".
And I can assure you that this is not the case. They've always been perceived and caused hurt. The difference is that we now have a name for it and decided that people deserve better.
> since they are primarily a matter of interpretation
They are not.
I mean look at how far this thing has escalated. Does that seem like healthy group behavior to you?