There was one black female mentee who I noticed was timid in taking credit for her work. I had recently attended a diversity panel where someone in a similar role as me said that in a similar situation, and her advice to her mentee was "Think about what a white man would do" and everyone applaud such an insightful advice. So identifying such an opportunity, I said the exact same thing word for word, basically "I see you're hesitating to take credit for your work. Think about what a white man would do."
Immediately after saying that, I could tell it wasn't taken well, and she asked "what does that mean?" I couldn't come up with an answer for that which wouldn't be taken in a really bad way, so I backpedaled. She later reported me to an administrative person who luckily felt it was too vague to file a serious report about, but told me to watch what I say.
But I do have a solution (my trick). From that point on, I definitely give more subtle advice unless they have passed my test, which is I see how they react to situations where they could give the benefit of the doubt to others in vague situations. Sometimes, I'll bring up a past story about another anonymous person and see if they are outraged and want to get them in trouble. Only the ones who remark that they probably had good intentions, and don't react too strongly, I'll give more candid advice to.
I guess you yourself repeating the same woke quite took away the uniqueness of the idea as it would be articulated by a non privledged individual.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-15/carry-yourself-with-t...
What was wrong with a "be bolder"/"be more assertive"/"don't be afraid of taking credit for your work"?
Even if "what a white man would do" wasn't emotionally charged (and it is), it's not a good way to make the point.
"How do you feel it went when people were talking about the work done on the project?" Allow them to chat ..."Do you think the credit was equally shared out?"
I don't see those as useful since it doesn't provide the person any actual guidance or reference point. What does assertive mean? What should I exactly do? How do I do it? "Act like X" provides a well known reference point that they can use to adjust their behavior based on. They can remember all the times they've seen X do something in a similar situation and then just act like that.
If you want to make it super explicit, come up with examples. "Be bolder, for example for this project I saw you doing 80% of the work, you should get to headline the presentation and have top billing on the authors page".
"Act like X" is also potentially useful, if you make it explicit. Explicit is not "Act like a white man" (whaaaa?). Explicit: is "Act like Bob, for example do you remember when HR said he couldn't have a new screen and he insisted"?
> I see you're hesitating to take credit for your work
Could easily be followed up with actionable items to take credit for her work: do a company/department wide presentation for instance. Instead you gave her vague non-advice. I'm a white man and I have no idea what a white man would do because I know a ton of different white men who would all do very different things.
Look at how often people tweak, clarify, and edit their comments even here on hacker news. So you'll probably just end up with "stifled" advice (using the terminology from the article), as you can see with all these suggestions in this thread.
Are they implying white men are smarter/better so they always take the right decisions? If that's what they're doing, they're also implying, in this case, she, as a black woman, is not as smart as a white man.
I'm a white man surrounded by mostly white people working on a field with mostly white men and I can't say what a white man would do in certain situations because we're all different and we all think differently.
Of course everyone should do their best in being sensitive in their ways of expressing themselves. But many people could definitely show a little bit more generosity in their interpretations and not jump on every chance to interpret something like racism or sexism.
This seems to fit the definition of cargo cult.
You clearly had good intentions, but you can't go around saying phrases without being able to back them up. This should be familiar to you from technical situations - consider: "prefer composition over inheritance" - reasonable advice, but be prepared to explain yourself, not just parrot it.
I do wonder if some boss in the future will only employ straight white males simply to avoid people "offending" others (it's hard to offend a straight white male in this new woke ideology). Of course this has the opposite effect to what the woke seem to want, but this is the world we have built ourselves.
I doubt anyone out there will have a similar visceral reaction to discussing code architecture.
It's just an extension of the classic "show, don't tell".
"Be bolder" is different than "what do you think a bold person would do?"
I have had many conversations with people going through a tough time and unsure of what to do or how to feel in a situation and there is this trick to getting people to think differently that almost always works... ask the question
"What would a reasonable person do in your situation?"
Suddenly the person having trouble coming up with the answer "What should I do?" has a perfect answer to "What would a reasonable person do?"
It's a psychological trick that goes after how one thinks about one's self and how one thinks about someone else being quite different. If you refocus your attention to view yourself from an external objective, you often end up with much better judgement.
Regarding why you can't just say the same thing word for word, that's because shared context matters.
This is basic social skills. If you don't have the same shared background and context, then it's unclear if you mean one thing or the other.
So when one woman says "Think about what a white man would do", to another woman, there's the implication that they're talking about their shared experiences regarding society's expectations around women.
When a man says that to a woman, especially it's a white man saying that to a black woman, your contexts and backgrounds are so wildly different that surface area of what you could mean is quite large.
So when you had the chance to clarify yourself and you backpedaled, that made it look even worse because it implied that you had bad intentions and were trying to take your words back.
So yes, it's true. You can't say the same thing word for word as one person say to another if you and the other person do not share the same contexts.
That's...horrible advice generally, though there are specific circumstances where it might be useful, and it is tragic if it was an example used in a diversity panel as anything but a negative example without a whole lot of context because it (1) appeals to race/gender stereotypes, and (2) requires, for it to even approximate actionable advice, for the mentor and mentee to share race/gender stereotypes. In fact, I've been to lots of such panels/trainings, and fairly commonly seen exactly that used as a negative example.
What would be more useful if your first instinct is to give this advice is to first unpack what behavior you are stereotyping as white/male behavior that you actually want to encourage, and then just advise that behavior without appeal to race and gender stereotypes.
My advice to you: "Think about what you would have told a white man"
As a white male from a poor southern family (not very tolerant) I've had to learn a few hard lessons on similar fronts. I know I don't have a good gauge for what is and isn't ok, even now. Given that in many occasions even mirroring words or behaviors can be a no-no, the only way I've learned that is 100% effective at not causing problems is shutting up, which I'm generally pretty bad at. Luckily I've had mostly understanding and light hearted coworkers, so I haven't been outright ruined yet, but I can think of more than one occasion that likely would have turned my life upside down if the audience was less sensitive to my intent.
Well that leads to something like "Toughen Up, It's Part of the Job".
I don't think it helps to activly missunderstand people, when they are trying to be helpful EVEN if their trying is in the wrong. Try to think about the intention and maybe ask what they really meant by that.
If I was giving advice to someone who was too assertive and taking too much credit, I would never say "Think about what a black woman would do." Things like this are so transparently racist it shouldn't even need to be explained. You are simultaneously characterizing a race and gender of people and also telling someone else to act like a different race and gender.
The reason the advice was poorly received is because it is nonsense. The recipient of the advice asked the perfect question - "what does it mean to act like a white man?" The OP, when asked, also doesn't seem to know what it means. I'd say there is a lesson there - don't repeat something just because it was will received when you originally heard it. You may not understand it. It may be something of an emperor's new clothes situation where nobody can question the person who gave the original advice, but that doesn't make it good.
Why not just say what you mean without the racial stereotypes?
In what way can someone disagree with you about the offensiveness of something you say, without you labelling them as "intent on outrage"?
"Graceful interpretation" does not mean that you ignore the advice and substitute for it what would have been good advice.
I hope we can all agree that in 90% of the cases we can hear on the tone in the voice what the poster meant. If unclear ask and if racism occurs report the ** out of him :D
In this case a simple followup of "you deserve more credit and I want you to feel able to advocate for yourself" would have cleared up the confusion and avoided a lot of trouble, and you wouldn't have had to invent a story-telling system in order to filter out people who believe in accountability.
> Why not just say what you mean without the racial stereotypes?
Nothing is going to win cheap applause at a diversity panel than saying "white man bad".
Diversity CAN BE a competitive advantage if everyone else is carving out a strict path. But if everyone is extremely diverse then heterogeneity could actually be the competitive advantage, allowing a business to specialize more or take advantage of certain economies of scale etc. etc.
Also, I find that more often than not, too much diversity leads to internal conflict because ideas differ too much, which can turn into a competitive disadvantage.
That it is unclear is obvious in that the person using the stereotype couldn't identify the concrete, actionable behavior they intended to encourage when directly questioned.
Resorting to advice that consists entirely of race/gender stereotyping isn't “mature, respectful language”.
This does contain the essence of your advice; namely, to take credit for work more often, and or more clearly.
My approach is very different.
And I have had the pleasure of mentoring women into male dominated roles a time or two. Fortunately, we were able to establish trust and another male coworker involved in mentoring worked in a similar way. There were challenges, but we made them team ones, not just hers. That made a big difference, IMHO.
What we did was take gender out of it early on, unless it made sense.
In this case, the advice would be, "you should take credit more." And the follow on would be ways to do that and to support the person who will benefit from doing it. That can be as simple as some recognition and sharing later:
"I saw you go for it. Nice! So, how do you feel about it? What happened? Will you do it again?" Etc...
Where gender does come up, that discussion almost always involved a telling of things. And the reason, explained if need be, is just simple understanding.
"How is it for you?"
And that helps with, "what if it were me?"
And then advice makes sense, because there is context, a shared basis.
That is not always needed. Hard to say when it is. But when it is, having it really helps get past or through whatever the challenge is.
I have been fortunate to have women in my life who will share, who I have worked with, who I have helped, and who have helped me. And the things they share have highlighted the fact that their experience is different. Same goes for many attributes, race, beauty, etc...
Often, the barrier to sharing and understanding boils down to some shame, or blame, or admission of weakness, or the perception of making excuses. And while those things can be part of the discussion, it is unhealthy to presume they are, and my experience shows me that presumption happens more than it should.
And that all contributes to how hard this matter is, or can be.
I am a guy, and have found myself discriminated against for seriously considering, "what if it were me?" Or for asking, "How is it for her, or them?"
It is almost like a betrayal, or threat... something I am expressing poorly. Sorry for that, I just do not have precise words.
Often we are asking people different from us to see things from a more familiar point of view. More familiar to us, but what good is that when it simply is foreign to them?
I resolved it this way: we should be seeking a better perception of what it is like for people very different from us. Mutual understanding and respect, consideration.
In my view, there should be no shame in any of that. But there is! And all this is harder.
Since that time, I have paid a lot more attention to these dynamics. Barriers to understanding one another better present real costs and risks that can be avoided, again in my view.
Even a single comment made with ill intent I don't think would push me all the way to pursuing professional recourse, not without me trying to 'fix' things on my own first.
I suffer a bit from imposter syndrome, so I completely get what the GP is getting at, it was just phrased ambiguously.
Here is a disambiguated version: "Imagine what a privileged, entitled, overconfident, upper-midlle-class cishet white dude would do, and do that."
When you speak, people pay attention! Comic books pander to your adolescent fantasies! Your doohickey is the greatest thing since sliced bread! In fact, it's the greatest thing since unsliced bread! You're a frickin genius for dreaming it up! Your LoMoSo strategy is going to make billions for you, the few early employees that don't quit, and the VC that you choose to let invest! You're making the world a better place through scalable fault-tolerant distributed databases with asset transactions! The world is your oyster, and everyone who laughed at you in high school is going to be sorry! Bwahahaha!
Er, ahem. Pardon, got just a little carried away there.
Anyhoo... that advice has nothing to do with capability, talents, skills, or accomplishments, and everything to do with self-promotion and attitude. If you don't toot your own horn, who will?
Saying that white men are confident and black women aren't is simultaneous bi-directional racism. You are generalizing white men and black women AND telling black women to act more white?