No One Likes a Tattletale
How Calling Out Racism in My Workplace Made Me the Most Unpopular Intern
Hello from the other side (Yes, Adele pun intended)!! I come to you from the other side of a new spring semester, which also happens to be my very last. The past two weeks have been filled with lots of lesson planning, class facilitation, thesis writing, and mini meltdowns. C’est la vie, as they say.
I came to this semester with a lot of dread—I was feeling really good about the rhythm I had set up for myself in terms of writing and taking on a more steady freelance workload over winter break. Time away from school allowed me to reorient myself and my priorities and to think about how I want postgrad life to look. I’ve been talking to a lot of different folks who have pursued freelance careers, and it’s all been in serious consideration. And yet, because stability is still a Thing, I’ve also been interviewing for a lot of different jobs within higher education over the past two weeks. I feel a little less dread-filled now that I’m in the thick of the semester, and am looking forward to getting to know my new students (Yes, all 80 of them). Teaching is something that I always knew I wanted to do in some capacity, and I’m glad that I’ve been given the opportunity to try it out over the course of my MA program. I might be anxious about it from week to week, but I know I’ll miss the classroom once I’m not in it anymore :)
Also: A note to whoever invented the asynchronous record-yourself-very-awkwardly-in-3-minutes-after-being-given-a-prompt interview structure: I hope your left AirPod dies. That’s all.
A WEEK IN GRATITUDE
Meeting new people is always a chore, and living with new people takes a bit of getting used to. I’m lucky to be living with very ~chill~ roommates who both have bustling schedules but still enjoy quality time together when we’re all at home. This week, one of my roommates and I have been helping each other get back into the groove of regular yoga, and have been doing some sessions together in the evening. Yoga has always been one of my favorite ways to wind down but I fell out of practice right as the pandemic began. Here’s to hoping some back and shoulder pain will resolve with more sessions…
This past week, I got to celebrate a very delicious Lunar New Year thanks to my bestie Meg and the incredible spread of food she prepared for me and her MFA cohort last Tuesday. We started the day with a bakery run to get our hands on some limited edition Lunar Near Year cookies at Bloom Bake Shop, which were just as yummy as they were cute. Spending the evening with people I haven’t seen since last semester was incredibly sweet—I’ve been on a bit of a prose kick lately, but sharing that space in warmth and community with them somehow thawed my poetry brain. Good news: I can think in verse again!
The freelance grind is going well! It’s been a little tricky trying to balance thesis writing, teaching, and interviewing/transcribing/article writing, but we’re moving right along. This week, I finished up pieces for two different publications: if you’re looking for socially distanced ways to spend Valentine’s Day in Madison this year, look no further. On top of that, I’m probably manifesting too hard, since an old friend reached out to me with a freelance opportunity with a publication back in New York that I really admire: stay tuned for that piece in March/April!
POEM OF THE WEEK
If you follow me on Instagram, you might be familiar with this week’s poem. Maybe-not-even-that-much-of-an-unpopular-opinion: Winters in Madison are beautiful. Yeah, they’re cold as hell, but the hashtag aesthetic almost makes up for it. There are the frozen lakes, for one. And um, there are the dang frozen lakes. For those of you who don’t know, downtown Madison is surrounded on either side by two big lakes, both of which freeze over in the winter. They make for great ice skating rinks, chilly strolls, ice fishing, and even cross country skiing. The lakes are beautiful in the summer, no doubt, but walking out onto the lake (shoutout Lake Mendota, aka my backyard) is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.
It might be because of this beauty that I don’t find winters particularly sad here. Yes, there are the bouts of seasonal affective disorder, but for the most part, I know that winter will end, that spring will come, and things, for better or for worse, will thaw again. And trust me: there have been winters in the past that I thought would never end, that I’d never see the other side of.
Despite this, I was incredibly struck by Danez Smith’s poem “i’m going back to Minnesota where sadness makes sense” when I came across it last week (If you want your daily dose of poetry, I suggest subscribing to poets.org’s Poem-A-Day or following @poetryisnotaluxury on Instagram). I teared up while listening to this piece just now, perhaps because of how uniquely beautiful the feeling of standing on a frozen lake is, perhaps made all the more beautiful because you can only do it for a few months out of the year. Beyond being a poem about sadness, I think this piece says a lot about how we learn to love things in spite of their impermanence, their finitude. And also, how we learn to love them because of it.
This week’s essay is actually a blast from the past! It’s a piece that I wrote pretty soon after I returned from living in Copenhagen for the second time way back in March 2020 (you got that right… this is a lockdown era piece). If you didn’t already know, CPH 2.0 was a really challenging time in my life. I was battling grief and depression of all kinds, which left me feeling angry and lost most days. The unique racism in Denmark didn’t help. It made me hostile to almost everyone around me, and though I had reason to feel this way, this ever-present rage affected a majority of my relationships. I had few people I felt as though I could really be myself around and express my thoughts and feelings to fully. And then there was the workplace.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my experiences in various workplaces as a woman of color, and the trouble I often find myself in within them. I’ve never quite considered myself a troublemaker, but what I’ve learned over the past few years is that I’m quick to point out injustice and inequality in the workplace when I see/experience it. Those of you who’ve read Jenny’s and my piece on emotional labor and care work in university settings know that. The situation that sparked the essay below is no different—it gets at ideas of institutional racism, white fragility, and the manipulation that comes with both. It’s quite long, but it’s because I had to get it all out as soon as I returned to the U.S. before I let all of that anguish destroy me from the inside out.
It’s not a lighthearted read, but I think it’s an important one. I hope it makes you angry. I hope it makes you think. I hope it makes you reflect on your own workplace and what change is necessary within it.
NO ONE LIKES A TATTLETALE: How Calling Out Racism in My Workplace Made Me the Most Unpopular Intern
IN POLITICS, THEY’RE CALLED WHISTLEBLOWERS.
In the schoolyard, tattletales.
On the football field, Colin Kapernick.
In the Supreme Court, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.
This was the league of superheroes-turned-villains I joined during my first full-time job. After graduation, I worked as a Program Assistant at a study abroad university in Denmark that I had attended myself as a junior in college. I was part of a competitive one-year internship program exclusively offered to alumni of the institution, giving a small group of individuals the opportunity to return to the university in a professional capacity.
I was, for the most part, unphased by the whiteness that greeted me once I arrived late that summer, with my specific cohort consisting of eleven white women, two white men, and two people of color (both Asian women, one of which was me). Denmark itself is an overwhelmingly racially homogenous country, which I had learned during my first time living there. Many, including myself, also came from middle to upper-middle class families, as this was the pool of students the institution usually pulled from.
Familiar with hiring trends and the general cultural sensitivities that organizations pride themselves in, I never entirely shook off the feeling that I was a token hire. Months leading up to my move, I consistently questioned whether or not I was the right fit for the job, if I deserved to be there, or if my employment had more to do with a quota the organization had to fill than any real potential they saw in me. But there I was, and token hire or not, I figured I might as well make the most of my presence there. The worst they could do was fire me. Other than a heightened sense of awareness of my own positionality as a person of color, the whiteness seemed for the most part benign, and so began my one year Danish journey.
TROUBLE CAME A FEW MONTHS IN when I caught a glimpse of a poster on campus about a panel meant to promote the internship program. While my face was on the flier, I had never heard of the event before, and after checking in with some of the other interns, neither had they. I casually put a photo of the poster in our group chat, asking if our attendance was needed. One of the intern representatives, the group of three people who were in charge of organizing intern events, replied saying that those who needed to be there already knew about it. Seeing as the event was scheduled for the following night and I knew nothing about it, I assumed this space did not require my presence.
While the strange shroud of secrecy surrounding the panel was enough to deem it a bit problematic, my quick math raised more pressing concerns about the event: I wasn’t asked to speak, and the other woman of color intern was out that week, so the panel, by process of elimination, was going to be entirely white. The event itself was intended to attract current students into applying, and I was disheartened by how the panel’s makeup contradicted the diversity initiatives that the university was actively pushing—some of which I myself was spearheading.
I calmly and politely pointed to the panel’s less-than-democratic selection process, highlighting the importance of accurate representation and students’ ability to see themselves reflected in groups and spaces that they’d like to someday join. To soften my points a bit, I added the various projects and initiatives that I would have loved to talk to prospective applicants about, which would demonstrate the breadth of the internship along with the possibilities that the position could hold.
As if on cue, the excuses from the intern reps started flooding in from every which direction, with so much fervor and enthusiasm (so many exclamation points!) that you’d think their force alone would have been able to wash their mistakes along with it:
They were trying to ensure a good mix of people from academic and non-academic departments. They were working with a tight deadline. They promised to pass along our contact info to students who were interested in our particular positions. That us “unselected interns” could take it upon ourselves to have office hours with students interested in our specific positions, on our own time, during our workdays.
And on, and on, and on.
K, another intern, chimed in, backing me up, echoing the sentiment of the importance of having someone with a similar lived experience represented in the role that students wished to one day come back to. As a first generation college student from a low socioeconomic background, K knew how much the structures of study abroad were heavily stacked against students like her, and wanted to make sure that they knew that returning to the university in a professional capacity was a tangible and legitimate possibility.
We were assuaged with empty promises of doing better next semester, and were informally offered spots on a team whose combined “brain power” would overcome the herculean hurdle of not managing to deplete a panel of every single minority identity that could feasibly be represented.
Pushing the real work of critically considering how to diversify the panel to a fuzzy, future date left accountability lacking in the actions that had already been taken, the event that had already been planned. The sorely overlooked factor that I pointed out was entirely unrelated to logistical roadblocks like time constraints, whether it be a day, a week, or a month. It highlighted a problem of ideology, not of efficiency: If a month is not long enough for you to mull over and rethink the homogeneity of a panel, then the issue isn’t time at all. It’s the fact that certain privileges come with different blind spots that lead people to unintentionally exclude or fail to consider individuals outside of those circles of privilege.
WHEN I WENT TO LUNCH THE NEXT DAY, I could feel the scarlet letter that had been stitched onto my chest overnight begin to burn: T for Tattletale, K for Killjoy, P for Politically Correct Tryhard, L for Liberal Snowflake, and maybe even B for Beef Starter, or more likely, Bitch. Things were still scheduled to go exactly as planned later that evening, despite the critiques and suggestions that had been offered to create a more representative panel.
As I wove my way through the cafeteria and to the food station, the intern reps didn’t have the courage to look at me, and honestly, I didn’t have the courage to look at them either. But our meekness came from different places: They were filled with white guilt that they still hadn’t owned up to. I was a newly branded troublemaker, with word across the organization spreading fast. Somehow, everyone knew that there was “drama” among the interns, and as one of two people of color in the cohort, it wasn’t hard to guess who the culprit was.
Not long after the workday began, I received an email from the interns’ HR supervisor calling me and K in for a meeting with the intern reps for the following day, after the panel had already been hosted. My stomach twisted and I was immediately filled with deep anxiety, and even a hint of regret. I was well aware of how they would paint this, 4 against 2, with a superior on their side. They’d reframe the issue as being about our feelings about not being selected, rather than the larger, harmful and damaging messages that their affluent all-white panel sent to the event’s attendees.
To reduce the lack of diversity in the panel to jealousy about not being chosen is to reduce every overt and incontestable act of discrimination to a case of hurt feelings. Oppressors coating objective wrongdoings in emotional subjectivity is by no means a brand new tactic, and its effects do not decrease in damage every time someone employs it. In fact, it reinforces and deepens it. To silence someone who is pointing out valid, constructive criticism and gaslighting them into thinking they have misinterpreted the situation or are simply being overly sensitive is an act of systematic violence.
I DEMANDED THAT THE MEETING be held amongst the entire intern cohort, instead of just me and K. When asked to clarify why I thought this was necessary, I explained that this was a conversation that everyone needed to have, and again, was not about K or my feelings. With reluctance, an all-intern meeting was called, where the same excuses from the original online conversation were both expounded upon and reiterated, this time explained more slowly and more condescendingly.
As revealed by one of the interns selected to be on the panel, they weren’t asked about their specific positions within the institution when they were approached to participate, invalidating the excuse of finding a balance between academic and non-academic representatives. New ideas for the coming semester that had nothing to do with boosting diversity were suggested by other interns who continued to remain on the sidelines, all of which were avidly agreed to. A closing statement about being more transparent about which interns are selected for what events around the university was meant to appease the crowd, once against centering the discussion around the childish issue of jealousy and getting picked. The real issue at hand was expertly skirted around, if not entirely ignored.
But perhaps the most irksome part of the discussion came when K and I once again brought up the impact of adequate representation for minority students. Our HR supervisor told us that as to not overwhelm students with too much information at the panel, discussions about finances and fitting in as a racial minority in Denmark would be reserved for after interns had signed their contracts the following year. This, she reasoned, would decrease the time between them receiving this “relevant” information and arriving in Denmark.
This logic can only ever come from someone who has never walked into a room and felt like they did not belong, or that the space was not made for them. From someone who has never experienced the mental and emotional tolls of being a racial minority in the country where they live. From someone who does not have to consider the financial ramifications of taking a low-paying position, or map out a long-term savings plan in order to make taking that low-paying position a feasible option.
It is a privilege to automatically assume belonging, acceptance, and possibility in any and every space, and these feelings were the exact ones that K and I were trying to cultivate for minority students who we knew would otherwise be deprived of them. It was only through showing them that someone had already blazed the path forward for this specific goal that some students would actually follow through with applying, let alone accepting the job offer.
THE NEXT WEEK, WE WERE ONCE AGAIN called into an all-intern meeting, this time about communication. We were presented with a cringeworthy venn diagram about how our communication as a cohort currently stood (with overlapping circles) and how our communication should be, moving forward (two entirely separate circles!). Of course, if this were a discussion about work-life balance, the demand for a separation between church and state would have made complete sense. “My, if I had messages from my coworkers about work at all hours of the night, I’d throw my phone away!” our HR supervisor joked, taking a lame jab at a real life comparison.
But the time to draw lines of professionalism was not then. If the interns had the liberty of blurring the lines between coworkers and friends, then we should also be given the liberty to bring up the harmful implications of racist and classist actions at any time, in whatever group chat we chose. After all, these ideologies and tendencies don’t just disappear once we leave work—in fact, they can even take on more insidious forms in the absence of clear structures that make them so easily identifiable.This demand for separate forms of communication was, then, not an attempt to undo the burden of receiving work messages in the evening, but to regain control in a situation in which their wrongdoings were made glaringly evident. If they could police what people said and when they could say it, then they'd be able to limit the instances in which they were caught red-handed and made to confront their errors.
Even though the conversation was sparked by a work-related event, the underlying implications of the intern reps’ actions reached far beyond just this one incident. Yes, the “call out”—if that’s what you want to call it—was an effort to be more mindful about the ways in which they promoted our program. Yes, it was also an effort to ensure that the legacy of our program would be much more diverse than it currently stood. But most importantly, it was an effort to make these so-called friends interrogate how a lack of diversity in their thoughts, words, and actions can be dangerous and harmful to every space they occupy, whether on the clock or not.
The goal of any conversation that confronts discriminatory acts against minorities, whether intentional or not, is to break through the echo chamber that normalizes and reproduces homogeneity and keeps those in positions of privilege blind to the toxicity of the chamber’s reverberating messages. It is to forcefully inject senses of self reflection and critical thought into minds and spaces that flourish off this very lack of challenge, the absence of opposing voices. It is to actively interrogate the versions of society that they have grown comfortable and complicit in, in an effort to carve out the space for reimagination and the active pursuit of a more diverse and inclusive world.
Since becoming an employee of the very same institution I attended two years prior, I was fed with nonstop narratives about how much the university was devoted to diversity and inclusion, both in terms of student numbers and in new programs that were being implemented in the coming year. And yet, when given a formal platform that would help boost the diversity within the organization, all strategy was somehow lost on its organizers. Diversity and inclusion should not be an underground operation tirelessly manned by those who are personally affected by its absence, but a collective effort to resist the structures that even demand that these factors be given special attention.
THIS WAS NOT AN UNCOMMON CASE of white fragility, nor was it one of the most severe or damaging of examples. But the subsequent actions taken by HR and the intern reps to cover up their faults point to a larger culture of white fragility’s institutional protection, as well as the silencing of those who stand up to authority and speak up against exclusionary practices. Denial was relentless and exhaustive, and the immense energy put into trying to redirect the conversation would have been a lot better off put into brainstorming ways to ensure that diversity and inclusion stay at the forefront of everyone’s minds, especially when their work has the power to influence so many young individuals’ futures.
Because the truth is, the real reason why no one likes a tattletale isn’t because they tell the truth. It’s because the truth that they are pointing to often requires bullies to interrogate the systems they live in, the very ones that allow them to succeed and live comfortably without any justification other than their own feelings of entitlement. And when these systems come crashing down and power becomes accessible not only to a few but to the many, those who have had opportunities handed to them must interrogate the merit on which their success is based, and for the first time, wonder if they would still be at the table if everyone was offered a seat.