Today's Reading
This book offers a "toxonomy" that will help you notice the different problems that need fixing so you can match the right solution to the right problem. Throughout my career, I tended to lump a whole set of different problems into something I thought of as "BS." In so doing, I made it much harder to find solutions and much easier to feel cynical or helpless. I found that by forcing myself to be more precise—was it bias or actually discrimination; was it prejudice or bullying?—I put myself in a much better position to break free of my tendency to default to silence and easier to take some action to make things better. I also found that it was easier to build solidarity with people who were experiencing different but related things—racial bias rather than gender bias, for example. This simple toxonomy helped keep me oriented in disorienting situations. I hope it will help you, too.
BIAS PREJUDICE => DISCRIMINATION
BULLYING => HARASSMENT
PHYSICAL VIOLATIONS
Bias, prejudice, and bullying are big problems, and it can be hard to distinguish between them. When you lay power on top of them, things go from bad to worse. Bias and prejudice plus power creates the conditions for discrimination. Bullying plus power creates the conditions for harassment. Both positional and physical power create the conditions for physical violations and violence.
Throughout this book, I'll use this toxonomy to keep us focused on one problem at a time. Of course, these problems aren't mutually exclusive, and as with all dynamic situations, they can change over time. But the advantage of imposing order like this is that it can help us identify solutions rather than getting lost in the complexity of the problem.
DISAMBIGUATION
Let's look for a moment at the first half of the toxonomy. People often treat bias, prejudice, and bullying as though they are synonymous. For example, the term microaggression is useful in pointing out small injuries that add up to repetitive stress injury—a big problem that can keep you from doing your best work or living your happiest life. The problem is, there are three different reasons why people commit microaggressions: they can result from bias, prejudice, and bullying. As you'll learn in the pages that follow, each of these things requires a very different response.
To help parse the problem, let's start with some simple definitions.
Bias is "not meaning it." Bias is unconscious. It comes from the part of our minds that jumps to conclusions, often reflecting stereotypes that we don't believe if we stop to think.
Prejudice is "meaning it." It is a consciously held belief, often rationalizing flawed assumptions and stereotypes.
Bullying is "being mean." There may be no belief, conscious or unconscious, behind it. Often it is the instinctive use of in-group status or power to harm, humiliate, dominate, or coerce others.
Depending on one's perspective, these three problems carry different weight. For example, we are all biased, and bias usually doesn't come with bad intent. So it's tempting to dismiss bias as less severe than other infractions. That is certainly true from the perspective of the person who caused harm. However, it may be different from the perspective of the person harmed. Many people feel that bias is more harmful than prejudice or bullying because it happens much more often. Others have found prejudice or bullying looms larger in their experience. The point is that these are all problems that we need to solve, and comparing which one is "worse" than the other isn't helpful.
Often there's no belief, conscious or unconscious, behind bullying. But belief, be it conscious or unconscious, tends to guide our actions. So bias and prejudice tend to make bullying likelier. A person might bully with biased language, using words that wound, even if they don't consciously believe the implications of what they are saying. I worked with a woman who did not consciously believe that women were less courageous than men but who routinely called men she wanted to humiliate "p*$&ies." I've seen racist or homophobic slurs employed in an analogous way. When bullying is emboldened by conscious prejudice, it often becomes violent, as occurred in the Jim Crow South.
Here's a story that illustrates why it's important to distinguish between bias, prejudice, and bullying.
Mr. Safety Pin
I was just about to give a Radical Candor talk to the founders and executives of some of Silicon Valley's hottest start-ups. A couple of hundred men were at the conference. I was one of only a handful of women. Just as I was about to go onstage, one of these men ran up to me.
"I need a safety pin!" he hissed. He was clutching at his shirtfront—a button had popped off. Evidently, he assumed I was on the event staff. To prevent this very confusion, the conference organizers had given the event staff, most of whom were women a good twenty years younger than I was, bright yellow T-shirts. I was wearing an orange sweater. But all he could notice was his need and my gender.
I didn't know what to say. He was utterly certain that it was my job to fetch him a safety pin.
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***** TABLE OF CONTENTS *****
INTRODUCTION:
We Can Fix Problems Only When We are Willing to Notice Them
PART ONE: Everyone Has a Role to Play
1. A Framework for Success
2. How Leaders Can Foster a Culture of Respect
3. Be an Upstander, Not a Silent Bystander
4. What to Say When You Don't Know What to Say
5. Be Part of the Solution, Not Part of the Problem
PART TWO: Don't Let Power Screw it all Up.
6. Design Principles for Radical Respect
7. Apply Design Principles to Management Systems
8. Create Virtuous Cycles, Prevent Vicious Cycles
9. Speak Truth to Power Without Blowing Up Your Career
10. Reinforce a Culture of Consent
11. A Letter to My Younger Self and Her Boss
12. Put Some Wins on the Board
...
