Learning break: Toni’s experience of a workplace microaggression

- I once had a professional disagreement with a colleague who I believed I had great rapport with, and after our disagreement, she began avoiding me to finish the project on her own. And I reached out several times, but I couldn't get any project updates. And after questioning her about the lack of communication, I learned that she'd share with the other leaders that she was afraid to give me feedback. And for me, the word afraid is triggering. It's sometimes a subtle way to assassinate the character of marginalized people. I met with her about the feedback, and I opened with guiding questions and wanted to understand where she thought the conflict began. And she explained that after our conflict, she became afraid to discuss it further. So I tried a little exercise. I pulled up the word fear online, and I asked her nicely to read the definition. And the definition as a noun is an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. And as a verb, it is to be afraid of someone or something as likely to be dangerous or painful or threatening. And then I asked her if there was anything about our conversation that made her think or feel that she was in danger in any way or that I personally would cause her harm. And her immediate answer was like, "Oh, no." And she recanted her perspective and just said that she felt she'd never seen me stern or disappointed before. So I offered the word uncomfortable instead as a replacement for the original discussion and to give her better tools to describe what our actual experience was like. And I shared that conflict is healthy, but our words have power and intentionality in how our peers feel safe or represented, and build credibility. And it's important to not misrepresent experiences to gain traction and to support our own perspectives. A disagreement shouldn't be an opportunity to weaponize bias. This avoids accountability and resolving a conflict. There are often things connected to the stereotypes of my skin tone that I've inherited just simply by being born in this skin. And when people use coded language, like aggressive and afraid and fear and assertive, it translates to me that showing up as my most authentic self is not the acceptable standard. Author Austin Channing Brown once said, "I am not the work" when referring to the pressures that marginalized people are faced with to be fixed, to fit into spaces that are perceived that they don't belong in. And those simple four words freed me of the obligation to shrink or dismiss small slights. I believe that the ultimate goal in our daily interactions are cultural humility and an unlearning of our unchecked biases. And we can all do that when we hold each other accountable.