Am I being guilty of unconscious bias?

[Normalguy22]

I see this a phase a lot in the media lately.

recently at my work we had a event for black history month. They basically said only black people can work in a certain public facing area on a set day. All white faces were excluded to another area.

They made a big fuss about it around diversity and celebrating black culture etc. Balloons, cake,flags etc etc

Now to me this seems to just reinforces stereotypes and division, surely it we shouldn’t highlight a group people by race, gender etc. I love working with all types of cultures and genders and believe we should all just stop talking about “differences” and get along.

Am I being guilty of unconscious bias or worse racism by seeing these events and racist and causing division?

• Celebrating Black History month is a great thing to do

• Putting black people and white people in different spaces at work as part of it is daft and I would find it offensive. It is bizarre that HR/your company went for something like this...

I am disabled, if my workplace told me that they would suddenly put me front of house for a day to show how disability-friendly they are I would feel used and that it was a gimmick to tick a diversity box, instead I expect them to support disabled employees all year long!

Most able bodied white people have no idea how it feels to be subjected to discrimination.

Do people actually believe this? There's more to life than just race.

Admittedly I'm Asian so no one really cares about the discrimination or challenges we face, however I don't see why people can't be celebrated without purposefully excluding others? There are plenty of ways to celebrate, shine a spotlight on and widen conversations around race than saying nah don't want white people on show today, truly weird. Lots of white people seem to feel shame and be overly apologetic for being white which is weird and why we have ended up here. I've found people at work definitely treat me differently than even say a decade ago before we have D&I (which is important) on steroids; someone even said they were worried about asking me questions in case one was offensive, like gasp where are you from (I have a northern accent but live down south so I wouldn't presume this meant my ancestory).

The fact that people think there is a "black people" is in itself deeply wrong.

What do "white people" want ?

It is hard to give an opinion on this without knowing the exact scenario. It does sound a little bit odd though.

This comment:
I love working with all types of cultures and genders and believe we should all just stop talking about “differences” and get along.
is very naive. Please try not to say that again.

Of course everybody wants people to get along, but it does not happen. There is still systemic racism in many institutions. It is important to talk about it and discuss it till we have something approaching equality. However, we have to think how we do this. Tokenistic gestures are not the way and may just annoy people, like it has you.

The kind of comment you made, whilst probably well-intentioned, is not helpful. It is like when people say ‘I don’t see colour’ or ‘I don’t care if somebody is black brown yellow or purple’. It dismisses the real experiences of minorities who are treated differently because of their skin colour. So clearly there are people who don’t get along with others due to racism, and who do see colour etc. That is why we have to talk about ‘differences’ until we have true understanding of each other.

@Startingagainandagain i agree, especially because racial identity is not always apparent to someone’s eye. am I considered “black” if I have 1 black grandparent? How about if I have a black dad but take my skin colour more from my mum? If we only think about racial identity solely on skin colour and on the basis of what someone else defines us as, does it mean I am then excluded from celebrating my heritage in black history month?

jeaux90

Maybe most white men, not white people. I'm pretty sure many white women have come up against all sorts of discrimination which is why intersectional feminism is a thing.

Maybe, I don’t know what that is 😁 Can only speak for myself. Don’t feel discriminated against, as a white woman.

It does sound a bit strange.

But pretending "we are all the same" doesn't celebrate our differences and worse suggests we aren't recognising that inequality exists.

If we just ignore something, it doesn't go away.

Do you not think women should be allowed to have "women only" spaces op?

Quite

No of course not.
It might mean you probably benefit from colourism though, no?

See this kind of Americanised crap is tiresome.

Agreed. It sounds very clumsy at best.

@Firestace you don't think colourism exists?

It very much depends on the crowd you are in at the time ....

It's really not.

Accepting you have unconscious bias is an important step in acknowledging systemic racism.

It doesn't make you a bad person - in fact, I'd say people who acknowledge their unconscious bias AND commit to trying to understand it and working to not allow it to influence their views and actions is exactly what we need.

Getting upset about being perceived as racist means you're probably not understanding the issue properly.

I would hope that the company asks people (all staff) to volunteer to be in this event, if they identify with the cause. Then its up to each person if they want to be included.

(same as if there is a pride event, anyone can volunteer to attend and take part - as a gay person or as an ally? - though i appreciate then its not visually obvious who "fits the class" or not)

if they just went up to people and said - You're gay, work this event - that would be very inappropriate.

That’s ridiculous! Separating colleagues by the day based on race. Have they thought this all the way through?!

it just reminds me of s.African apartheid where people were sorted according to how brown or black they were. I don’t think companies should be getting involved in sorting their employees according to their skin tone! Policies should be there to promote diversity of recruitment year round not to segregate their workers for 1 day of the year….how does this change things? As a left wing person I’m aware of how liberals can be guilty of tokenism, it’s ironic considering how diverse the top tier of the Conservative Party is in recent times compared to the Labour Party !

"if they just went up to people and said - You're gay, work this event - that would be very inappropriate."

Ha exactly @burnoutbabe hence it's a very odd thing to separate people on account of a visual difference.

But we still don't know yet, as the OP hasn't explained if this was instigated by their BAME colleagues....???

I think it's awful they only want people of one particular race to be in public facing duties for the day. The company should be showing they're diverse by having different races, backgrounds etc. I'm East Asian so if I was at your workplace, I'd be hidden away too.

I'm not sure which way to vote as it's not clear. YANBU to think segregating people is strange.

I didn't say that, did I? But bringing it into everything is tedious and creates even more division. The poster has black heritage and asked if they should excluded from celebrating BHM; your response is very telling.

@Firestace I don't bring it into every conversation

There is a black police officers organisation ...

She didn’t say that there was any volunteering involved ( which would make sense to me)
From the op’s update ”again without being specific let’s say it was like a restaurant removing all their white staff from a branch and shipping in black people for a day,(from other branches) (It wasn’t this but quite close). What made it worse (imo) was the people that were removed still got paid for the inconvenience/loss or work for the day.
(So in my warped mind(!) I saw this as white folk being paid to enjoy a day off and black people put front and centre to promote the companies diversity agenda). “

my profession has a BAME professional group too, the difference is it’s voluntary participation by someone according to how they define their race, I think a company imposing something is different to allowing people to choose to be part of something.