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> "It's hard to challenge yourself and others to go beneath the surface, but the rewards are great." The author of the post seems entirely reasonable and I'd l

by fsaneq2 10y ago

> "It's hard to challenge yourself and others to go beneath the surface, but the rewards are great." The author of the post seems entirely reasonable and I'd love to have a discussion with him about this type of stuff. The problem, at least for me, is that it's difficult to tell upfront who's reasonable and who is not. What I mean by reasonable is someone who will put forward an honest effort to have a discussion, as opposed to deliberately trying to insult the other party (like the CEO from the article), or deliberately trying look for unintended missteps and immediately paint the opponent as some kind of racist monster (like some POC). I used to be quite honest about these things; now with more experience I think I am less so. This seems really sad, and like a step backwards, but I don't really see how to solve it without somehow being able to guarantee the other party will cooperate. Of course, if it is your wife, I'm sure you trust her a lot and she trusts you as well, which facilitates the discussion. However, realistically the vast majority of these discussions will be between people who not only don't trust each other as much, but they might even see each other as foes/adversaries. In that scenario, I'm not sure it's a good idea to "challenge yourself [...] to go beneath the surface".

sverige 10y ago
I agree, and I certainly wasn't trying to promote the idea of striking up such conversations with someone you barely know just for the sake of personal development. I've had far fewer such discussions with friends and coworkers, though I've had some. Mostly they have turned out OK, but I've been burned a few times too. And I didn't actively seek the conversations; rather, they always occur when something happens in a shared environment and usually later one of us makes a comment about it that leads to a discussion.
slackstation 10y ago
While in general, there are sometimes people who feel put upon and don't feel like answering questions and/or having that difficult discussion of race, a job interview isn't the place to have it. The power dynamic is too skewed for you get anything like a real answer to your question. If the question was designed to see how the interviewee handles pressure than that's a shit move to do. Either way it's a terrible question. Also, it's an unfair one because other white applicants aren't getting this question. By definition, there really isn't a way for a white interviewer to be able to judge how well the interviewee responded to "Why isn't it OK to say nr". It can easily end up feeling like a personal judgement or worse a judgement on a person's entire race of which there is no way they could represent every perspective. The fact that it was in a job interview just shows the that interviewee either didn't understand the context of the question which is strong evidence that they are probably a bad manager or they didn't care, which is even stronger evidence of a bad manager.
- aptwebapps 10y ago
  "The fact that it was in a job interview just shows the that interviewee either didn't understand the context of the question which is strong evidence that they are probably a bad manager or they didn't care, which is even stronger evidence of a bad manager." By "they" you mean the CEO, right? Because it scans as though you mean the interviewee.
- rpgmaker 10y ago
  A job interview it's certainly not the place to ask those kind of questions.

by fsaneq2 10y ago

sverige 10y ago

I agree, and I certainly wasn't trying to promote the idea of striking up such conversations with someone you barely know just for the sake of personal development. I've had far fewer such discussions with friends and coworkers, though I've had some. Mostly they have turned out OK, but I've been burned a few times too. And I didn't actively seek the conversations; rather, they always occur when something happens in a shared environment and usually later one of us makes a comment about it that leads to a discussion.

slackstation 10y ago

While in general, there are sometimes people who feel put upon and don't feel like answering questions and/or having that difficult discussion of race, a job interview isn't the place to have it. The power dynamic is too skewed for you get anything like a real answer to your question. If the question was designed to see how the interviewee handles pressure than that's a shit move to do. Either way it's a terrible question. Also, it's an unfair one because other white applicants aren't getting this question. By definition, there really isn't a way for a white interviewer to be able to judge how well the interviewee responded to "Why isn't it OK to say nr". It can easily end up feeling like a personal judgement or worse a judgement on a person's entire race of which there is no way they could represent every perspective. The fact that it was in a job interview just shows the that interviewee either didn't understand the context of the question which is strong evidence that they are probably a bad manager or they didn't care, which is even stronger evidence of a bad manager.

aptwebapps 10y ago
"The fact that it was in a job interview just shows the that interviewee either didn't understand the context of the question which is strong evidence that they are probably a bad manager or they didn't care, which is even stronger evidence of a bad manager." By "they" you mean the CEO, right? Because it scans as though you mean the interviewee.
rpgmaker 10y ago
A job interview it's certainly not the place to ask those kind of questions.