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> At first, you are shocked when you hear some insensitive comments made around you. Then you realize no one else even notices, so it must be something wrong wi

> At first, you are shocked when you hear some insensitive comments made around you. Then you realize no one else even notices, so it must be something wrong with you. I think is important to talk about because insensitive comments aren’t always clear. Finding a good way to talk about comments in a healthy way is the difference between me having more peace or stewing. Sometimes people don’t know what they’re saying is offensive, sometimes I misperceive something. An example is that I was in a staff meeting and one of the seniors said “Paying for itself in spades...” and another developer’s face just sunk and he was clearly upset but the senior didn’t notice. Dev2 went to a colleague to talk and explained how he was really upset because Dev1 uses this term quite a bit and that it’s offensive. Colleague pulled up some info on the origins of the term [0] and how it has nothing to do with race. If Dev2 hadn’t talked about it, then they would have continued thinking that Dev1 was saying racist things. Obviously, the particulars of situations will vary and there are jerks. But given that we work with lots of different cultures, it’s good to try to find a way to confront these offenses in a way that’s not exhausting and can help build team relationships. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_a_spade_a_spade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_a_spade_a_spade

octokatt 6y ago
The trick to what happened in your example is that Dev2 was able to find someone in the office (Colleague) they trusted to talk about the situation. In some organizations I’ve been in, he could have talked to Dev3, who tells them to “not be so sensitive”, then tells other devs about how Dev2 played the race card. Dev3 is more common than Colleague. Hell, Dev1 being an idiot and not learning to maybe adjust his language to be inclusive, and maybe read a book about race, is less common than Colleague.
- prepend 6y ago
  Yes, and this is what makes it so hard and sort of a wicked problem. This is a “best case scenario” but there’s lots of other worse outcomes like the one you mention, or if dev2 reported Dev1 for a microaggression. I think the important, and hard part, is to have trust and existing relationships where people can discuss these types of scenarios. Also my perception is that Dev1 was not an idiot and did not need to do anything for his language and the moral here is that Dev2 was able to learn more context around Dev1’s speech so they understood that there was nothing racial about it. We all could have read lots of books about race and Dev1’s statement should not have changed. But that doesn’t mean that Dev3 is right. I think we want to train and improve Dev3s so they become more like Colleague. And we also want to build more relationships like between Dev2 and Colleague so that Dev2 could talk to Dev1 directly. I don’t like advice that people should be more thick skinned, because for every scenario where the misunderstanding is on the part of Dev2 there are lots of scenarios where the statement is racist. Maybe the heuristic is that we should be more curious before judging.

octokatt 6y ago

The trick to what happened in your example is that Dev2 was able to find someone in the office (Colleague) they trusted to talk about the situation. In some organizations I’ve been in, he could have talked to Dev3, who tells them to “not be so sensitive”, then tells other devs about how Dev2 played the race card. Dev3 is more common than Colleague. Hell, Dev1 being an idiot and not learning to maybe adjust his language to be inclusive, and maybe read a book about race, is less common than Colleague.

prepend 6y ago
Yes, and this is what makes it so hard and sort of a wicked problem. This is a “best case scenario” but there’s lots of other worse outcomes like the one you mention, or if dev2 reported Dev1 for a microaggression. I think the important, and hard part, is to have trust and existing relationships where people can discuss these types of scenarios. Also my perception is that Dev1 was not an idiot and did not need to do anything for his language and the moral here is that Dev2 was able to learn more context around Dev1’s speech so they understood that there was nothing racial about it. We all could have read lots of books about race and Dev1’s statement should not have changed. But that doesn’t mean that Dev3 is right. I think we want to train and improve Dev3s so they become more like Colleague. And we also want to build more relationships like between Dev2 and Colleague so that Dev2 could talk to Dev1 directly. I don’t like advice that people should be more thick skinned, because for every scenario where the misunderstanding is on the part of Dev2 there are lots of scenarios where the statement is racist. Maybe the heuristic is that we should be more curious before judging.