Nerdfest 2015

First exciting thing: My orchid continues to grow! A few weeks ago it sprouted new buds for the first time since the original flowers died, and now three of them are flowering!

Second exciting thing: Yesterday was our fifth year refereeing at the FIRST Lego League middle school robotics competition! We forgot to take any pictures, since we've done it so many times it has become sort of routine, but it was still a fun - if not exactly romantic - way to spend Valentine's Day. Plus, I was psyched that the winning team was all fifth grade girls who were competing for the first time :)

Third exciting thing: Ben visited the Google NY office for work last week, and they gave him one of those cardboard viewers. I thought the fun would be mostly limited to constructing it, since I love assembling things and didn't expect it to be much more than a high-tech viewfinder toy, but it is surprisingly cool to play with. As a result, the nerd level over here is even higher than usual, as Ben and I keep finding each other like this:

Soups on!

Ben got me a cooking class for the holidays, and unlike last year's experience-based holiday gift that took him nine months to deliver, this time he came through by February! The class was "hearty Italian soups" and we made three soups over the course of the evening:

Creamy potato, cauliflower, and leek soup

Italian wedding soup

Some sort of delicious amalgamation of vegetables, chicken, and pasta

All three were delicious, but only the first one seemed like a likely candidate for home preparation - the other two were good but way too time-intensive to make in real life. While potatoes, cauliflowers, and leeks sound pretty bland, that soup was surprisingly tasty - and it used my favorite kitchen tool of all time, the immersion blender!

Doing things: At work

My last post about my efforts to better use my privilege generated an unexpected (and welcome!) number of people emailing me with suggestions for additional reading (including one excellent comic) and/or interest in reading and learning along with me. I'm really happy that others are interested in doing this work with me - but now I also have a lot of reading to do! While I'm working on that, I'm going to also focus on doing things besides reading. Today's theme is doing things at work - not necessarily the actual work that I do, but the way I do that work. I share the below not to pat myself on the back for being such a great person, but because it’s been a difficult, multi-year process for me to get to where I currently am – with lots of people pushing me to get better, and lots of mistakes on my part – so I want to share what I’ve learned, as well as what I’m doing to get better.

What I have done so far:

• When I had the opportunity to hire someone for the first time a few years ago, I did what most hiring managers do and started asking around in my networks for candidate recommendations. I got a lot of suggestions, but I noticed that they were all very similar to me - young, straight, cis, white women from middle class backgrounds who attended great schools and whose strengths were primarily in analytics and operations. I already had one of me on my team, so I didn't want to hire another one. I started reaching out to a broader swath of people and groups for recommendations - e.g. I asked the African American Managers affinity group, and I asked teacher coaches about their teachers about to finish their two-year commitment (since the role was entry level and so someone could be competitive for it straight out of the classroom). I ended up being able to build a very diverse applicant pool, so when I found the person I wanted to hire I felt confident she really was the best person for the role, not just the best person in my immediate network. Hiring in this way is important both because it makes it more likely that you get the strongest talent, and because hiring only within your networks is one of the ways that privilege is consolidated and protected. In the words of that study's author, "most white Americans engage, at least a few times per year, in the activities that foster inequality. While they may not deliberately discriminate against black and other non-white job seekers, they take actions that make it more likely that white people will be employed -- without thinking that what they're doing amounts to discrimination."
• Creating a diverse team is not a useful end goal, though, because numeric diversity is worthless if your workplace isn't also inclusive (everyone feels safe, welcome, able to be themselves, etc...) and equitable (people have equal access to knowledge and power, input into decisions that affect them, etc...). When I hired someone who had a different background from me in so many ways, and who had a completely different set of skills and growth areas, I was nervous that I wouldn't be able to manage her in a way that allowed her to really thrive. I only knew how to manage someone who worked the same way I do, and I was afraid that in trying to manage her to work like me I would quash her ability to work like herself, and in turn stifle her ability to really contribute to the team. I asked a white colleague who manages a diverse team, and has really high staff satisfaction and engagement, for recommendations, and she suggested I read The Inclusion Paradox. It can be a little self-help-y at times, but it was really helpful in terms of being very concrete about what to do to foster an inclusive work environment.
• The most helpful thing I learned was "the seven dimensions of culture." The basic idea is that there are seven big cultural ways people often vary in how they approach their work and their lives, and problems arise when one way is taken to be the only right way. For example, one of the dimensions is how people manage time - there is a spectrum from synchronous (very flexible with regards to timing and deadlines) to sequential (very focused on punctuality and having deadlines for everything). I am undoubtedly way at the sequential end at the spectrum, but until that was called out for me, I didn't even realize it was a cultural preference - I just thought it was inherently The One Correct Way Of Operating At Work. The person I hired is much more on the synchronous side of things. When she first started, we actually went through all seven dimensions and diagnosed ourselves, then talked about where there were discrepancies and how we would handle them - without automatically assuming that either way of operating was right or better. It was really helpful to have a common language and shared framework to guide our early conversations about how we work most effectively. Now we work really well together - we align on when something does have a non-negotiable timing/deadline component for a specific reason, and when something can be more flexible. Of course, there are still occasional bumps along the way that make one of us wonder what the heck the other one is thinking/doing, so we sometimes have to revisit our earlier conversations to figure out what is/isn’t working and how we can adjust moving forward. In general, I've found that operating in this way with everyone I work with, not just people I directly manage, has led to a lot of benefits - for example, I have been in many meetings that reached the scheduled end time but the conversation wasn't finished. Before I would have just ended them because the time was up, but now I ask if folks don't mind staying a few extra minutes to wrap up. We often are able to land in a much better place as a result, and we avoid having to schedule an entire follow-up meeting to resolve something that only took a few more minutes. Being inclusive makes work better for everyone!

What I'm committing to do next:

• My biggest growth area is in making sure my team is not just inclusive, but actually equitable. Do the people who are most affected by my decisions have a seat at the table while I'm making them? I recently discovered Chris Crass's Tools for White Guys who are Working for Social Change… and other people socialized in a society based on domination, which is a very concrete checklist for just this task. I have printed it out at my desk and am trying to be much more conscious of dynamics at work, particularly when I am in a position of power (due to my title, my race, my education, my class, or any combination of the above). It's really hard, and it can be painful to realize that I have been dominating discussions or hoarding power in ways that I didn't even realize. But at the same time I can already feel it making me better as a person and helping me to operate in a more equitable way. It's definitely something I will need to continue to be conscientious about so long as I am alive, it's not a list to check off once and then be done, but I'm hoping to get to the point where I've internalized it and it's much more automatic for me to operate in this more equitable way. And just like a more inclusive culture is better for everyone, a more equitable culture makes work better both in terms of how it feels, and the actual quality of work that gets done.

Opposites

Last week I was in Miami for work:

Yes, I'm in business casual on the beach - I only had a little bit of time between conference sessions!

Then this weekend I went to Boston for a work thing on Monday:

These are my feet, in the opposite of sand.

It was all good, though, because I got to see friends in Boston, and because you can't go sledding in sand!

Also it turns out sledding is really exhausting as an adult.

It's alive!!

I love orchids, but I've never been able to get one to re-bloom after the initial flowers fall off. I usually keep watering them for a few months until I give up and buy a replacement. But yesterday, for the first time ever, I went to water my latest all-leaves-no-flowers orchid and saw that it has sprouted a new shoot with buds on it!

Look at all those buds!

I'm still sort of expecting that the buds will die and fall off without blooming, but at least I've gotten farther than I ever have before!

Learning Things: History

As I talked about in my last entry, I am re-committing myself to doing more and being better about using my privilege and power to work for equity. I've been working on myself in this area for a while now, but am going to start documenting my efforts here to try and hold myself accountable to doing this work more, not just when it's convenient. I'd also love to get ideas from others, if anything I write here is something you have thoughts on! I'm tentatively thinking I'll divide my efforts into the highly nuanced categories of "learning things" and "doing things," to try and make sure I am not doing entirely one or the other. I am going to always include what I've been doing so far (even if it's nothing), and what I'm committing to do next.

So, today's theme is learning things - history edition! One of the benefits of being in the dominant group is that you get to write your own history - that's how I went through school learning things like "the Indians helped the pilgrims and they all feasted together!" and "slaves were really treated like part of the family!" and "the Civil War was about state's rights!"  From my (non-American) parents I was often taught the second half of those sentences at home - "... and then the pilgrims committed systematic genocide against the Indians!" and "...only if you consider people in your family to be your property that you can beat, rape and murder!" and "....specifically, the right of states to base their entire economy on slavery!" So, I'm not coming into this with the view that everything I learned about history is the One Righteous Truth, but I do know that my knowledge of history is often lacking and one-sided. Since one of the ways that oppression works is erasing the history and culture of the oppressed, I am aiming to re-educate myself about American history (and maybe eventually world history, but I'm trying to not be overly ambitious at first) in an effort to resist that erasure.

What I have done so far: I have been somewhat sporadically learning about history as I find interesting articles and books, but I haven't been particularly purposeful about it.

• Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Case For Reparations is excellent, and brilliantly lays out how America as it currently exists could and would not exist without being built on the plundered lives and labor of Black people. I got to see him speak at Penn a few months ago, and he is equally brilliant in person - the video is online if anyone is interested.
• Because Ta-Nehisi Coates is the best, I made a twitter account so I could follow him, and he recommended A Sword Among Lions: Ida B Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching.Oh. My. God. I don't think I even learned about Ida B Wells in school, but she is AMAZING! I think I annoyed the crap out of Ben and everyone I work with while I was reading this biography, because I just couldn't shut up about her. Anecdote: She was riding in the "ladies car" of the train, and the conductor told her she had to leave because she wasn't White and therefore not a lady, but she resisted his efforts to remove her and even BIT HIM before he physically forced her out. Then she sued the train company for discrimination and won - in 1884. Unfortunately, the company appealed and the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the ruling in 1887. And that was one small blip early on in her lifetime of fighting for the rights of women and Black people.
• At the recommendation of a friend, I read The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. I think the great migration was mentioned once in passing in my AP US History class, but I really had no idea about the magnitude of both the migration itself and its impact on the country. The whole thing is beautifully written - it's nonfiction but reads like literature. One of the parts that made a big impression on me was the utter bafflement of many White Southerners about why all the Black people were leaving - there are many letters, editorials, journal entries, etc... from the time that illustrate their complete inability to comprehend why Black people wouldn't want to stay in the land of sharecropping and lynching, because they genuinely believed that conditions were as good as they could be for Black people. I had previously thought that White people not understanding the reality that Black people live in was a recent phenomenon, but this book disabused me of that notion.
• I can't actually remember where I saw this book recommended, I think it might have been the Daily Show, but I also read and enjoyed Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barrack Obama. My previous understanding of the civil rights movement was very superficial (MLK was Professor X, Malcolm X was Magneto, a few new laws were passed, the end). This book complicates that linear narrative, and taught me a lot about how the different leaders interacted with and influenced each other throughout their lives.

What I'm committing to do next: I want to be a bit more systematic about filling in the holes in my history education, instead of (or at least, in addition to) my previous haphazard approach.

• I'm going to start with A People's History of the United States, because I keep seeing it suggested as the starting point for learning American history from the point of view of the colonized, not the colonizers. I figure that will give me some high level understanding, and then I can use the bibliography to pick what to read next.
• I'm also going to read Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Final Year. I saw it on the Daily Show and it looked really interesting, and I know I need to
  unlearn the sanitized "MLK just wanted everyone to get along" version I was taught in school, and learn instead about the radical who railed against the triple evils of poverty, racism, and militarism.
• Lastly (for now), I signed up with some work friends for a free online class on the history of American education reform. I think we often have a tendency to think that the work we do "really" started when we got here, so I want to better understand the history leading up to the education system as it currently exists, and the history of efforts to reform it, so I can better and more accurately situate my work in that context.

We The People

Some pictures from today's Reclaim MLK march in Philadelphia:

School District of Philadelphia central office

City Hall

National Constitution Center

Independence Hall

I have been reading Dr. King's Letter From a Birmingham Jail and thinking a lot about the part about White moderates who agree with the civil rights movement but don't actually do anything to further its goals. I think about the White people who read about lynchings and beatings and did nothing and I feel so incredulous - and then I ask myself what have I done about the ongoing murders of so many unarmed Black people by the police. I have been letting myself off the hook because I work for a nonprofit whose mission is educational equity, but that's not enough. I need to learn more, I need to march more, I need to give back more, and I need to talk to my fellow White people about these issues more. Dr. King also said "large segments of White society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity" - I have let myself be too content with tranquility, and that needs to change.