People pleasing should not consistently traumatize the people you are trying to please
Lately, we have been diving into the impacts of people pleasing, and there is a lot to unravel, especially when you consider that we have all been socialized into people pleasing a little bit differently, depending on our various and intersecting identities.
We’ve been having conversations with each other on our team at CCI as well as with our clients about our identity stories through the lens of people pleasing asking questions like:
How has people pleasing shown up over the course of your life? To what extent are you or are you not a people pleaser? Have you been around people pleasers? How does this show up now in your role at work?
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We are not safe until we are all safe
Imagine a system of violence that doesn’t just turn white people on Black people, but Black people on Black people, Asian people on Asian people, and white people on white people?
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Willful negligence
We’re down to the wire in this dystopian process known as the NYC public high school admissions process.
It’s hard to explain exactly how complex and overwhelming this process is, from uncertainty as to whether we would be returning to the pre-covid schedule or the more delayed covid schedule (it’s the earlier pre-covid schedule - but this was only announced two weeks before applications opened!) to the undecipherable hexadecimal “lottery” number that each student is assigned that is a) very hard to find and b) once you find it, impossible to understand what it means based solely off information shared by the DOE.
And that is barely the tip of the iceberg of what is confusing about this process. In fact, I don’t think you could make the process more confusing or stressful if you tried.
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Getting up close and personal with the system
NYC high school admissions season has begun. For those of you unfamiliar with this process, it’s a unique and “interesting” opportunity to get up close and personal with one of the most segregated school systems in the country - I’m talking about the public school system but of course, the way it interfaces with the private school system is part of what makes it so segregated.
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Overworked but underutilized
Staff, usually those least aligned with power and privilege whether because of their identity, position in the organization, or both, are often expected to carry a heavy workload without appropriate compensation or support, and they are expected to do so with little complaint or pushback either.
The assumption is that they will work miracles with little time, money or other resources. Those who raise concerns about unrealistic expectations or lack of resources risk being characterized as “not a team player” or “divisive” or a “troublemaker” or they are blamed for being poor performers. Meanwhile, those with more privilege, usually white men, are the first ones to get money and other resources thrown at them to fix crises that they are rarely held accountable for.
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Rage
Rage.
Rage for me is a sense of helplessness, of banging my head against a wall, of having arguments in my head with people who are not present.
Rage for me is a kind of insanity internalized from living in a deranged world.
Rage often comes from the kind of systemic gaslighting, the hypocrisy and audacity of trying to pretend that being anti-abortion is about being pro-life. That it is about babies, or some kind of religious or moral high ground, when clearly it is not.
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The right to bear arms
In 1705, a Virginia law was passed requiring masters to provide white male servants whose indentured time was up with 50 acres of land, 30 shillings,10 bushels of corn and a musket.
Whose land were they given? Why was a musket deemed a necessary part of the deal?
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We are not “the help”
I’ve had this blog post brewing in my head for a while, since before I read Ijeoma Oluo’s piece “We have the right to not be annoyed” where this passage hit home:
Y’all (the white people out of pocket in my comments and DMs) keep thinking that this is all for you.
The books, the talks, the work - all of it is for you. You are sure that I and others who write and speak on race wake up every day and think, “how can I help white people today?” I’m not being facetious. You really do view us, in our anti-racist work and in our very existence, as “the help.”
Oooof, yeah this hit home.
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Some wounds are not ours to heal
A friend shared some wisdom a coach had shared with her once - some wounds are not ours to heal.
This stuck with me because for the longest time, I thought ALL wounds were mine to heal.
I’ve become very conscious of how women of color, and especially Black women, are socialized to taken on everyone’s emotional burdens and healing except our own, when really the only wounds that are ours to heal are our own.
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The hypocrisy of “violence is never the answer”
White people self-righteously declaring that “violence is never the answer” is… not a good look. The utter hypocrisy when white culture and white American culture was FOUNDED on violence is entirely predictable yet exhausting just the same. The ENTIRE PREMISE of whiteness is violence. Whiteness was created explicitly and purposefully to justify and perpetuate violence.
So yeah.
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Internalized oppression: if we can’t see that it’s systemic, we have no choice but to believe it’s personal
Of all the pieces I’ve read about Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings, this article by Elie Mystal hit particularly hard: Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Long Pause Explained Racism and Sexism in America.
The article nails so much, from describing Ted Cruz as “the office manager who never learned how to use PowerPoint” to “the small-minded and condescending white people arrayed against her” on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the experience of watching her being put through “crucible of white approval.”
Oooof.
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The problem with empathy
It’s been a tough week of news out of Ukraine.
I have been trying to take special care and to be aware of the different and perhaps invisible ways that we all might be variously impacted, on top of everything else that is going on. I am noticing my responses, managing my energy, and trying to stay focused on where I can make a difference.
As the days passed though, I’m noticing other things.
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Deep abiding grief
I’ve been experiencing a huge wave of grief lately.
Some of it is personal, some of it is systemic.
It’s painful, this deep and abiding grief.
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It’s not about love
Something that struck me this week is that it is a common belief amongst white people and an underlying default assumption that racism is about hate.
When they say they “don’t have a racist bone in their body” they mean what they also sometimes say which is that their “heart is full of love.” When asked why racism should be eradicated, they say it’s because “everyone deserves to be loved.”
Do white people really think that people of color don’t experience love? That we don’t feel loved? That we experience love less than white people do?
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Those of us with kids in a pandemic are not ok
I've also been thinking a lot about the systemic and intergenerational roots of trauma, hyper-vigilance, anxiety, over-responsibility and depression.
I am becoming more and more aware of how, as women of color, we are socialized to make ourselves over-responsible for.... everything. And we don’t just make ourselves over-responsible - we are made over-responsible, used as workhorses while being undermined, dismissed, devalued and uncredited.
And those of us with kids in a pandemic are not ok.
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Invisible work
The topic of invisible work has been coming up a lot lately.
Invisible work has been an undergirding principle of capitalism, patriarchy and white supremacy since the beginning of time immemorial - and it is deeply embedded into every aspect of US history and the ongoing legacy of a country founded on slavery, genocide and colonization.
Of course, at the inception of this country, it wasn’t just invisible work, it was the violently coerced labor of chattel slavery without which this country could not have built a viable economy, infrastructure or culture.
That legacy lives on today - we no longer have slavery but we still have invisible work.
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White entitlement leads to violence
Can we talk about white violence?
Can we talk about white parents who bought their son a gun as an early Christmas gift?
Can we talk about the kind of white entitlement where a parent either assumes their son won't harm others or doesn't care that he might?
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I should have done my research on IDEO
Last week I wrote about my experiences with some IDEO design thinking courses and highly recommended them. However, one of our readers, Malla Haridat, very generously reached out to note that IDEO has had some serious conversations pop up around DEI that I should know about.
Yikes.
And sigh.
I have to admit I was not aware, and absolutely should have done my research, especially before making a recommendation. I regret that Malla had to reach out and let me know.
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Pandering to funders
Ooof. It came to my attention earlier this week that an architect had resigned from UCSB's Design Review Committee over the university's proposed Munger Hall Project, a giant monstrosity of a student housing project where 94 percent of the 4,500 students would not have windows in their small single-occupancy rooms. Further, these rooms would be grouped into suites of 8 bedrooms per one bathroom. Oh and those 4,500 students? There would only be 2 exits to the building.
How could this be? Well, as the article explains, "The idea was conceived by 97-year-old billionaire-investor turned amateur-architect Charles Munger, who donated $200 million toward the project with the condition that his blueprints be followed exactly."
Did I say ooooof already?
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Unresolved harms
A couple of weeks ago I found myself walking down the street in tears about something that happened to my family almost two years ago.
The anger, the rage, the hurt - it was so present, it surprised me.
Why was it coming up now?
It was because another family was experiencing something similar within the same community, even though for completely different reasons, and even though the community was now under different leadership.
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