Individualism part three

As I prepped to write this entry, I kept thinking about the following four ways that Individualism shows up as:

• for white people: seeing yourselves and/or demanding to be seen as an individual and not as part of the white group;
• failure to acknowledge any of the ways dominant identities — gender, class, sexuality, religion, able-bodiedness, age, education to name a few — are informed by belonging to a dominant group that shapes cultural norms and behavior;
• for BIPOC people: individualism forces the classic double bind when BIPOC people are accused of not being “team players” — in other words, punishment or repercussions for acting as an individual if and when doing so “threatens” the team;
• for BIPOC people: being blamed and shamed for acting to solve problems without checking in and asking for permission from white people;

As I reflected on my career so far, this double bind is something that I have experienced from time to time and I’ve learned to be measured with my feedback in certain situations. For example, I was once approached by a majority of the people of color in the organization that I was working for about concerns of racial discrimination that they noticed toward me and others by the CEO. They gave me example after example and I listened to it all.

Most of my career, I had avoided relaying this type of feedback because I watched others like me, black people, speak out and get accused of “playing the race card” or by bringing this up is actually causing racism. All of this was occurring just months after the death of a good friend and person that I admired for speaking his truth an living his values. He was always one of the few people that I would see speak up and just hold a box of tissues for people to move through their initial reaction and not internalize the reaction from people. At one point just weeks before he died, he came to me and said he’d love to see me step out more and connect people in this journey to an anti-oppressive reality.

It was at that point that I decided that the concerns needed to be brought to the CEO’s attention. That didn’t go well for me. Every typical denial was unleashed and after years of good performance reviews and solid 360 feedback, I was the problem. Despite, following the complaint procedures and protecting the identities off those that brought the complaints to me, I was the problem for relaying the message and preventing people from brining it up directly. Instead of addressing the issues I brought up, the focus was now on me and topic was changed. This is the results of the double bind of individualism.

For years, I watched white colleagues, stand up for themselves, solve problems and get the glory. Rarely did I ever see them being force to apologize when they stood their ground when publicly challenged by someone being disrespectful to them. Yet, that happen to me in private and public and was forced to apologize for my reaction, but the insubordinate behavior of the white male was never addressed publicly. Suddenly, I was constantly on the defense and even when I went to mediation, the mediator told me in private that I could talk to one of their attorneys because he recognized the retaliatory nature of the behavior towards me.

Even through all of that I chose to just leave, I shared all of it with two Board Members of the organization and was asked to not sue the organization. I agreed not to as I did not want the organization itself to suffer because they had a leader that refused to acknowledge the impact of their dominant identities cultural norms and the negative impact it had on others. They had a leader that demanded to be seen as an individual. They had a leader that embodied “individualism”, but it went unseen for years after I left and more people took issue with them. The damage done was and is still being dealt with.

It wasn’t just the white supremacy characteristic of individualism that was the problem. However, it is a key part that, in most instances, feels like it is something that can be glorified in our culture for some and used as an attack on others. I implore you to take this seriously as people try to hear from these types of interactions, but the realty is many of us have to go back to the environment that is abusive and told to be resilient. That has only gotten us so far.