pull down to refresh
100 sats \ 11 replies \ @ek OP 11h \ parent \ on: The Problem With Being “Too Nice” at Work mostly_harmless
Doesn't this explain it?
No, I don't think it explains much, at all. I think it explains something about the speaker's insecurities. I think that if race is on your mind a lot, that your anxieties will be about race. But if you have some other trauma, then that will be what your anxieties will be about. So I don't think that this has anything to do with race, but with insecurity.
All people of all races have insecurities.
reply
There's a reason people who aren't the majority race often have race top of mind.
reply
reply
Maybe you should ask someone who's experienced it.
reply
reply
Sure. It's useful to consider the difference when the minority status is noticeable only after conversation and intimate contact (many religious ones; sexual ones; cultural ones) vs when it's immediately noticeable to anyone in visual range, but any difference can lead to different affordances in interaction.
reply
reply
But to be fair, @optimism also has a point.
These insecurities aren’t limited to race, since, as he mentioned, every race everyone has insecurities, which might also come from fear of losing your job, and we don’t want to accidentally cause a conflict, so we tend to overcorrect for niceness.
But since race is immediately obvious to anyone, I think everyone has experience with this “anxious niceness” in that context, which is why the talk focused on that.
Thinking more about this, this topic also seems very related to the second season of The Rehearsal about aviation safety (first officer being too nice / not assertive enough even though the captain is obviously about to kill everyone on board).