The place I work started 55 years ago as a
grassroots movement to address hunger and homelessness and has 10,000
volunteers deliver 12 programs to approximately 60,000 people each year to
address the short and long term needs in our community. Our 13 member, all-volunteer Board of
Directors (BOD) members represent government, private industry, and low-income
residents, working together to provide guidance and leadership for the
organization. More women than men and almost 70% POC.
It's not that I don't love my job: I get to
write, for a living, for fuck's sake. I'm not writing The Great American Novel,
but when I write effectively, a lot of good people can do great work. And I get
to write, which I fucking love to do. I
work for a nonprofit, and almost all the things I thought I would hate about
Dat Nonprofit Lyfe were things that just flat out weren't true here. I even
like the actual people I work with- the people who are above me on the food
chain seem to have my back as much as you could ask people you work with to
have your back.
The place I work is generally Brown and Down.
With all of this, why would I dread going to
work? Shitty, racist people I can't tell what I feel about them. I should
probably provide some background…
As I said above, I work for a nonprofit that
offers a variety of services for people who need things- we have a food pantry
and clothes closet available twice a month for people who need it, a produce
sack available for anyone who needs it once a week, daily sack lunches for
anyone who might need it, a low-income home energy assistance program, and
emergency housing assistance to help with move-in costs and to help stave off
evictions. We also have employment services, an age 0-17 Education program, an
urban gardening program, as well as a policy and organizing wing. With such a broad array of ser, you can imagine there are always people in and out
receiving services as well as volunteers on-site, constantly. And our members
are reflective of poverty not just in the area, but nationally- which means
it's more black and brown than society is, generally.
Our volunteers, however, are reflective of
what I determine to be three, particular groups, reflecting different times in
the history of the organization. The organization has changed from a charity to
an organization focused on social justice and poverty alleviation. Some have been there since the beginning-
volunteering and donating from a time when the driving force behind any involvement
was just straight unadulterated Catholic guilt. Some of our volunteers are new
to the organization and have been around under only the metamorphosis. The
final set of volunteers, which would consist of most of our volunteers fall
in someplace that could only be classified as "the middle"- some of
them lean toward, for lack of a better description, Old and Shitty and Young
and Woke Willing.
Wow, I've been writing for a while, and I
haven't even described what happened this time to make me wish I could work
from a home office and come in for the occasional meeting. So what had happened
was…
I was sitting in the Admin office at my
cubicle. I'd just finished up a grant proposal that was due later that day, and
was in the process of "closing out the file"- making hard copies of
the application to put in the file folder, making soft copies of the file to
there is a paper as well as a digital copy of every application and was in the
process of updating the calendars when a woman walks in the Admin office, which
is, in and of itself, a bit strange: it's an office set back from the rest of
the building and is frequently locked. There are two doors in the office, and
the back door is the one closest to my cubicle. When you walk in the door, to
find my cubicle, you have to turn around, as my desk is behind the door. Also
to get to my desk, you have to pass another employee, as her cubicle is the
first, one you'd see if you turned around, but there's an entire office in
front of you. When the woman walks in, she looks like she is looking for
someone, but I'm doing work and figure the woman could ask my cubicle mate or
the HR manager, whose desk is a cubicle directly in front of where she was
standing. I look up, and she's looking DIRECTLY at me, which is odd, and she
looks bitter and angry, which is a look I have been known to draw out of
people, but not usually until I speak to them. When we make eye contact, she
barks at me "There are no paper towels in the women's room." This
took me aback for a few reasons: a) why are you angry at *me* about that- I
can't even go in the women's room, b) who are you and why do you think it's
OK to treat anyone that way, c) hey wait a second, there's a room FULL of
people here you could have asked, including my cubicle mate, who is actually
much closer to you than I am. But before I could make any comment, she had
stormed out of the office, and by this time, all the information had been
processed and it occurred to me that she barked orders at me about paper towels
because she assumed it was my job to stock the bathrooms, despite sitting
at a desk and working on grants when she summoned me.
It is infuriating: but mostly because this is
consistent with a theme since I have been working here. There are a lot of people who volunteer here
who have a hard time seeing past their implicit biases and don't believe they
even have them, which makes a discussion about their behavior even more
complicated. I have had three separate volunteers in six months treat me as
less than an equal. It's infuriating for a couple of reasons, but the most
important one is this one: if this is how they treat black and brown people
they are supposed to be equals to, how do you think they treat our members?
Having spoken to a fair amount of our black members and just asking them how
they are, I have heard more complaints about the way our volunteers treat our
black and brown members than I am comfortable with. They speak about the way
they're spoken to by some volunteers. One of the members used the term
"disgust" to describe how she felt she was treated- but "if you
need services, you need services. You get what you need and keep it
moving." The volunteer who came in Admin had a look of absolute disdain,
like that she couldn't believe she had to find me to come and do my damn
job and if that's what I felt like from my small exchange, I can't imagine
what kind of stuff she could project on our members.
It's also infuriating because I know that when
it happens, that I have two courses of action, both equally unfulfilling: I can just keep quiet,
pretend it didn't happen, and go walk out the anger and frustration (which is
my ordinary course of action) or I can file an Incident Report, where I tell
people who work here what happened, they track down the person (if they can) to
find out what happened (and I always wonder what would happen if they straight
denied it and it became a "my word vs. their word" issue- I do not
have confidence it would work out in my favor). Once the report is filed, and
the person is notified, then the org speaks with the person involved in the
incident and tells them "we've spoken to the person/will speak to the
person," there's usually a part of the conversation about training they
have done (which didn't work, clearly) or will be putting them through. And I
know the person will if they choose to return, will be allowed to return and
volunteer. Inevitably it means there's no real closure for me: I know that they
said some messed up shit, and then I get to see them a week or two later, and
the only thing that happens is that person is unwilling to look me in the
eyes. No apology. No recognition of wrongdoing. No acknowledgment of anything. I get the privilege to see them walk around here like nothing happened. Maybe a better phrasing would be "like nothing that matters happened."
And that's why, despite something happening to
me here about twice a month, I rarely say anything. I have no problem speaking
truth to power IF there is some level of recourse for doing so. It's hard. It's
painful because it requires to drudge up shitty, painful memories. It's harder
when you know doing so leads to no real change.
And that's why it's now hard to get out of bed
and go to work: because some racist shit is probably going to happen to me, and
I'm probably going to have to bite the bullet or be told the result of an inquiry was **literally** the same as if I'd just bitten the bullet.
And that sucks.
