EO Community Meeting No. 5

© Alex from the Rock/stock.adobe.com

Topic: How to challenge discrimination and other poor behavior as an active bystander at the work place.

Speaker: Emma Kaywin

Summary of Dr Emma Kaywin’s workshop on “How to Challenge Discrimination and Other Poor Behavior as an Active Bystander in the Workplace.”

By Jojo Vanhoecke

 

There are people who exhibit poor behavior, such as harassment, discrimination, microaggressions such as condescending jokes or other harmful comments. This poor behavior is present in all places of society, including in academics. The question is: what can we do about it when we witness this?

 

What is discrimination?

• That is any behavior in which a person is treated differently based on specific identities.

What is a microaggression?

• Commonplace verbal, nonverbal, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial/sexist/homophobic/ableist slights and insults to minority groups.
• This means, that it is in everyday life, can be something said, a behavioral act or other signal, that is often invisible to the perpetrator, but that is still very harmful and is directional to the victims’ identity.

How to act as a bystander in general? (= being an “upstander”?)

1. Distract

• • Ask the person doing the harassing a question
  • Ask them for help with something
  • Walk in of them
  • Get them into another room

2. Delegate

• • Find someone who is appropriate to help
  • Human resources, Supervisor, ombudsperson

3. Delay

• • You don’t have to handle an issue in the moment to help
  • Check in with the harassed person after
  • Help them re-establish safety (= important to mitigate a trauma reaction later)

4. Direct

• • Help the person receiving the harassment
  • Focus on the person being harassed, ask if they are okay or distract them
  • Break the focus of the harasser, let them know you are witnessing

5. Document

• • Documentation is important
  • Write down, document what you hear or see
  • Give documentation to the person being harassed for legal action or affirming their experience

How to interrupt a microagression?

1. Provide support

• • Sanity check
  • Build back up self esteem
  • Re-establish safety

2. Make the invisible visible

• • Call out
  • Call in

3. Disarm the microagression

• • Interrupt
  • Deflect
  • Act confused

4. Educate

• • Differentiate intent from impact

5. Constantly interrogate your biases

• • Validate the experiential reality of marginalized persons
  • Work to combat your own defensiveness
  • Be open to discussion your biases with others and how they may have hurt those around you
  • Work to become an ally to stand with marginalized populations (constant practice)

Reporting

1. Human resources is there for you

2. ReTune Ombudsperson

3. Documentation is helpful

• • Start at the very beginning
  • Be as detailed as possible
  • Include dates of incidents

4. Talking about harassment is not “gossip”

Resources

1. Hanna, F.J., Talley, W.B., & Guindon, M.H. (2000). The power of perception: Toward a model of cultural oppression and liberation. Journal of Counseling & Development, 78, 430-441.

2. Sue, D.W. (2010). Microaggressions in everyday life: Race, gender, and sexual orientation. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

• https://www.microaggressions.com/ and further examples:
  • “Have you talked to person x already?” “No, but they are only a technical assistant / research intern”
  • When talking: “The research of this Chinese guy showed …” instead of “The research of Dr. Zhang showed…”
  • In an email: “Dear Sirs of the Committee” instead of “Dear members of the Committee”
  • In an email: “Dear Angela” where “Dear Dr Merkel” would be a more appropriate form of address.
  • “Your idea on this research is probably not as important as that of Prof. Mustermann, because you are only a bachelor student.”
  • “It is not a problem that you did not know that. No worries! That is because what you studied in your own country is of course not as good as what we studied here [in Western country]”.
  • “At this conference I talked to this black person, who was doing research in… “
  • “Her poster design was really beautiful, and her dress was very pretty too”.
  • At the conference: asking a female black person for more coffee, who is actually a PhD student.
  • “I think you are a very good scientist, but why are you then religious?”
  • “We really don’t need to talk about discrimination in our lab, because there is no such thing here. Let’s talk about this publication.”
  • “I don’t need a pronoun tag, because I have normal ”
  • “You are currently at Harvard University, but where do you really come from?”
  • (Two persons in a dialogue at a conference):
    • “In which lab do you work?”
    • “I am working in the lab of Prof. Mustermann at the university of Berlin”
    • “What is he researching?”
    • “SHE is conducting research in neuroscience” (Question should have been, “What are they researching?”)
    • “Is that the reason you moved to Berlin?”
    • “More or less. I primarily moved to Berlin because my partner received professorship at the university of Berlin.”
    • “In which field is she doing her research?”
    • “HE is professor in Gender Studies”