26
AsklemmyOn an email with my manager I described a coworker I only worked with once as a small, thin woman that was either born in an East Asian country or has East Asian parents. I don't know this person's name. I don't see a better way to describe her all things considered.
The managers answer: it is disrespectful to describe people according to ethnic background or physical appearance.
My next question for this manager: dear manager, how should I describe this person then?
I don't know if I'm being genuinely disrespectful or this is a very thin skinned manager. Either way, I had to work with another coworker I didn't know either. This conversation with manager B ensued:
manager B: 'today you're working with mike'
me: 'who's mike?'
manager B: 'that fat guy'
make it make sense.
Send them a link to a game of guess who and ask them how you are supposed to figure out the coworker without using descriptive words.
If they want to hard make your boss describe them to you instead of you describing them so it is their problem not yours
You: hey boss I worked with a person do you know who I'm talking about?
Boss: there are three people here.
You: tell me about them so I can tell you who it was.
https://www.crazygames.com/game/guess-who-multiplayer
At a workplace, aren't there other identifiers? Their job title, their boss, how long they've worked there etc that can be used to identify them?
Who's Mike? He's in the sales team under Sally. I'll introduce you.
In the last few decades we've noticed that we've been treating each other like shit. We've used race, skin colour, ethnicity, weight, etc to insult others and reduce their social standing.
We're trying to fix that. As such, calling out those specific differences is frowned on, even if we aren't using them negatively.
Is this inconvenient? Yes. It's pretty easy to point out the only black/fat/disabled person in a work place. But we're really trying to avoid any conversations that could turn into insults or attacks.
So we now have an unwritten social rule that we avoid using those identifiers when talking about individuals.
You clearly don't live in the US if there is only 1 fat person in the workplace.
The baseline just changes
A lot of it has to do with equality and countering bias. If you're writing alt text for a photo or doing audio description for a video, then the recommended policy is that you either describe everybody's race or nobody's: if you only describe the races of minorities, and leave people to assume white when you don't describe people's races, then this plays into the idea that being white is the default and anything else is somehow "exotic" or "other" or whatever. By not describing people's races you also make it harder for whoever you're talking to to apply their own biases/prejudices towards the person you're talking about. Describing people's races excessively can also make it seem like you're yourself weirdly fixated on that one aspect of their being, which would be reductive.
This being said, I can only assume that your manager isn't some great anti-racist activist. They're really just trying to cover their (company's) ass, which is why they didn't explain the rationale very well (they don't actually understand it) and their behavior isn't consistent (they don't actually care). There is also nuance to all of this, too, naturally, since "colorblindness" is not true anti-racism, so there are cases where it's actually better to mention people's races/ethnicities than not mention it; and if certain features of appearance weren't stigmatized/racialized, they'd be just as suitable for a short description as any other feature. The problem is that you cannot easily teach these sorts of nuances to people who haven't actually experienced racial prejudice: white people will (deliberately) misunderstand the nuances or try to do borderline things. So you end up just getting these blanket bans and taboos on mentioning race that make the frank and actually important discussions about racism difficult.
This is how I understand it, at least. Bear in mind that I'm not racialized myself, but the other commenter — infuziSporg — is.
Edit: Turns out I misunderstood, infuziSporg is white.
It's disrespectful to refer to someone as "the fat guy" too, perhaps moreso.
I'm not sure exactly what you said, but if it was "a small, thin woman that was either born in an East Asian country or has East Asian parents", then that's pretty weird.
It may have also been unnecessary to describe the person at all. It depends on the context.
It’s disrespectful to refer to someone as “the fat guy” too, perhaps moreso.
As a fat dude, I think it's a perfectly valid way to describe me. It's not insulting nor in this case used to be derogatory, it's just a fact.
I didn't say it wasn't valid, I just said it's disrespectful. Generally, it is. While you're ok with it, not everyone who's fat is ok with it.
Calling the guy fat. Yeah kind of rude.
The way you described the lady. No nothing wrong with it.
Now if your comment was: just like people from Asia, good with math and impossible to understand.
Then yeah rude.
But how you said it. I’d say thin skinned manager. You described her in a way that it would be easy for your manager to figure out who you were talking about.
Also you are asking Lemmy, so I’m sorry but you are automatically wrong.
The way you described the lady. No nothing wrong with it.
If that's the actual phrasing he used, I think it was pretty weird. Not necessarily offensive, just weirdly specific in a strangely technical way. Something like "the small Asian lady" would get the point across while sounding less like you're some kind of robot or alien trying to classify her as a research specimen.
And the bit about either being from an Asian country or having Asian parents is kind of weird, for all OP knows her family might have been in the country for generations. People have a tendency to view people of Asian descent as a sort of perpetual foreigner, and that phrasing kind of feels like it's playing into that.
"East Asian" also feels needlessly specific. How likely is it that there's other women who otherwise fit the exact same description but are of, say, southeast Asian descent that OP needs to differentiate her from? I also think it's probably the kind of distinction a lot of people just won't understand. At least in the US I know I've had to explain what I'm talking about when I've talked about southeast Asia for example, a lot of people just don't think that much about geography, let alone know about the cultures and physical characteristics of people from different regions.
It just all feels like a weird way to describe someone. Personally, I wouldn't take it as rude, but it would definitely make me think that the person saying it is pretty odd and socially awkward.
Little Britain pokes fun of this sceanrio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrFBBCFrKaY
You can always say "straight black hair, brown eyes". Hair and eyes and height are common descriptors, and then maybe skin tone if necessary.
Someone who hasn't met someone has nothing to describe them by besides "physical appearance" but that doesn't mean trying to pinpoint their presumed origin.
You're reaching the fringe of this discussion! So, if he had said "dark brown eyes with epicanthic folds", is that a bridge too far? I think this is where this question gets messy and it's why people tend to either leave it well alone, or just wade in with no tact whatsoever.
It's a bit harsh to imply someone is racist because they use features to describe a person.
You're reaching the fringe of this discussion!
No I'm not. Quit using the cloud to do your thinking/forum posting for you, it's transparently pathetic.
I don't know, but if you put some more effort into remembering people's names you don't have to get into these situations in the first place. I say this as someone who's terrible at remembering names, but I have gotten better at it, and so can you.
Also, most times it's fine to just say "a coworker" without specifying who it is unless people ask.
And yet its how I see it used in Vancouver area by people of different ethnic backgrounds. Walk into Best Buy and ask for something specific, Sikh greeter says look for the brown guy near the iPads.
