Let’s Talk About Second Chances
Sorry about all that. Where were we? Oh yes, for those unfamiliar, or who may have forgotten, welcome to Productivity, Without Privilege. I’m your humble host, Alan Henry, author of Seen, Heard, and Paid: The New Work Rules for the Marginalized. I recently had a chance to listen to a few chapters of the audiobook, and Landon Woodson’s voice guiding you through the chapters is way better than I probably could have done, so if you haven’t had a chance to listen and you like consuming your books in audio format, please do give it a try.
As for where I’ve been, let’s call it an unintentional hiatus, but I’m here now, and ready to chat. I should, however, say that if you entered my book giveaway and your address has changed, just hit reply and let me know! I'm setting up the packages to go out this week, so if I need to change your address, just let me know and I'll fix it (or, if you get this too late, let me know and I'll send you a fresh book to your current address!)
Now then, there’s nothing worse than a creator who spends more time on why they’ve been gone than they spend back into their creation, so let’s get right to it, shall we? This week I want to talk about second chances, and who gets to have them.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how in life (and in death,) marginalized groups, especially people of color and LGBTQ+ people, are expected to show forgiveness when they are forced into contact with the people, organizations, or platforms that abused them. When a Black man is brutalized by police, he’s expected to show forgiveness amid the hope of just getting back to the status quo. When a massive company discriminates against its customers en masse, or a media company just happens to lay off all of its people of color, the affected party is always expected to show resilience, a turn-the-other-cheek view, and always be willing to offer an olive branch in the interest of, again, returning to the status quo.
Instead of asking why it’s their victims that lose sleep over their actions while they sleep peacefully, interviews ask the abused if they forgive the person who hurt them. Companies dedicate a chunk of marketing budget to a non-profit to make the story go away. Journalism pretends to have a “reckoning” and then does no such thing. Our society did the same.
And through all of this, the same people and organizations responsible for the harm they’ve caused cycle back and forth through their industries, free from accountability and remorse for the things they’ve done. And when they do inevitably emerge from mediocrity or obscurity to make waves, not only is forgiveness the order of the day, but so is the expectation that the responsible party get “a second chance.”
The second chance, weaponized to maintain the status quo, is most often trotted out when someone with a track record of abusive, manipulative, or other psychologically unsafe behavior tries to rehabilitate their image or move on like nothing happened.
“Doesn’t everyone deserve an opportunity to show they’ve grown?”
Is one iteration of what you’ll hear, usually demanding you subsume your trauma, your worries and fears, and most importantly, your own safety—physical, psychological, or even professional—and we’ve discussed the importance of psychological safety in the past (although I get the feeling that I may have to revisit the topic soon.) The desires of the privileged override the needs of the marginalized. And it’s not that I don’t think people deserve second chances. In fact, we’ve discussed what it means to do the work necessary to really earn that second chance before, and how important it is to be able to make mistakes and learn from them.
Few people understand this duality more than disabled individuals, or immunocompromised people, both of whom saw the care and attention we were starting to treat our society with during the Covid-19 pandemic and thought that perhaps we were on the way to a more accessible, community health conscious society. We saw how that’s panned out, and we’re continuing to see it in the form of the Covid wave we’re currently in the middle of.
But of course, the desires of the privileged—whether it’s to get back to the office, to brutalize with no consequences, to refuse to work with a union, to remove people of color from their industry (and their sight)—always seem to be more important than the basic needs of the people forced to deal with them. Whether those needs are intangibles like psychological safety at work and the freedom to do your work without fear of reprisal, or they’re highly tangible and specific, (like a physically safe and disease-free work environment that’s also free from harassment or discrimination,) they all seem to be soft things that should be “nice to haves” when it comes time to let an abuser into your midst.
Here’s the thing though: you don’t have to forgive. You certainly can, if you feel that’s the right move for you. But especially once you’ve been abused or the target of someone else’s actions, you should never feel a forced responsibility on you to play nice when society should be punishing the systems or the people who have wronged you. Of course, walking away from problematic situations like that requires its own privilege, usually monetary or class privilege. So for those who don’t have the money or options to never interact with their abusers again, my advice is never ever forget, even if you choose to forgive. You know how it goes: you don’t have to be kind to be nice. That applies to family, coworkers, companies, or businesses.
I wish I could say I have some grand advice here to deal with that when you run into it. All I can say is that a lot of the suggestions we’ve shared to protect yourself at work and the right way to advocate for yourself are the ones you (and I) should remember. When you go from a space of psychological safety in your field to one where you don’t have that, you have to begin treating your company, your job, your industry, or whatever else as a potential threat instead of a potential collaborator. A place where you need to watch your guard and protect yourself rather than dedicate yourself to your best work. Ideally, that’s not the kind of place you would have to spend 40 hours a week (or, most likely, more,) but the rent and bills don’t wait for you to find someone who won’t sacrifice you and your career to the pyre of venture capital. So it falls to the rest of us to look out for ourselves, and each other.
My real takeaway here is pretty simple: in a world where whisper networks and small communities do a great job of letting people know what, who, and where they should avoid, they’re even more important when we’re ambushed by the intractable systemic issues that underpin any industry or field of work. So lean into them when you need to, and when you are inevitably ambushed by the systems that seek to marginalize you, take time to rest, recover, and readjust.
Then fight for yourself, and your dreams, like hell.
[ Worth Reading ]
Fortune: Bosses who want their workers to be more productive are better off sharing their salary than forcing them back to office, by Jane Their: The beauty of this piece is that it points out that if you’re a manager and you want your team to “be more productive,” and I mean that in the “specific and measurable ask” way, not the generic and intangible, “I’ll know if I feel like you are” way, the best thing you can do is level with your team about your salary and the salaries of everyone else.
New research suggests that by sharing salary information, people work harder. Not just to overcome any discrepancies they see among themselves, but because the attitude of fairness fosters a sense of collaboration and transparency, not to mention accountability from management. Wild, people are more likely to give you their all if you don’t keep secrets from them and pit them against each other. Imagine that.
Harvard Business Review: Why You Should Take on More Stretch Assignments, by Jahna Berry: Before I took my job at WIRED, I spoke to Jahna Berry, and asked her what I should know before tossing my hat into the ring, and what she thought of Conde Nast as an employer. She was kind enough tot ake time to answer my questions and give me some insight, for which I’ll forever be grateful. That also means when she sets pen to paper to offer career advice, I’m going to read it.
This piece is a master class, especially for marginalized people (but not exclusively!) who want to stretch their career wings and try new projects or reach new opportunities, and who want to know how to manage themselves, their projects, and their own manager’s expectations all while doing what’s necessary to get the job done. As the title suggests, a “stretch” project is one that you’ll have to grow your skills and abilities into, like a new promotion or initiative at work. They can be terrifying (trust me, my last promotion was as scary as it was exhilarating) and sometimes you can feel alone, but this piece offers some excellent tips.
HR Dive: Why trans inclusion is a matter of total rewards, by Caroline Colvin: It’s no secret that the sheer existence of transgender people is under attack in more than a few places in the world right now. The “issue” of trans rights and freedoms is being used as a political wedge to keep people from rallying socially to address common problems and stand up against discrimination in our culture, and this piece in HR Dive explains why so many trans employees are terrified of being out at work, even if they want to be. And then there are so many others who never make it through the door because of implicit (or explicit) bias. This article is just one piece on a recent panel, but it is nice to see some organizations taking the issue seriously, not just in terms of worker inclusion and productivity, but also in the more human terms of how it impact he mental health of the queer community.
[ Try This ]
I’m renaming this section because, despite the fact that I still love “See You, Space Cowboy” as a manner of parting, I always wanted this section of the newsletter to be dedicated to something actionable I can give you. I’m a service journalist at heart, so everything I write is with the goal of giving you tools, tips, techniques, or even just some moral support that you can use to succeed in whatever field or endeavor you choose.
So while I did link it above, I want to call some special attention to Word In Black’s dive back in May on whatever happened to that so-called “racial reckoning” in journalism, that was so promised and alluded to after George Floyd was brutally murdered in 2020? And just speaking as someone who’s been in journalism that entire time, I’ve seen no real action of consequence industry-wide unless it’s come at the behest of and the effort of journalists of color. Is hiring and retention for journalists of color getting better in our industry? Not especially. What about journalists of color in leadership positions? No significant change there either.
In fact, for the feature, the team working on it reached out to a dozen Black journalists at various publications, and none of them would speak (except one!) for fear or retribution at their organizations. And this is three full years after every newsroom promised to stop taking police statements as fact uncritically, or to diversify their staffs and hiring practices, or diversify their sources in stories, or even the lowest possible bar: holding themselves accountable for discrimination and racism in their own newsrooms.
The picture is pretty bleak. We can see the results of those empty promises and grand overtures in the whittled down, mandatory webinars everyone has to take every year. Sound familiar?
This is where the “what you can use” part comes in. If you’re a journalist of color, that all probably sounds awful (it does to me too, make no mistake,) but the latter half of the piece highlights not only other Black journalists and their own advice for surviving in this industry, but also a number of Black owned or Black directed media organizations that may be worth a look for you if you’re interested.
While this isn’t the responsibility of this pub whatsoever, I’d love to see similar coverage for my Latinx friends, especially as in many major cities around the country they’re living in growing and thriving communities but they’re not at all represented in the journalism that’s supposed to serve them. Same for the queer community, in fact. All of us deserve the utmost in transparency and fair treatment in our industries, and if mainstream or legacy places can’t offer it, we should be able to go where we can be our whole, true selves, and use our lived experiences to inform our work.
Give the piece a read, and if you have thoughts or have seen similar coverage at other outlets, just hit reply and let me know. Similarly, if you ever run into something I definitely have to try, a book I should really read, or a story that you read (or even worked on!) never hesitate to send it to me, I love hearing from you even if I don’t have time to reply to everyone.
Thank you for taking this ride with me! It’s not over, not by a long shot. I’ll be back soon.