Bobo Dakes
Member
So we hired this new guy at the start of summer, everyone SEEMS TO get along with him well enough, but he keeps rubbing me the wrong way with his racial humor. Maybe he's trying to be ironic, but here are four exchanges we've had since he started.
1. We were talking about a lunch, I said ”I'm feeling like Chinese (food)." His response, ”I don't know, you look black to me." Thought that was a weird comment and thought to myself ”Woah, new guy got comfortable pretty quick." Wasn't anything to get upset about, I can see the groundwork for that joke, I didn't laugh, but it was whatever.
2. A few weeks later, he needed a hand model for a picture, everyone in the room started looking at talking about each other's hands. Not at one point did I volunteer to be the model, but he still felt the need to single me out and say ”Your hands are too black." This caught the attention of everyone in the room. He apologized and just said he was kidding. We ended up doing a group shot of hands so I was in it anyway (even though I never asked to be).
3. A few weeks later I was complaining about having jury duty, his suggestion on how to get out of it was to say I'm a racist or wear a black lives matter shirt (now I'm wondering if he equates those two things), then another coworker chimed in with this brilliant gem ”Hey, you should say you're a part of ... what's that secret black group ... The Black Panthers, yeah, say you're a Black Panther." * sigh * This fucking job.
4. His latest thing (a day after the jury duty conversation) was probably the least bothersome, would've ignored it if it weren't for the previous exchanges. My manager brings her dog in, she loves everyone that has food and runs up to everyone begging, but only jumps on one of the coworkers when he's in his chair. She was begging me for lunch, but I didn't feel like picking her up, so I tried to make it as easy as possible for her to jump on my lap. She wouldn't so I ask out loud ”why do you only jump on so and so?" and that same coworker cuts in with ”well because he's white." And I'm just annoyed.
Tried to talk to a coworker who was there for the ”hands too black" moment and he thinks I'm looking too hard into it, of course, he doesn't see anything as racism unless it's a white person saying the n-word.
The people in my office tend to let out their ”casual" racism sporadically, I tend to let it go because most of the time it when they're just small comments mostly coming from a place of ignorance rather than something blatantly offensive. Though I do call it out when it's really bad, I pick my battles basically. They're all ignorant as hell when it comes to racial nuance, but I mainly get mad at this guy because it really does seem like he thinks me being black is a punchline.
We have HR but, it feels weird to contact her because everyone has said and done so many things they should've gotten in trouble before, it feels like a step backwards. Like getting pulled over for going 5 over the speed limit after you spent the night drunk driving. No one (to my knowledge) ever called out the guy that gave everyone in the office unwanted massages. At least two people were into it (the other 20 of us weren't) and I did walk in on him and an older employee rolling all over the floor together holding hands (surprisingly, it wasn't sexual, they were just like that with each other).
I guess my question is, how do you go about calling out that kind of thing in an office that's lax about everything. He's not gonna get fired. It's just gonna make things awkward and it's not like I plan on being here by the end of the year. Or is that a poor excuse just to avoid confrontation? It's tougher here because socially the managers want us to be this big family. I sit right next to this guy and 3 other people, so this isn't Tom who works 10 cubicles down.
And I don't want to make this thread specifically about my thing, please, share your experiences.
1. We were talking about a lunch, I said ”I'm feeling like Chinese (food)." His response, ”I don't know, you look black to me." Thought that was a weird comment and thought to myself ”Woah, new guy got comfortable pretty quick." Wasn't anything to get upset about, I can see the groundwork for that joke, I didn't laugh, but it was whatever.
2. A few weeks later, he needed a hand model for a picture, everyone in the room started looking at talking about each other's hands. Not at one point did I volunteer to be the model, but he still felt the need to single me out and say ”Your hands are too black." This caught the attention of everyone in the room. He apologized and just said he was kidding. We ended up doing a group shot of hands so I was in it anyway (even though I never asked to be).
3. A few weeks later I was complaining about having jury duty, his suggestion on how to get out of it was to say I'm a racist or wear a black lives matter shirt (now I'm wondering if he equates those two things), then another coworker chimed in with this brilliant gem ”Hey, you should say you're a part of ... what's that secret black group ... The Black Panthers, yeah, say you're a Black Panther." * sigh * This fucking job.
4. His latest thing (a day after the jury duty conversation) was probably the least bothersome, would've ignored it if it weren't for the previous exchanges. My manager brings her dog in, she loves everyone that has food and runs up to everyone begging, but only jumps on one of the coworkers when he's in his chair. She was begging me for lunch, but I didn't feel like picking her up, so I tried to make it as easy as possible for her to jump on my lap. She wouldn't so I ask out loud ”why do you only jump on so and so?" and that same coworker cuts in with ”well because he's white." And I'm just annoyed.
Tried to talk to a coworker who was there for the ”hands too black" moment and he thinks I'm looking too hard into it, of course, he doesn't see anything as racism unless it's a white person saying the n-word.
The people in my office tend to let out their ”casual" racism sporadically, I tend to let it go because most of the time it when they're just small comments mostly coming from a place of ignorance rather than something blatantly offensive. Though I do call it out when it's really bad, I pick my battles basically. They're all ignorant as hell when it comes to racial nuance, but I mainly get mad at this guy because it really does seem like he thinks me being black is a punchline.
We have HR but, it feels weird to contact her because everyone has said and done so many things they should've gotten in trouble before, it feels like a step backwards. Like getting pulled over for going 5 over the speed limit after you spent the night drunk driving. No one (to my knowledge) ever called out the guy that gave everyone in the office unwanted massages. At least two people were into it (the other 20 of us weren't) and I did walk in on him and an older employee rolling all over the floor together holding hands (surprisingly, it wasn't sexual, they were just like that with each other).
I guess my question is, how do you go about calling out that kind of thing in an office that's lax about everything. He's not gonna get fired. It's just gonna make things awkward and it's not like I plan on being here by the end of the year. Or is that a poor excuse just to avoid confrontation? It's tougher here because socially the managers want us to be this big family. I sit right next to this guy and 3 other people, so this isn't Tom who works 10 cubicles down.
And I don't want to make this thread specifically about my thing, please, share your experiences.
