Systemic Jerks

A few years back, I worked for a bigot. She didn't like the color of my skin. At staff meetings, where I was the only member of my race, there was plenty of racial commentary every week.

For the two review cycles that I worked for her, she gave me the worst reviews and worst raises / bonuses of my life. It wasn't close. If I recall, I got zero one year. Her annual write-ups of my performance were nasty and bore no resemblance to what she had said for the previous 51 weeks. The first time I got her performance appraisal, I was stunned. I spoke to her about it and immediately saw that she wasn't going to tell me anything useful.

She simply didn't like me because of my race.

So what? I stuck around for another year because I liked the work and felt I was doing something important. There were plenty of other places I could work, both within and without the organization. In fact, the reason it lasted only two years was that she moved on to another job. I would have stuck with it because I liked the work that much.

Was she a racist? Yes. Was she a jerk? Also, yes. So what was the best way to describe her, a racist or a jerk?

I'd argue that she was just a jerk.

When you complain about having to work with a jerk, everyone knows you're talking about an isolated individual. The solution is simple: escape the jerk. We all know jerks, but, more importantly, we all know that there aren't that many of them. Getting away from a boss who is a jerk usually isn't that hard. Sure, you might have external circumstances tying you to the jerk, but that's typically not the case.

If we call her a racist, that changes the tone of the conversation dramatically. Everyone immediately starts thinking about race and hate and generalizes to the population as a whole. However, since we know she's a jerk, we can see that those generalizations are our own creations.

I'm writing this to collect my thoughts as a response to friends of mine who are in love with the idea of systemic racism. They see it everywhere. If, instead, they saw individual jerks, their construct of systemic racism would dissolve.

Conclusion: If you can easily go somewhere else to escape the unpleasant person, you're dealing with a jerk. If you find unpleasant people everywhere you go, all motivated by race, you're dealing with systemic racism. Next time I get into one of these conversations, I'll try out that line of reasoning.

I could just easily have called her one of these.

Note how the atmosphere of a conversation changes based on how you characterize a bad boss. If you say they're a jerk or a female dog, it's not really that big of a deal. If you say they're a racist, all bets are off.