who woke the business bro?

Sometimes I find myself in these conversations at work with a person I don't know very well who is explaining to me that, you know, George Floyd was murdered in 2020, it was an awakening, and they've been thinking about a lot of things. My response is always the same, and it's genuine - that's great, we should always be learning, progress is a team sport, and so on. Finding more people who are committed to these ideas is a rewarding part of the job, each one swelling our ranks one at a time, so despite the major setbacks represented by certain current events I remain convinced that we will win - we the people who see each other equally, who reject the bullshit that enables or excuses bigotry, who see the future as a place we will all share together. We will win.

There is something else I think about in these moments, however, and given that it's not an immediately helpful thought I mostly keep it to myself. If someone highlights 2020 as a turning point, then it means I have around a thirty year head start in terms of at least having some related topics in mind. Such a detail has no real meaning, of course, reflecting merely that I'm a two-time minority in his mid-thirties, but in a workplace context I suspect it means I have the equivalent of a few additional years of experience ahead of the class of 2020. For those who've endured far more serious forms of discrimination than me, the perspective they bring to the workplace is even greater than mine.

It might be necessary for me to work out a way to express this observation in a productive way. It always sounds good on paper to talk of "meeting people where they are", but what do you do when the variation within a workplace is as wide as the gap in math skills between a third-grader and a college graduate? I don't have the answer, but it surely isn't a few optional training sessions per year. I guess this is the age-old problem we are trying to solve - if you aren't among that privileged majority, then you either have to be twice as good at your job just to keep up with your peers or you can recite the company script while the advantage of your experience is eroded down to the corporate average.