A senior colleague whom I otherwise genuinely admire recently had a very public, loud conversation with me (within earshot of other colleagues' offices) in which they included some fairly unmistakably racist remarks. I was pretty stunned and fumblingly tried to change the subject as best I could, but now I'm kicking myself for not having just fled the conversation at once, or figured out a way to more definitively show my non-assent to those views. What can/ what should I do?
I'm in a junior probationary position in an education-adjacent workplace. The remarks in question concerned affirmative action. I'm especially confused because this is a colleague whom I know to be relatively left on the political spectrum, and who's an excellent critical thinker-- I have no idea where this came from, whether it was some sort of odd test/joke, or what they were thinking. The remark, unfortunately, was prompted by my mentioning score distributions in general (across a broad population we work with, absolutely without reference to race or similar factors). When they made the assertion, I initially kind of couldn't believe that was what they were talking about, asked for explanation (which they gave, in no uncertain terms), then sort of weakly said something like "oh, well, I haven't noticed anything like that, definitely beyond my remit to comment on." I then tried to change the subject, and closed the conversation on a jokey note.
I've been obsessively replaying the interaction and can give details of my half of things if it'd help. I'm shy and reflexively adopt a people-pleasing attitude in conversations with superiors, so while I definitely didn't verbally agree with anything, I have no idea if my level of friendly politeness at the end sounded problematic given the objectionable character of the remarks. I also wonder whether my initial discussion of statistics and metrics, in light of what followed, could somehow read to an observer like a dogwhistle for these views.
This is a situation well beyond my very limited level of office political competency. I feel as though I haven't always clicked in general with colleagues, and am now dreading years of interactions, including possible performance reviews, in which everybody secretly despises me as a horrible racist-by-association. Since Colleague has been otherwise great and is apparently well-regarded in the workplace, I'm also, maddeningly, wondering whether there was the slightest possibility that they could have been somehow testing me to see if I'd repudiate things more energetically? Or could I have possibly misunderstood? All my anxious instincts to revisit, clarify with colleagues, and engage are almost certainly wrong here, but that's all I can think about.
If anyone could weigh in on (a) how concerned I should likely be, and (b) what I should do about it, it'd be much appreciated. Throwaway email at helphelpnotracistreally at gmail dot com. Thanks! |
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