Flipping the Double Standard

I saw this tweet last week, and I thought of job interviews:

“Imagine the media treatment of Kamala if she had five children by three different men. Then add in having sex with a porn star.”

Of course, on the surface, this is political commentary. But the argument it’s making is relevant to the workplace. 

This commentator’s bias is pretty conscious. But he’s using a technique that organizations can use to help them hire and retain more diverse employees. Kristen Pressner called it “flip it and test it” in her TED talk “Are You Biased? I Am.” 

It’s hard to see our own unconscious bias—that’s why it’s called unconscious. But we can run a simple thought experiment to spot double standards. 

As Pressner explains, the idea is to imagine someone with a different gender behaving in the same way, and ask yourself if you’d make the same judgment about them in that case. 

Whether you’re evaluating a candidate for president or a candidate for a job, it’s a useful test. 

When you’re preparing for an annual review and assessing an employee’s attitude, communication style, or leadership, flip it and test it. You might notice a tendency to judge men vs. employees with other genders differently for speaking assertively, or taking time off for family needs. 

When you’re considering someone for a raise, a promotion, or a stretch assignment, flip it and test it. Do you find it easier to imagine an employee with a particular gender playing certain roles or managing certain responsibilities on your team?

Flipping and testing works for any type of bias—not just gender, but also race, age, culture, and so on.

And it’s not a bad practice for election season either.

Identity Politics Isn’t All Or Nothing

Last Monday morning—the day after Vice President Kamala Harris looked like she would become the first Black and Asian woman to head a presidential ticket—I was cruising through Facebook. 

One of my old college friends saw that I had changed my profile pic in support. 

He commented: “Hey, do you like her because she’s part Jamaican lol?” 

My initial reaction was, “Wait a minute—what…?”

Is he making an assumption that I can’t think beyond a shared identity? That women are only going to vote for a female candidate because she’s a woman, or that people of color can’t resist a POC running for office? Maybe he is implying that what some people call “identity politics’ drowns out every other possible factor for me.

All this went through my head for a split second—and then I reread the comment. My friend hadn’t actually said “the only reason.” 

That would have pissed me off. 

Clarence Thomas is Black. And I don’t like him or what he’s done—notwithstanding the fact that he is Black. 

There are women I don’t align with. The way Representative Elise Stefanik treats other women, including university presidents, offends me. 

It’s rude to assume that you know why someone likes a candidate based on something superficial. It suggests that people can’t think beyond affinity. In our discourse around the election, let’s talk about policies and approaches. 

Fortunately my friend wasn’t implying this—he was just teasing someone he knows really well. My reply? 

“It's not the only reason, but it certainly helps! Doesn’t everybody want to be part Jamaican?”

DEI This And DEI That

DEI mayor. DEI Secret Service. DEI president.

We all know what’s going on here.

The acronym DEI has been weaponized. Shorthand for saying someone is incompetent or undeserving because of their race, gender, or other identity. 

Used the way “affirmative action” was sometimes used: as a euphemism for, basically, the “N-word.” 

The people weaponizing the acronym are doing it intentionally. They are showing their conscious biases against people of color and women. 

And they are catering to, and counting on, tapping into the implicit biases of the broader population. 

It’s how our brains work, given the messages we’ve received all our lives. 

This makes it easier for some people to readily accept that Kamala Harris—an accomplished attorney general, senator, and Vice President—is less qualified to be president than, say, a white male writer of a memoir or a reality TV host.

Or to blame the Black mayor of Baltimore for the collapse of the bridge that was hit by a tanker.

Or to immediately assume that the secret service failed to adequately protect candidate Trump because it is now being run by a woman.

DEI has become a handy slur. Maybe you've heard it used in your organization—"a DEI hire"—or even been described that way yourself.

Using new code words doesn’t make the ideas any less offensive—or inaccurate.