Squarespace exec told staffer "you’re so black, you blend into the chair"

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Gulliver; you have a point when you say

“There are very few fire-able offenses in and of themselves. Most often termination is a matter of ongoing behavior. And not simply for ethical reasons. Termination for cause requires documentation if you don’t want to end up paying unemployment or a court-ordered fine.”

Kelly is obviously the best example of a racist psychopath who has no place working in a multicultural environment. One would think in this day and age, an Internet business would not tolerate such "dirty"behaviors. Hopefully everyone will move their pages else where, word will get out. The place will either shut down or change the culture.

Racism and sexism are very prevalent in the work place these days. I worked in a place where people screamed; no one gave a heads or “new employee” need to know information. It took six months, but I changed the culture. I didn’t give a damn that employees were so freaking ignorant and racist. The company was owned by a Black Man who was never in the office; he was a creative type. It was a consultant gig. The money was lousy, I was actually working three professional positions for impoverished wages. The DOL fined the organization and they had to pay unemployment.

Why am I saying this. I’m older, I’ve matured and I’m damn good at what I do. In the end the CEO promised the job to someone who failed. Was the white female CEO racist? She works for a black man. I’d give her a low rating of under 20%; she had tendencies; she exposed them, probably never knew it. My experiences are intimidating.

The CFO who hired me quit; there was ugly fall out. Racism is one screwed up factor of our society. If a company culture is racist; they need to be exposed; tell everyone you hate blacks, latinoes, asians, yadda, yadda so people can stay the hell away.

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My experience as a pointy-haired manager was that there are broadly speaking two interacting continuums of racism, ambient and harassment. Ambient racism is baked into the culture. I’m ambient racist. Everyone is, even the minorities it unfairly disadvantages. But I found that if you let the ambient racism go unchecked, you end up with harassment. The same principle applies to ambient sexism and sexual harassment, which I had more experience dealing with anecdotally. The hurdle in modern Western civilization, and the US in particular, is that racism is seen only as something you yourself do, not an insidious bias embedded in our very culture. So no one wants to admit it or allege it, because that’s seen as a personal impugnment. But then the ambient prejudices slide and the harassment has an environment in which it can blossom unchecked.

The black chair incident was harassment, but things like that happen when management doesn’t attend to the ambient culture.

ETA: I was actually pretty fortunate. I co-founded with two other partners (my college roommate and an investor who groked the tech we wanted to create) a successful start-up. When I asked my partners to buy me out so I could go back to grad school and pursue my life-long passion for physics, we had about fifty full-time employees and about 40 independent contractors. Even at that middling-small size, in a company that addressed problems and working with partners who understood how insidious office politics could become, there were always issues. And because my skill-set was being the bridge between the various teams and management, and we only had one HR person (this was a while ago now, I know the role of HR has expanded since), I wound up doing most of the mediating, documenting, damage control, client babysitting, and other assorted personnel-related tasks. It got old real fast.

One reason I finally moved back to academia was because my partners wanted to merge with a much bigger company, and I didn’t want to deal with those problems in a more entrenched environment where I would have to answer to someone else to solve these kinds of problems. I don’t blame my partners, the money for the buyout was right (though the parent company ended up mismanaging the IP and trained personnel they inherited in the acquisition, which both makes me glad I left when I did and sad to see a decade of my life’s work squandered).

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It would seem very clear that this is all about simple respect. And the lack that exist between the manager and the staff person. And yes it is racial and no it is not innocent and no big thing. If any of us were disrespected in some way that we find important and demeaning it would hurt and embarrass. Especially in a business environment where how we are regarded is important to our future compensation.

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I actually worked at Squarespace and can partially confirm what Amelie relates. Not so much in terms of the actual event, but the attitude of the executives and higher management. Although “Kelly” is not working at Squarespace any longer, the micro aggression evident in comments about certain cultures, minorities or ethnic/religious groups is definitely a fact that I experienced myself. When raising awareness about it with Supervisors I was told that everybody has the right to express their thoughts. I was directly verbally reprimanded and only after I said that I consider those kind of comments and attitude borderline harassing I was left alone.
I don’t think at all that Amelie was dramatizing the incident - good to say now that those managers are now gone from Squarespace. Me, too!

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From what Amelie said, and from your confirmation as well as the person earlier who spoke of working there… the squarespace “culture” almost comes off as a cult to me. If you drink the coolaid and know the right people, you’re gunna have a good time. If you… don’t… welp. Good luck with that, you’re probably going to feel awful.

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Yup, that’s pretty much how it went!

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Some women have been taught social graces. Being nice, saying thank you, looking you in the eye when speaking or smiling to fake the workplace “funk” does not mean she is coming on to some guy. Southern men and women may tend hold some “graces” that can be read the wrong way by others.

This young lady, sorry to say, stepped over the line when she told the guy she liked him. She should have been stronger, much stronger before admitting a crush, unless it was “love at first sight,” engagement ring, wedding in the near future. Note: I am stepping over the line making this comment. No need to go any further. I do not fault her, but when I read the sentence, I felt bad for her.

NYC is a people watching classroom when taking mass transportation. I love watching; sunglasses on, you can really get a good look at people. Everyone looks at someone; the whites on the train always have very weird looks during rush hour where and when the typical black woman without weave, fake nails and MK purses get on the train. The stares are really rude, but they probably feel they have the ultimate privilege to do it. One can easily tell when there is the ambient (you called it; I call it inherent) racism where not a woman and her man stares, but the children (from toddler to young adult) will stare with such strange looks; it’s hard not to just say "WTF are you staring at?"
or burst out laughing, loud.

Much of the mental health industry or whomever is in charge of measuring the psychology of Post Slavery Traumatic Syndrome (which affects both whites, blacks and others who come here to fit in to their workplace) really need to take a strong look, read and listen to Professor Joyce DeGruy; let her come into your place and give a good try at working on PSTD.

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GulliverFoyle; I really appreciate this discussion.

Ambient racism, my grandmother called “Inherent racism.” You’re right, everyone has it. I have it, I know it, I’ve worked, read history, learned history of black people really unknown to most and i try and keep it in check. I give myself a good grade for it. I give everyone that 3-5% inherent racist factor, or as you say ambient racist factor.

I love your explanation of the ambient culture. You’re right. I’ve worked in progressive offices before and young people may have ambient or inherent behaviors (according to geographical locations), but with the right office culture; different people work well together.

I worked in the World Trade building before it was demolished. The culture in the entire city at that time was multi-cultured progressive. I remember working as a PM at a major investment bank and it was so much fun. There were (all American) young white progressive female; smart as a whip; a couple of young white men; very well mannered; myself (Black American; slave descendant) Spanish New York born male; a young woman who was born in Portugal (had to get over her racism; but when she did, we were best buddies) along with our clients from the bank departments. We had a great time working together; it was the best work experience I’ve had thus far.

Then an uneducated white male; racist tendencies came into the mix, flirtatious, good looking, lazy and not too smart; he changed the mix. He’s from one of those places where racism is evident, spoils the milk in any well multi-cultured work situation. Another racist pig came from a southern state; created problems, then left the company.

My grams used to always say, look at yourself first, do the right thing no matter what and do not think about the person’s race, think about their character when you are dealing with them. I keep that in the forefront of my dealings. When i experience racism with the knowledge, it’s easy to push past it, see it, but push past it.

Knowing who I am, where I came from and my craft first is what goes into the workplace. AS a black woman with knowledge of the PMI PMP process down to practiced science for manufacturing, oil refinery, technology (investment banking) and mass transportation; I can handle most industries, I come across as arrogant to many. However if I were a white male; I’d be CEO of some major engineering firm by now.

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This is, hands down, the best explanation of microagressions I have ever read/heard. As the member of a monority community I thank you so much for this.

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I just saw the movie Brooklyn. It was cute, I really enjoyed it; I loved when the young plumber told the young Irish woman he loved her; he was looking, he found a great catch and he jumped on it.

She didn’t know what to say when he admitted his love for her. I love that she was mentally mature enough to really think about it; ask her housemate about love and then admit she could be in love too.

This has nothing to do with Squarespace; but some idiot telling you he loves you in the work place makes me want to go EEEEW!!! Love in the romantic sense is very different from some “lusty” emotion that comes and goes according to the hormone level of the day.

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It however quite limits your options when pretty much all the people you see on more constant/frequent basis are in your workplace. Some are not blessed with wide out-of-work social circles.

That’s what you get when you have too many lawyers around.

You, man, are lucky. Many others aren’t.

And better dragons than nothing.

…re dragons…

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No, that’s what you get when people try to hook up with their coworkers and it turns out that their coworkers just want to, you know, do their job without people trying to pick them up.

You keep saying that but…whatever.

Not if it gets you fired and then taken to court.

You do realize that women probably want to go through their workday without some guy at work hitting on them, right?

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Well, there we go then.

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There’s obviously an innocent explanation. Proof:

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Likewise. It’s not the sort of discussion one can really have down in the trenches. It’s nice to have a discussion about some of these things.

I think a lot of whites have this notion of white guilt which, while understandable and well-meaning, becomes a kind of cop-out. Like original sin, it becomes a way for them to feel penance and then, because they feel they’ve felt penance, to feel some reprieve from it, a way to ignore the ambient/inherent racism. Guilty feelings don’t help anyone. Deeds do.

White guilt is almost like the role of confession in the Catholic Church. In fact, I think it stems at least in part from how certain Christian sects have historically interpreted Isaiah 64:6…

“But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.”

I’m an atheist, but I know my history, and the Bible is inextricably embedded in history.

But owning the one’s participation in a prejudicial society doesn’t solve the problems. So I always say, when you’re plugged into a system where injustices are inherent (racism, sexism, classism), don’t feel guilty for being in the Matrix, feel guilty for every chance you can do something, whether large or small, about it but don’t. It’s been said that eternal vigilance of others is the price of freedom. I add that eternal vigilance of one’s self is the price of justice.

I’ve not seen it, but now I want to :slight_smile:

Yeah, it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people in a lot of different situations. It’s not a bad word, but it’s super-subjective. And I think I get what you’re saying about love-at-first-sight (even though that’s not exactly how I’d put it). Some people are going to prioritize their affinity for each other over workplace prudence. If that a good thing? The question is sort of academic since they’ll do it anyway. That’s what I meant when I said banning office romance was a futile battle. But a lot of younger people in the workforce aren’t impelled into it by being head-over-heels, but by being naive and lonely. Discouraging those romances is not a bad thing, IMHO.

I will say that the best time to say I love you is after you’ve demonstrated it to the person you’re already with; then they know what you mean because you’ve shown them and are just putting it into words. Telling someone I love you to get them to be with you is often youthful nievety about what love is (not realizing there’s much more to it than an emotion), and other times it’s shady manipulation.

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Ding ding ding!!!

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You didn’t have to deal with decades of loneliness that gets worse when there are people around.

That can be considered an acceptable risk.

When your options are limited, you work within the available options.

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So you’re saying there’s something about you that makes hitting on women at work a viable option, but going out somewhere after work and doing so is not? If so, what exactly is it about you and you’re supposedly limited options that you’re talking about?

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This took over (and eventually effectively shut down) another thread within the last two weeks. This is probably not a viable direction of questioning.

Start here and read @shaddack’s reponses to the end of the thread: Is it OK to torture a robot? - #260 by shaddack

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