Advice for a college student on dealing with a situation involving racism

As far as I can remember, the email below is a first for me over the past 6 years of responding to reader questions on this blog.

The author of the message is a college student who asked for my advice in dealing with racism. As you all know, this is a huge topic and there is no single right answer on how to tackle the issue. It is probably even tougher to handle for a kid who is in college, so I admire this person for being willing to ask for counsel about it.

Unfortunately, it’s something that I’ve had to face several times throughout my life and it certainly isn’t an easy play. As a result, I’ve thought about it a lot and came up with a somewhat structured approach over the years that works well for me, but may not work for others. That said, I offered my approach to this student as a starting point to come up with one of his/her own.

Usually, I try to anonymize the names of folks who email me by only using their initials when posting their emails, but, given the sensitivity of this matter, I’ve just inserted “[Anonymous]” as the person’s name. The last thing I’d want is for someone from this student’s school to randomly come across this blog post and be able to figure out who it was who reached out to me.

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[Anonymous] wrote:

Hello Marquis,

My name is [Anonymous] and I am a [Major withheld] student at [College withheld].

I ask how you deal with racism, especially in a situation where responding is not feasible. If you have a couple of minutes, I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter!

Thank you,

[Anonymous]

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My response:

Hi [Anonymous],

I’m sorry that it took a while for me to get back to you about your question. I just got back to Chicago a couple of hours ago after a work trip to Europe.

In all of the years that I’ve been giving advice to people, I don’t think anyone has ever emailed me with a question like yours. Of course, I’ve discussed it with people live before, but I’ve never tackled it via email as a forum. It’s interesting for me to think about how to address it after thinking about it instead of responding on the fly as in a verbal dialogue.

When tackling an issue with racism, I’d recommend that you take a strategic approach to doing so:

• Assess whether you’re truly facing a case of racism: This may seem like a basic thing, but, in my experience, there are some situations where a person THINKS that he/she is facing racism and others where the person KNOWS that racism is in present. It is important to understand whether your situation is the former or the latter because that will play a big role in whether/how to act. This is especially important when you’re facing this situation in an academic or professional setting because the long-term impact of how you proceed could be huge. Net-net, it is crucial that you confirm that you’re dealing with racism before you take action because the negative implications of a false-positive here could be difficult, if not impossible, to come back from.

• Determine your course of action: Once you’re sure that you are truly facing a case of racism, you have to figure out what to do. Most people would react directly to the racist situation, but, in an academic/professional setting, this wouldn’t be a good move. This is a sensitive sort of thing to manage, so it would have to be done delicately. I’d suggest the following steps:
  1. Start keeping very detailed notes on the actions that have made you feel that you are being mistreated due to your race. You’ll want to note specific conversations, comments, emails, and other actions along with the dates and context for when these things happened. Some people would try to make a claim at a high level to say that these behaviors have happened over a long period of time, but I’m a big fan of capturing as many details as possible to demonstrate a pattern of behavior that can be linked to specific actions, thereby helping you meet any burden of proof. Instances where one feels that they are being mistreated due to racism (or sexism or any other reason) can be very subjective and, as such, evidence is crucial when trying to find a resolution outside of you responding directly to the person.

  2. Reach out to some of your peers to see if they’re facing a similar situation. If there is truly an issue related to race, then it would make sense for there to be other people like you who may have faced the same issue. There’s strength in numbers and, if others are facing the same issue, that may make it easier for you to push for something to be done about the problem.

  3. Reach out to a more senior colleague (e.g., Manager, professor, college administrator) to discuss the situation and get their feedback. This offers the benefit of you making someone else aware of the situation that has you worried and gives that person a chance to provide advice based on their knowledge of how things work in the organization. Also, this is a sort of “cover your butt” move that allows you to say that you haven’t kept the story to yourself in the event that things blow up in your face.

  4. The final step would be to go to someone who is in the position to stop the behaviors that are impacting you. As you mentioned in your email, you aren’t in the position to respond directly, but, in most cases, there is someone who should be able to intervene, provided that there is enough information upon which he/she can act. This is where everything that I’ve suggested in steps #1-#3 come into play. Share all of this information with this senior official and ask for something to be done to resolve the situation. While it is possible that this person will do nothing, you’ll know that have done everything in your power to prove that something is wrong and, at that point, you will have done everything that you could to handle it through any official channels available to you. After this point, I think you’d be justified in responding directly to the person who is mistreating you.

I know that what I’ve mapped out here may seem like a long drawn-out process, but, when it comes to these types of situations, I believe that one needs to address it strategically in order to lessen the chances of his/her claims being ignored by people in the position to help.

I hope this response was helpful to you. I couldn’t get any more specific on the advice without knowing the details of your situation.

Marquis