Tag: discrimination

Clash of Organizational Cultures

Not to be confused with the often quoted ‘clash of civilizations’ between the East and West, lately I’ve observed an equally significant disconnect between assumed expectations and the ensuing chaos when those around us behave otherwise. The physic disruption this kind of gap has caused in my own life over the past ten months is related to the way other people’s nonsensical choices contradict the symbolic order of my life as I’d like to live it. And the result has been irritation, rage, frustration: the desire to not stand and fight but to flee.

And I’m noticing the effect it has on others….

Little things, for example, such as the position of a desk in an office, to big things, such as who has access to what information and when, color how we feel about ourselves and our place in the order of the institutions we belong to.

Young people in Qatar are being educated in a different professional value system from those of their managers. Instead of basing respect on title or age, they are taught in their educational settings to give credit to those who contribute to the overall mission. They are encouraged to be treated with the same consideration as the higher members of the company, in accordance with a system that is more egalitarian than hierarchical.

This sometimes in direct conflict with a system that rewards age and also gives people with titles lots of privileges.
As someone who entered the workforce at the age of 20 in a professional capacity, I fought hard to distinguish my work persona from my student persona (it didn’t help that I stayed to work at my undergraduate institution after graduation).  And perhaps this is why I see the potential in so many of the younger people around me – despite the fact that I am now a 32 year old manager. I know that people like to have tasks that are meaningful rather than clerical and to feel a part of the greater purpose of an organization rather than just ordering paper clips.

Of course I’m a perfectionist and expect that things that are requested get done – as soon as possible or with an explanation as to why otherwise. Nothing irritates me like staff meetings where planning ahead or warnings fall on deaf ears (or students who have to have things repeated to them). But I am a relational leader and I’ve noticed that while others may not choose this particular style, it’s worth too much to me to give up just to strike fear into the hearts of others.

If only more managers knew how to cultivate the young people around them so that they would bring to work a sense of pleasure rather than duty or obligation. I have been trying to let go of tension and worry in general in preparation for the last two months of pregnancy.

I swing between feeling that this is such an ordinary experience, because women around the world do it all the time and wanting to treasure it and nurture the child at the same time. Generally I just collapse into a nap on the days that I can to get away from it all: work, home, the baby growing inside me. And generally, I feel more energized when I wake up, like I can hold on for another ten hours or so.

A friend was visiting and gave me a copy of the Shambhala Sun, a magazine that includes thoughts on “Buddhism, culture, meditation, and life.” The theme for the March issue was Mindful Living. Given all that is happening in my personal and professional life to get ready for this baby and the longest break from work I’ve ever had, it couldn’t have been better timed.

The entire issue was related to how to just be still. Be still and focus on the now. On simple things like your breath or even the sense of what you are about at the present moment. Life isn’t the past or the future – it’s the now, one of the contributors said.

And that’s the profound truth I’m taking into this next phase of my life as a mother and also a professional. I am trying to chip away at that idealist core in me that is always reaching for excellence and what could be possible – the logical order of the world as it should be – and accepting what it is. Flaws and all. Hopefully this is an important lesson the young people around me will also be able to put into their repertoire.

Are there valuable lessons you were taught or are being taught in the workplace or life?

Still not by the content of character

Yesterday I watched the Martin Luther King Jr. "I Have a Dream" speech on the anniversary of his birthday.
Today, three times at the American Embassy I was told to come back at 3:00 pm to pick up my passport because that’s when immigrant visas were issued.

Three times I had to reassure them, despite wearing Western clothing, speaking with a Western accent, and showing up during American citizen service hours, that I was in fact there to pick up American passports, not immigrant visas.

The most abrasive time happened when I was at the counter itself. The person took my two tickets and said, "Someone will be here to help you with this soon." He then pushed the electronic button to advance to the next number. I sat down, in the front row, right in front of the window.

A man came from the back and said, "You need to pick these up at 3:00 p.m."
I said, "Why? It says on the card from 1-3 o’clock."

He looked at thecard, at me, and said, "You need to speak to the person who gave you this. When did you do this?"

"Last Thursday," I said, "it was a woman." 

I don’t know who was more frustrated: The first teller, his colleague or me.

"They’re American passports," I said, for no reason at all, since no one had thought to ask me.

"For additional pages?" the first guy said, having not asked me this when I handed over my cards.

I nodded. He asked me to pass him the pick up stubs again – all the while the next person he had called up was standing next to me – and left the window.

Lo and behold: returns two minutes later with two American passports. Mine and my husband’s – Asian American.

I wonder if he had gone to pick them up if they would have bothered to ask him, either at the check in desk, guard gate, or the teller station.

Why make the Embassy such an unpleasant place to go? As if the three years and counting construction in front of the Embassy weren’t enough frustration, a chasm worthy of a fairy tale preventing any sensible direct entry, people’s assumptions that all Americans are still white made me angry enough never to set foot into that Embassy again. Me, a person who has received numerous grants from the State department and helps host dignitaries often on their visits to Qatar. Me, who has taken countless excursions with students from Qatar to the U.S. – many for their first time – for a positive experience with American culture.

Many Westerners give Qatar a hard time for their strict attitudes towards citizenship – by birth only and only through the father. What I experienced today taught me that the embassy could do a lot of training with their staff, guards, and consular services to help them understand that American citizenship is much more inclusive. If a brown person shows up during citizen hours, maybe she isn’t misinformed. Maybe she’s there because she’s a citizen. And maybe, one of the ten people between her and the door should think to ask her.

God bless Barack Obama  – I pray for strength fo him and his family  to serve four, or more, years in the White house as America’s first non-white president. And let all non-white, and white, American citizens the world over rejoice today as he is inaugurated. We can only hope it gets better from here.
 

Don't leave my daughters

As part of my job, I often design trips for students which require international travel. In the Middle East this is a new counter culture concept for many families who do not let their daughters out their sight. Most of my students have never traveled without their families and in the instances they have, they are usually returning to their countries of origin for a summer trip. Family travel can involve six or more people and is never a casual affair. Given the 40 days of annual vacation allotted to most employees in the Gulf, it stands to reason that traveling 10+ hours for a week seems like a tremendous amount of hassle for a short period of time.

Yet, these international trips are increasingly popular for the female students where I work because they too are catching the millennial fever to travel the world and see all that it has to offer.

What I found interesting, yesterday morning at the check in counter of the airport, was a father’s reaction to seeing me at the head of the group.

“It is only you going with them?” He asked me, eyeing me up and down.

I smiled and nodded.

“But there is a team of people on the other side to receive us,” I assured him. 

This is the second year that I have planned and taken students to Mauritania (a country in West Africa) to see how 
a Qatari created NGO does work with local people towards sustainability. The first trip was last summer and one of 
the best student trips I have ever been a part of.

“Are you Indian?”

This question surprised me, but it’s not unsual for people to assume your place of origin based on your skin color. With so many transplanted people in the Middle East, living outside their countries, Iraqis, Palestinians, Lebanese,
no one would have a country of origin if they got absorbed into their countries of residence. So you are where you come from.

“Yes,” I said, taking my American passport back from the check in agent, not wanting to get into a long conversation about my accent, dress, or years abroad.

“Don’t leave my daughters in Mauritania and go back to India,” the father said, laughing.

Now, this took me completely by surprise, as did the two hours it took for our group of seven to get boarding passes for our connecting flight in Tunisia.

At the end of the processing, one of the woman behind the counter was holding my passport.

“May I have my passport please?” I asked her, ignoring the fact that in the past two hours I watched two of the employees at this desk get into a screaming argument, another employee walk off her job to collect her children from an arriving flight, and accept the profuse apologies of the desk manger.

She nodded and held up one finger, Arab hand signal for WAIT.
She flipped to the first page of my passport, read something there that she found interesting, and flipped it closed. She nodded to her friend and something in a mix of French and Arabic that none of us watching needed a translator for.

“Not really American,” is probably what she said to her friend after reading my birthplace on the first page of the passport.

It appears that Americans are not the only ones who discriminate based on color.

Discrimination is alive and well the world over and yesterday’s reminders took my breath away.

Have you had cases such as these? Or feel that your identity is more complex than most people want to deal with? 
Share and join the club!