“The outer world is a reflection of the inner world. Other people’s perception of you is a reflection of them; your response to them is an awareness of you.”

― Roy T. Bennett

Perspective is everything. An individual’s ability to understand and unwrap the roots of their perspective and others is highly predictive of their ability to interact with people of different backgrounds. You see, people often forget that humans are not carbon copies of each other; it is physically impossible to experience the world in the same way, not to be confused with experiencing in a similar way. Every human comes from a different neighborhood, culture, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, sexuality, etc. Each of these dimensions affects the way the individual experiences the world, and as a result, the way they think of the world. More awareness of these differences leads to a deeper understanding of each other and more meaningful interactions.

Individuals like Marcus Garvey, Maya Angelou, and Howard Zinn, all made reference to the importance of knowing your history. They believed through the understanding of history, individuals would be better prepared for the present and future. Interestingly enough, we’ve seen for years the damage and disillusion that results when individuals are denied the right to learn their history. Right here in America, minorities of all backgrounds face daily reminders of their stark history, the resulting circumstances, and the creeping change fueled by a lack of understanding and disengagement from history. Example number one, historically insensitive position titles.

A company decided they wanted to put an individual in every department to audit the department’s processes and report their findings to the manager of the respective department; seems reasonable. The title they gave this position? The Overseer. Interestingly enough, this title appeared to be well received with little to no push back from the company’s employees or HR. After hearing about this, I had to ask my friend group and colleagues their thoughts on this company’s decision.

My conversations began with two of my friends, both black women. When I explained the situation, they were appalled that a company at the forefront of its industry could be so culturally insensitive. We spoke about how this could have happened and what employees of the company could do to raise awareness and potentially create change; nevertheless, throughout our conversation my friends would regress to their main point, “those who would raise the issue probably feel disempowered to do so for fear of being stereotyped and those who have the power would never raise it”.

My next conversation was with a Jewish female colleague. I consider us to be fairly close, so I cut straight to the point giving her a brief overview of what was happening at this company and asked her thoughts on the situation. She initially thought my question was about management structure in general at which point I redirected her attention to the name of the position. Her response? “it’s just a word”. I left that conversation with a deep feeling of disappoint. While I had many conversations on this topic with various colleagues and friends and received many different reactions to this topic, including not knowing the historical significance of the term, it cut a bit deeper coming from an individual from a marginalized group whose people continuously chant “never forget!”.

As I wrapped up my conversations, I had to reflect on how such terminology could be used in 2017; it seemed to come down to three things. (1) Individuals who would raise the issue do not feel empowered to do so, (2) Individuals who understand the historical context dismiss it as a non-issue, and (3) Individuals are oblivious to the historical context. In the end, I don’t know if anything further took place at this company, but I thought it was an interesting lesson on perspective.

It’s a hard pill to swallow when it seems no one acknowledges a significant part of history, especially when it directly affects you, but there’s so much opportunity for growth coming out of this experience. Just think, how could someone seek to understand or change something that they  do not even know exists? Can you blame someone for not seeking that knowledge? Why would so many people be uneducated about the intricacies and horrors of the slave trade that this America, such a twisted beauty, is built on? And with all of that, how could you blame a modern day American for believing that there is no such thing as institutional racism if they can’t even comprehend any of the aforementioned concepts? This is not to say that I agree or disagree with these questions, but it reinforces my point that perspective is everything.

“The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you’ll get action.”

― Malcom X