A White Woman Wrote This
I received this blog post in an email from Glassdoor last week and immediately thought “a White woman wrote this.” Even if a White woman didn't write this, the person that did was writing for a cis White audience.
A screen capture of How to deal with remote work microaggressions by the Glassdoor Team.
It’s literally titled How to deal with remote work microaggressions but goes on and on about “allyship”. It basically just lists all the microaggressions they can think of for various communities and drops BIPOC as many times as possible. Who are y’all talking to?
Lola Bakare (She/Her) shared similar feelings after receiving an email entitled “Want to Be an Ally to Black Women? from Lean In. Lola shared that “another great way to be an ally is to acknowledge your Black subscribers exist.” Both examples credit the writing to the brand and not a specific writer or group of writers. If your target audience is cis White people, you should say that.
K’s reaction to Lola’s share of Lean In’s email.
This also reminded me of an incident that occurred when I wrote a blog post for the Stability Network a while back. When sent the draft of the post I received the first image below and quickly asked for the featured image to be changed to someone closer to my skin complexion, seen in the second image. Yes, they were.
The draft of a Stability Network blog post next to the final blog post by K Strohl.
One of the most endearing things ever said to me was from Kimberley John-Morgan (She/Her). She said “your voice comes through in your writing.” This was during our very first Zoom call and I’ll never forget it. I write a lot and take pride in the fact that I write how I speak. There’s slang, there’s humor, there’s culture and there’s me. You will read each piece and know that a White woman had no hand in it and was not the target audience.
K Mataōtama Strohl (They/Them)
K is an award-winning consultant, coach, writer and speaker. K is also the curator of a content space that shares “refreshingly genuine and educational bite sized yet profound insights and experiences,” as well as the host of two popular podcasts.
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