DINT 126 - This Week in Tech, Race, and Gender
Workday? More like Work Every Day. HR tech firm Workday sends police to a Black employee’s home for a wellness check.
"If you lie to yourself about your own pain, you will be killed by those who will claim you enjoyed it.” - Tashi, protagonist in Alice Walker’s 1992 novel, “Possessing the Secret of Joy”
Sadly, to pretend everything is alright and collect a check prevents us from telling ourselves the truth. Black people in tech are not okay. Some of us just haven’t arrived at that truth yet.
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Workday must have known it was putting its employee through a tough time. When he took a day off to regain mental strength, the HR tech firm specializing in resume management for enterprises, sent police to conduct a wellness check on said employee, reports Business Insider.
A wellness check is when police visit a person’s home to find out if they’re ok. It’s often used when loved ones are concerned for a family member’s mental or emotional state.
What some may see as a kind gesture on Workday’s part is seen as an aggressive message to the employee to get back to work or they’ll be dragged back by police or jailed by them.
It all depends on who you are and how honest you allow yourself to be.
A central question is, did they mean well?
The company has remained silent when asked for explanations by Hill and by media outlets.
I often heard “assume positive intent” when confronting blatant racism and hypocrisy at work. To assume positive intent is fine. It would be great if it went both ways. Could Workday have assumed the employee simply needed time away to regroup? Why send police for that?
Still, intent isn’t an excuse. I don’t intend to hit another car when I’m driving, but if I do, I still have to make restitution or face the law. Yet, some in tech are able to skate by chanting “assume positive intent” to excuse their efforts to derail careers of Black and Brown people.
Note: This isn’t Workday’s first time in the spotlight for racist behavior. The HR tech firm has been dragged into court for its algorithm that separates and targets applicants based on race, gender, and other categories protected by the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission.
It’s still in litigation and should be there for the foreseeable future if the litany of motions, extensions, and legal formalities of their lawyers continue at pace.
Put up with it? Or speak up about it?
This made me think of a conversation I recently had with a family member. She’s of another generation and is to be respected as such. Yet, when I shared insights into why I’d rather work an hourly wage job than return to on-site office work for anything under $120,000/year starting salary, she balked.
She says our generation put too much of ourselves into our work. We should go to work, work, and then leave. Use the job to level up to the next one. It seems simple in theory. In practice, it’s a recipe for a short-lived career or mental health issues, or both.
Working in tech, especially in an office, holds danger for Black and Brown professionals.
Here’s why: We’re often driven, focused, and dedicated to doing a good job. Some of our non-Black or Brown peers are intimidated by that and engage in all kinds of tactics to distract us and derail our careers. This isn’t an exaggeration. Not only have I lived it but so have many Black women in the tech workspace. For many who are still there, it’s unsafe to speak out and expose the aggressions we face daily.
So when the Workday employee took a break for self-care, who could blame him? Sending police to his home under the guise of caring about his well being reminds me of the passive aggressive stunts co-workers and managers would pull at the tech firms where I’ve worked.
If the people who sent the wellness check say they’re oblivious to the implications of sending police to a Black person’s home, they’re flat out lying. This was a threat, a scare tactic, an overt warning and display of control.
No matter the intent, the effect is terror. Any Black person will tell you about the shock that runs through our bodies when police show up at our door. Workday knew what it was doing. Workday should be held accountable.
Anthony Hill, the person Workday requested a wellness check for, is now suing Workday for racial and disability discrimination.
News Bites
A tech strategy and planning leader, Christelle Mombo-Zigah, SET LINKEDIN ON FIRE WITH HER REVIEW OF AI HEADSHOT GENERATION TOOLS titled “Digital Colorism: How AI Headshot Generators Are Failing Dark-Skinned Users.”
Facial Recognition
Kroger’s has NOW SCRAPPED ITS PLANS TO USE DIGITAL PRICE TAGS (ELECTRONIC SHELVING LABELS AKA ESLS) AND FACIAL RECOGNITION in its stores. U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib pointed out the potential to change prices based on the ethnicity of shoppers, in a letter to Kroger.
Black-founded FINTECH STARTUP CAPWAY HAS CLOSED DOWN. The startup’s mission was to provide banking options for ‘banking deserts’ and the underbanked. It was backed by Y Combinator by the same startup incubator that launched AirBnB, DoorDash, and Instacart.
Palate Cleanser
All things in moderation