An example: A tech worker Mandela Schumacher Hodge wrote a blog post about how she, an African-American woman feel alienated from her mostly European-American co-workers because they don't want to bring up the latest race-related killings of African-Americans. She felt as if they don't care, and was so elated when her boss finally showed some sympathy.
Here's her blog post
https://medium.com/@Mandela/my-white-boss-talked-about-race-in-america-and-this-is-what-happened-fe10f1a00726#.6os68t7xh
What was left unsaid is if she went up to any Latin@ co-worker (if there were any) and bring up the subject of the murder of Brisenia Flores, or any other Latin@s victimized by hate crimes.
But back to her feelings that her co-workers are apathetic about her emotional state, I did place the following comment on the blog's comment thread
People have different emotional expectations when it comes to being at work. The author of this article feels that she needs to have her emotions from outside of the workplace to be validated from the people within the workplace.
Meanwhile, a person with my mindset might go to the workplace and spend the next few hours totally focused at the task at hand. This doesn’t mean I’m uncaring about what those around me are going through in their personal life, it just means I want to focus on the task at hand! I tend to be so into my focus on the Task at Hand, that it would be difficult to understand “why can’t this person leave outside distractions on the outside?”
At this point, readers might be saying about me “his last name sounds German, he must have white privilege” but actually I’m of mixed-race and look mostly Latino (hence my Spanish first name), which will make me a minority in Hawaii which is mostly a mix of Pacific Islander & Asian. So I do know what it’s like to be different around me.
But still, I’m so good at blocking out outside distractions from my mind when I’m at work that I don’t usually bring up non-work related stuff to conversations with co-workers. That might be the mentality of the co-workers that Mandela Schumacher-Hodge is dealing with, co-workers who are accustomed to not talking about their personal lives at work, co-workers who are accustomed to not want to bring up controversial issues to workplace conversations, co-workers who are uncomfortable being a “shoulder to cry on” to even their closest friends. These co-workers may not be heartless, they’re just not accustomed to dealing with the emotionally needy!
I can speak for myself on that, because I remember when I was in high school, I was annoyed when a friend wanted to discuss his personal problems when there was a big event going in campus! I was like “wtf you’re bringing your emotional problems when we’re supposed to be living it up?” In other words, I wanted to focus on the “task at hand” (enjoying the event) whereas my friend wanted his emotions to be validated.
I might sound cold-hearted, but that might explain why the co-workers Mandela Schumacher-Hodge described are reluctant to emotionally validate her feelings about events going on outside the workplace.
Interestingly enough, when I was teenager and was unhappy with my parents moving to a different community on the other side of the island, I didn't get much sympathy from my relatives, which made me very alienated from my family! It took years (and tons of letter writing, plus family counseling) to heal those wounds that were made worse by the lack of emotional validation!
So in a way, I do get Mandela Schumacher-Hodge feel about the lack of emotional validation.
It's just that in my case, I Almost Never bring the subject of family alienation to peers at school or work. They have their own problems to deal with!
To me, I tend to keep work, school, and family life separate! I just don't want to be distracted!
If someone wants to talk story during break time, I'm usually cool with it! However, if the co-worker doesn't want to be bothered with "small talk" then I just leave that person alone!
