Let me start by saying I’m Puerto Rican.  I’m brutally honest and that can sometimes piss people off.  I thought it was just me at first, but my sister and people I know have confirmed that they have the same talent.  

Most businesses see diversity as good/important until they realize what that entails.  The biggest mistake businesses make is that they add people of color to the workforce and expect all new people to adapt to the company’s culture.  The issue with this is that if the culture was built by mostly white people then it’s going to be very different than if the culture was built by a diverse group of people.  In turn, new people of color are asked to adapt and behave similarly to the white people in that environment.  

This quickly backfires as most people of color have different values and cultural norms which can be seen as aggressive and combative by white people.  Conflict can be healthy if the emotion is taken out of it and it’s used to achieve results.  I’m used to arguments and conflicts as it’s part of my cultural norm.  In puerto rican culture there’s no pink elephant in the room.  Everyone speaks their mind. If it causes friction so be it.  

In my experience this tends to make white people feel like they are being attacked or accused of something and that the problem is me.  I can be seen as combative and aggressive.  Usually what happens is most people play the blame game instead of taking responsibility and fixing the issue (which is what I’m looking for).  I’m assuming this is because of the self imposed fear that making a mistake or not knowing how to do a task effectively means they are incompetent (impostor syndrome).  The other outcome is they blame me and assume that I don’t know how to tactfully work out my differences.  Again a mentality of the people of color should act or behave like the rest of us.

The other issue I face is connotation.  It’s hard for people from other countries to understand connotation because phrases that mean the same thing can have different connotations.  For example these phrases all mean the same thing to me: 

  • childish vs childlike
  • low standards vs easy to please or low maintenance
  • judge a book by it’s cover vs perception is reality or personal brand. ( Perception is reality doesn’t sit well with me as it feels like you’re spinning something inherently bad into something good )

I’m working on understanding connotation and ask the people around me to ask questions in order to clarify what I’m trying to say.  This helps me represent the connotation I’m trying to communicate.

In the part 2 of this topic I will address: I see the problem, what can we do about it?