Have you found your voice? Unshackling hostile work environments

Disclosure: In my prior work life, I had the unfortunate experience of working for a decade+ in a hostile environment in Sacramento, and where I pervasively felt all the disparagement and negativity all the way to Los Angeles, where I was based, via emails, phone calls and surreptitious visits after working hours by my immediate boss. I detested reading my emails as it would scrutinize or minimize our regional practices. It took very caring colleagues who reported to me and protected me. In the process, I experienced involuntary hemorrhaging for three months. I was fortunate to have my spousal support and the community support of trained mediator/friends and EEOC mediator from LA County, and psychologist wives of staffers, who made me aware of the hyper-scrutiny in a negative toxic environment. I had to enlist the intervention of the EEOC at the federal level, Fair Housing and Employment at the state level, including a letter from a very experienced labor attorney through the Asian Pacific American Legal Center.

How was it resolved? I went through mediation to make my all-male coworkers (predominantly white and one Latino) conscious of their harassment and sexist behaviors. As a condition of mediation settlement and non-filing of a lawsuit, all supervisors and managers in the department underwent a half-day training in hate and prejudice reduction training, conducted by a law firm in Sacramento, who was well versed in workplace harassment.  After the department-wide training, the hostile work environment changed.

 In my last year of working, given the oversight of the department’s civil rights section, I was able to work, experiencing a professional, non-toxic environment, as a manager and second-level supervisor, while training all my regional staff to be promotable.

 At every public event I went to, I highlighted what was right in my public agency and no one was privy to what I was internally experiencing.  Community friends cared for me and referred me to attend employment discrimination seminars, workshops, and training sessions.

 How did I manage to work daily? I created a culture of care and mentoring, “We are all students, learners, and teachers” to ensure all are included and all have a chance to be promoted and are promotable. Every day as I prayed and practiced forgiveness, “Tabula Rasa,” the slate is clean.  I retired after 27 years with 12 years as a manager, who worked in a toxic hostile environment, and one in which after I left had promoted more folks of color and white women in leadership positions. Though I bled physically, I found the succeeding staffers of mine did not have to.

 Have you found your voice?

Fourteen years later, I am healed to fully discuss this experience, prompted by the changing culture of the #MeToo movement, founded by Tarana Burke and amplified by working women in Hollywood (like Angelina Jolie and many others), who were preyed upon by Hollywood’s power bigwigs, the likes of Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey. No longer feeling like a victim, I am able to reclaim my voice and mentor others who face similar situations.

 I consider my working life at present, a great privilege that I am most grateful for, that I can stand in parity and equal to anyone, even to my female employer, a very good friend, and even very privileged men, socially dominant in any situation in America.

 With my found voice, I get to share what I think, not speaking brutally, but with honesty and respect to the other person, be they CEOs, community leaders, parking lot attendants, store owners, entrepreneurs, and even men and women of faith. I am most grateful to have this weekly column, where I find my connections in a just world, and wherein I can share what I believe we must all do to improve our current situations where disparities exist and that includes me, of course.

What are the features of a hostile environment?

The 1980 EEOC Guidelines interpreted Title VII and defined hostile environment harassment as “has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment.” It is defined in the Code of Federal Regulations Section 1604.11 (a). Barbara Lindemann and Paul Grossman, authors of Employment Discrimination Law, described it further, “whereas Vinson (a court case) spoke of altering conditions of employment and creating an abusive environment.”

 Can you, AJ readers, think of abusive environment’s features? I am sure you can, as our current 45th president, ranting, raving and screaming at his underlings, as reported on national broadcasts and the New York Times and the Washington Post. I often wonder why a single staffer has not filed a complaint with the EEOC?

 Shouting indiscriminately as visible displays of anger directed at someone in the workplace, where that person feels belittled, are features of a hostile workplace.

In my prior workplace at this public agency, the top-ranking Caucasian scientist used to belittle me as unable to hang with the white guys. For one, I did not drink beer, alcohol nor play golf (as they did) and my boss was perturbed that I would be reduced to tears, when he struck the table with his fists, in anger.

 The mediator pointed out to him that women cannot be made into men and that women resort to tears when they are offended. I cried because my heart was broken and my spirit was crushed. To recover my center, I spontaneously cried and after, I found my voice. I recovered from being traumatized to articulate what I observed. Because I cried, my male boss invalidated me and dismissed my perspective, yet when another white male articulated my ideas, using his own words, my boss would immediately say, “Good ideas, Jim.” It was patently unfair to its face and he kept repeating his behavior until it became a pattern of disparity and it rose to become offensive. He sent other colleagues to out-of-state training sessions but not me, another disparate treatment feature.

My boss criticized our regional enforcement work and questioned what and why we did, professional and vetted work that was complimented by local district attorneys and their cadres of law enforcement officials that we worked with. It made for an unhealthy environment that our meritorious work was considered substandard, yet our region became the nurturing spots for problematic employees “to be rehabilitated.”

 In collaborative meetings with the federal government, my colleagues in Sacramento shunned me, as if I had the plague. But since I had close collaboration and working relationships with the federal folks, they invited me to join them at dinner. I found it amusing that the federal government leaders were inclusive towards me, while my own in-house Sacramento colleagues shunned me, clearly showing me the contrast in professionalism.

 My superiors made up false written reprimands that I had to seek the intervention of the department’s civil rights section. I befriended a staffer who advised me how to respond allegation per allegation. When they alleged I was insubordinate and unable to do my assignments, I was under the care of a physician, who had diagnosed my internal bleeding and what she called “stress-induced hemorrhage.” Imagine bleeding for three months and the anemia which resulted from it, and even imagine that this was happening as my eldest daughter was growing up to be a teenager. How does one maintain functionality as a professional, a working mom and spouse and even a community volunteer?

Thanks to the professional associations I belong to and headed as the chair in the field of quality and women’s groups in the Asian American community, I was fully supported by healthy behaviors and good character. I knew what the features of a healthier work environment by serving the community and the professional quality community and not to normalize hostile environments.

 The #Metoo Movement

#Metoo Movement founder Tarana Burke has used her voice quite prominently as to say, “You have to use your privilege to serve other people.” Hollywood actor Reese Witherspoon is one of those using her privilege, amplifying the collective women voices to clean up their working environment, including fundraising for legal fees for others who may need legal services. At a community gathering for the organization Look What She Did, Felicity Huffman shared that she attended a gathering of women and collectively, they have now raised $21 million. The fund has oversight by a national group of women lawyers to determine who will need legal representation, which Witherspoon shared on a national television platform with Oprah Winfrey.

Last Thursday, April 26, I attended Cal State University Northridge’s Department of Asian American Studies Awards Night where students visibly advocated for CSUN’s D.A.T.E, “a peer education, date or acquaintance rape prevention program,” as described on CSUN’s website. One student spoke of being a survivor and how she used her own past to rise to become a student leader on campus. It was also so inspiring to see Dr. Shirley Hune, Dr. Edith Chen, Dr. Eunai Shrai, Dr. Tracy Buenavista, along with Allan Aquino and Glenn Omatsu speak coherently, with ease, with confidence, but with care and consideration for their “community family” at CSUN. One speaker, a founder of the Department of Asian American Studies, Dr. Kenyon Chan, said, “I am home.” That same night, Aquino recalled this is the week of the Armenian genocide, where an estimated 1,500,000 Armenians were killed by the Ottoman government and the 1992 LA Riots, the same anniversary day for my promotion to a regional administrator at that state agency.

 Imagine working at CSUN’s Department of Asian American Studies and to feel your second home is your workplace?Students, though trembling as they approached the lectern, found their sheepish voices realized and shared their dreams and what they have learned as graduating seniors, including their mission on how to develop other leaders in their midst. Do you find this environment quite healthy? That as their professors guiding them towards finding their voices, they are encouraged to be integrated into CSUN, to discover their own pathways in higher education and no longer lost, able to graduate on time, and as they succeed, they lift others as well.

 What if America was one community family?

I am quite fortunate today that my employer, the Asian Journal, values my strengths. Just a few days ago, I was given an assignment to attend Parent Community Education night at St. Genevieve’s School in Panorama City.  I was intrigued to experience being welcomed with vibrant and energetic voices, led by their principal, Dan Horn, as with 500 other students and their working parents. He introduced Craig Scott and Beth Nimmo, the brother and mother of Rachel Scott, respectively, the first victim killed by hate-filled student/shooters at Columbine High School in 1999. 

 That evening, the parents listened for two hours and learned about the faith convictions of Rachel Scott, and how she befriended her classmates by writing in a journal which she passed on discreetly to others. Her journal became a space for an honest exchange of their interior feelings, and how they developed friendships, while sharing Rachel’s love of God and love for them. It was a tear-jerking moment, but also inspiring for parents and students, whose social awareness was being raised that these Columbine shooters were angry, isolated and felt diminished. So, it was incumbent on all these St. Genevieve students, their teachers, their support staffers to create a ‘community family.’

 In America today, unresolved anger at home or in school turns to hatred. To deranged minds filled with hatred, it can take on planning multiple deaths, as in Columbine, where the two student shooters wanted the destruction of the school’s more than 500 population and planted bombs in critical areas. Nimmo shared that the planned massive deaths of hundreds did not happen, as the bombs did not detonate but 14 students and a teacher died, including her own daughter, Rachel. 

 The following week, I returned to interview the principal, Dan Horn, and to my good fortune, as others in the Valley, St. Genevieve has undergone their own transformation to become a ‘community family’ and self-identify as a National School of Character with three values: to know God, to live with honor, and to change the world. I considered this assignment my own spiritual gift from God using my enlightened employers, for I can see clearly by these two examples, one at St. Gen and another at CSUN’s Department of Asian American Studies, what an inclusive community family is.

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Prosy Abarquez-Delacruz, J.D. writes a weekly column for Asian Journal, called “Rhizomes.” She has been writing for AJ Press for 10 years. She also contributes to Balikbayan Magazine. Her training and experiences are in science, food technology, law and community volunteerism for 4 decades. She holds a B.S. degree from the University of the Philippines, a law degree from Whittier College School of Law in California and a certificate on 21st Century Leadership from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She has been a participant in NVM Writing Workshops taught by Prof. Peter Bacho for 4 years and Prof. Russell Leong. She has travelled to France, Holland, Belgium, Japan, Costa Rica, Mexico and over 22 national parks in the US, in her pursuit of love for nature and the arts.