This week’s advice column tackles the shock of benefiting from preferential treatment all year, then running into the Warriors.
Welcome to “Couldn’t be me”, a weekly advice column where I solicit your personal dilemmas and help out as best as I can. Have something I can help you with? Find me @_Zeets.
This week we’re tackling the idea of preferential treatment. What do you do when you are the subject of privilege, or you see someone being favored over you for reasons beyond merit? Do you ignore it? Bring it up to someone? Release a memo to the public detailing all the times that the party in question has been favored over you?
James:
We’re in a playoff series against our biggest rivals. Last year we almost beat them, were it not for a spectacularly bad team performance in the the seventh game of the series. This year, I’m sure that we can absolutely overcome them, but after the first game, it seems that the referees are giving them preferential treatment. They’re not being called for fouls that referees have called all season, and while it seems a small complaint, certain fouls not being called changes the way we have to play the game. And with the games being very close, those missing free throws can have a great effect on the outcome.
CBM:
This is a classic case of the boy who cried wolf. Though there might be some legitimacy to certain fouls not being called, the fact that it’s you bringing up the problem inevitably invalidates the claim. You do have a reputation for exaggerating contact and conning the referees. Regardless of whether what you say is true, people will be hesitant to listen to you, or even your team, because of that reputation. (Though to be fair, your opponents are also known to whine a lot.)
I should tell you that because such things are out of your hands, the best that you can do is play the game as well as you can and try to ignore the missed calls.
But I am also a selfish person, and I want chaos. I think you and your team should continue sending memos and tapes to the league, and making those memos public. I think that you should make grievance the narrative of this series, so that if you lose, you can always believe that you would have won were it not for the referees. I think you should make this a bigger story until fans are so sick that they wish for the playoffs to be over, and so that everyone involved in this series can be haunted by it for the rest of their lives.
If you aren’t going to get your way, might as well have retribution, at least.
Rich:
So, it didn’t end up getting me the project, but I experienced a moment during my last couple of interviews where I was being given preferential treatment I had never considered before.
I was contacted about a contract position for a technical role, and at the beginning of the phone interview, I gave my rate. The interviewer commented that they had more qualified people whose rates were significantly less, and were local, so they didn’t have to worry with travel expenses. However, we continued talking, and they attempted to get the end client to sign off on me, even providing a rate they were sure the client would agree to.
Like I said at the beginning, I didn’t get the role, but I was very confused as to why I was even being considered. I mentioned it to a more seasoned colleague, and he said it was because I was American. That, in the technical consultant field, a lot of these roles go to tech guys from India whose rates are a lot lower than standard. So the client liked not having the potential language (accent) barrier, and would pay for that.
That experience has sat with me ever since, because I’m not sure what to do about it, or how to handle or fix it going forward.
CBM:
This is a fascinating look at how structural inequality and privilege can intersect, and almost contradict each other. The question is, what should be the obligation of an individual who is aware of the preferential treatment that they’re receiving?
This is evidence of how market forces can reduce problems like privilege by enhancing others, like labor inequality. In the drive for the cheapest labor possible, what you get is highly qualified people from places like India getting jobs not necessarily because they’re good at them (though they are), but because they accept less money than someone else who is not as qualified.
Often we see this type of problem show up among immigrants who take what are societally-defined as menial jobs. They are criticized for taking jobs away from natural born citizens, but the truth is frequently that immigrants dominate those jobs because those in power are more concerned with getting workers for cheap.
But your problem, which occurred in a space that is considered white-collar, shows that there are so many more conditions at work in achievement than merit, for yourself and the workers already there. I would imagine that if they demanded to be paid something close to their worth, they would see themselves passed up in favor of people like yourself because of the privilege of your identity.
If you had gotten the job, it would have been silly to give it up on the principle that you knew that your privilege played a great part in getting it. In this case, the company seems to have a structural problem that would only continue even if you left. And unfortunately, those Indian candidates may not know that they’re being underpaid, or if they do know, they’re not willing to risk their jobs in order to ask for equality.
A union might be able to set conditions that could allow those workers to demand the proper pay that they deserve, without fear that they will be left with nothing. As an individual, one of the things that you could have done if you had gotten the job would have been to share how much you make with your coworkers. A lot of pay inequality is enforced by workers who are convinced that talking about salary is indecent, even though having knowledge of pay disparity is one of the first steps to addressing the problem.
Beyond your situation, addressing privilege is really about having the knowledge of the forces at work behind your achievements, and doing your best to balance those scales for those exploited or oppressed people. You don’t have to commit some principled self-sacrifice. Positive steps could be things like making the pay disparity evident, addressing and changing those hiring practices, or making those in power aware of inequality.
It may take some creativity, but there are always ways to be active in change.
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