That Awkward Moment When…

Hello again. Something came up randomly at work this past week that sparked this blog post.

I recently started my new job last month, so I’m new to the company and still getting to know people, and people are getting to know me. It’s fun to see all the different personalities and how people react to diverse situations. The general make-up of my office is everyone is White/Caucasian while me and another person who are the only minorities. So take everyone’s cultural background and upbringing into consideration, the diversity is not that wide. Although we have another office in Cali where there are more minorities than there are Whites. So our company as a whole is quite diverse, just not our office, at least for now until we begin to hire more.

Anyways, with the general make-up in mind, I see that everyone’s ideas/support of same-race relationships outweigh IR relationships. So that “awkward moment when someone jokes about something that applies to you…” comes into effect. It came up when we were doing some HR training. We were going over questions you should ask or shouldn’t when interviewing a person during the hiring process. Generally, questions you’re not supposed to ask is if a candidate is expecting to become pregnant or is pregnant, religious affiliations, or political views.

Someone commented later after it was over as an inside joke, “Oh, don’t ask if they’re going to become pregnant, because legally you can’t ask them that.” Then joked again and said “What else can’t we ask?”…”Can we ask what their views on interracial dating is?(something to that affect)”…”Because you know I’m a huge advocate of Jim Crow.” I will definitely give him the benefit of the doubt because he said it very sarcastically and jokingly, so I know he didn’t mean it, but a slight ting went up my stomach as I thought to myself, “Hey, I’m in an interracial relationship, are you implying or making fun of it, or don’t support it?” I didn’t say anything, as I was trying to focus on work, but it bothered me a little that it seemed like that the subject was a joke – no need to make matters serious.

I was wondering though, how appropriate/inappropriate is it to discuss matters such as your relationship status/dating preferences in the workplace? Not in an interview setting, but when you’re in a laid back work environment? I know it is never a factor of how valuable you are as a employee, but it definitely can cause those working with you to look at you differently once they see/know you’re dating outside your race.

After that day however, I got to see this play out. We had our company holiday party that same day. Again, here I am, put in a situation where I don’t know how people will react/respond to seeing my boyfriend who isn’t Asian with me. **I know this shouldn’t matter people, but AGAIN, this is something new and to some people it changes their perception of a person when seeing who their partner/spouse/bf/gf/etc is.** Considering (1) I’m new to the office, (2) Only one or two, at most three people knew I’m in an IR relationship, and (3) A corporate environment is a judging place to begin with, you always have to be on your toes! However, I know my bf is a great guy and he was awesome meeting everybody, it’s just that I didn’t know how people would receive him, especially after that joke was made.

I never thought before about how they would think of me and the IR relationship because I never saw it to be something that would affect me.

After I introduced him and everyone talked with him, I saw that nobody cared or noticed (I mean it would be rude to point it out if it did bother), but nobody came back in the office the next day and said, “I didn’t know you date a Black guy.” It would have been funny to explain all this back to them. Now my IR relationship in the workplace has come to pass..at least for now. What everyone else thinks is up to them, I shall lament no more.