I just have to vent. I had a long awaited performance review today at work after being with the company for nine months. I know I’ve been knocking it out of the park, and on a small team that’s essentially a start-up, I take on responsibilities from project managing, event managing, website building, writing, to talking with clients. This is my first job out of graduate school and I’m a young, gay Asian woman, which will come back as I talk about this fateful performance review, blessed upon me by my boss today.
I sit down and at first everything is going well. He tells me I’ve been exceeding expectations and they couldn’t have been happier with their decision to hire me. I thank him and tell him I’m grateful that I work there blah blah and I say I want him to be frank about where I can grow to improve my performance. At first it was good advice. But then y’all. SO quickly it started spiraling into the way I communicate and that I’m not forthcoming enough about what I think. Fine. This is where it gets bad. He proceeds to ask about my heritage and how hierarchies where my family is from in Asia must be so difficult to deal with, and if I weren’t held back by my own culture, I could be set free and flourish. Mind you this man is white. I’m in a boiling rage that he insinuated that there was something wrong with MY heritage, not his oppressive perception of me through his whiteness and manhood, that was holding me back from reaching my true potential, which is word for word what he said. The conversation concluded with him telling me that I should overcome it. My CULUTURE.
I asked him about a raise which he then proceeded to dodge by going on a tangent. I cried on my way home.