How “Common Sense” Perpetuates Structural Racism

Originally published on Medium.

Have you ever seen someone make a head-scratching mistake at work and thought to yourself, “That’s common sense! They should have known that!” Or better yet, as a manager, onboarded a junior employee and skipped talking about something practical — like dress code — because you thought, “That’s common sense: everybody knows that!” Careful.

The Invisible Playbook of “Common Sense” at Work

There’s something sneaky about “common sense” and it’s in its very name: common. Common to whom? The answer here is whatever population is in the mainstream of that culture and has the power to set the rules — usually white, cis-gender, those with advanced education, more financial resources, etc.

Common sense implies that a critical mass of people worth emulating: those who are generally smart, generally good, generally in-the-know, have a shared conduct/thinking playbook that they can choose to use or not use. It also applies a judgment against those who don’t use the playbook. This would work if the playbook was equally accessible, not exclusively grounded in white normative cultural ideals, and not biased in how it assesses compliance to its norms. Unfortunately for people of color, folks with less financial resources, those with disabilities, the LGBTQ community and others, none of these conditions is true.

As a woman of color with lots of ambition, this hits home for me because I know I only got to my first C-Suite role because three white women mentors across my career revealed the playbook to me. They spoke to me directly about how I dressed, how I spoke and approached my work, and issues in my character from their perspective. They helped me “talk numbers” and advocate for myself. They modeled the playbook for me and prepped me for milestone moments to make sure I knew how to conform to what was expected. They didn’t demand I follow their “common sense” rulebook, but they gave me a choice I wouldn’t have had if I didn’t know the rules in the first place. And that’s my issue with the doctrine of common sense — especially on the lips of managers and senior leaders. To me it signals, “We’re so powerful, you have to intuit the expectations we have set for the organization without us telling you…and if you don’t, you’ll pay.” For folks with different race and gender identities, first-generation white-collar workers, and from different economic backgrounds than these leaders have, intuiting what’s expected can be a real challenge.

My dream is a world where our business norms are truly more inclusive and responsive to the people that make up our teams, as opposed to offshoots of white supremacy and broader white-normative management culture. Until then, the least we can do is say what we want: deadlines, ways of presenting, how to raise feedback, what kinds of jokes we’ll allow. If we don’t, and we ding employees that miss our expectations on these fronts since they’re “common sense,” I believe we are actually advancing bias and white supremacy culture at work — whether we mean to or not.

So how do we work to disavow the doctrine of “Common Sense” at work?

• Be clear about what behaviors and mindsets matter in your environment;
• Truly onboard new folks to the culture, and especially those with marginalized identities, to ensure they know the rules of the road;
• When you see someone consistently missing the mark on an expectation, restate it explicitly and model what good looks like;
• Every time you think something is “common sense” but could materially affect an employee’s success on a project or in their role, say the thing.
• Open the door for employees to ask questions about culture, expectations, or what you expect — and to give you feedback if those expectations are making success materially harder for them given their identities.

This won’t solve all the bias that shows up in organizations, but it is a first step to making sure people don’t fail because you haven’t been clear.

Originally published on Medium.

Image: freepik