orvette1 wrote:My sort of supervisor is a white guy. He believes non whites should not be smarter than he is. I am non white and have shown his mistakes and lack of knowledge several times. He is giving me a hard time because of it. Nothing reportable, just being mean.
As a Christian I have to show love. In Romans it says to be nice to your enemies and you will dump heaping loads of hot coals on their heads.
It is so hard to show any kindness to this man. He also has a very foul mouth, and uses profanity to spite me. Other guys curb the cussing, not him.
I can't imagine how Jesus must have felt. I am a Bible believer through and through, so I will show him I am a Christian by my love.
I just wish God would show these types of people we are all his children and equal.
To try and gauge this for perspective's sake, what makes you certain he believes this about white people and non-white people? It sounds like there could be any number of things going on beneath the surface. It could be as simple as feeling self-conscious that someone who his is a supervisor for shows a larger reservoir of knowledge to tap into, and the feelings of inferiority are expressed in a certain way. Is he giving you a hard time about pointing out his mistakes? Or is he giving you a hard time about that you, a non-white, are pointing out his mistakes? If there's a distinct racial tone, it's reportable under non-discrimination laws. Even if there's a not a detectable racial tone, but just a general sense of harassment (are you uncomfortable in your workplace environment?), well most company's have guidelines for that as well.
What is the nature of the mistakes; are they items that help with the smooth function of what you and your co-workers do at work, or are they trivial matters? Is this something that can be addressed by saying off-the-books, "Hey, guy, I'm here to be a productive worker, to help you out and make this a worthwhile working environment; help me to help you by not doing (fill in the blank here with what you perceive is making life difficult)," or alternatively is this a situation you can step back from dispassionately and non-threateningly, and non-judgementally let the boss-man deal out the rope that he's going to hang himself on?
I know I don't understand the nuances of the situation.
Is it pragmatic to regard the situation from the perspective that he is not your enemy, and you are not his; rather, he is his own enemy, and you are your own enemy; and you can subtly change the game with this perspective? Or is that naive, in the face of the actuality of the circumstances?
I don't like the prospect of going out on a limb in defiance of a perspective, but I find talk of enemies and an "Us vs. Them" dichotomy as counterproductive. When my own mind thinks in terms of me and other people being enemies, I know that I personally am thinking along very childish lines. So it's very easy for me to take it a step further and regard that kind of thinking in general is childish across the board. It disappoints me that these words from the Bible are a destructive/counterproductive perspective for me dealing with reality with a realistic perspective, very disappointing. Enemies, villains, bad guys: absurd and contemptible...but then, that's just my damage, eh? I don't feel the least bit bad about Osama Bin Laden, and neither do I revel in the outcome with raw bloodlust; that operation went down, now it feels good to move on. Read a book called Gardens of the Moon, and tell me that you can identify who the "villain" of the novel is before you're fully half-way or even two-thirds of the way through; and even then, is that character really a "villain"? Anyone who openly targets me and actually regards me as an Enemy I would consider dangerous and childish, and to be actively avoided; but I figure most people don't actually care, they are simply focused on their own personal goals, lost and embroiled in their own damage. They weaken themselves by regarding me as an enemy or give me credit as a threat to their sense of self worth, and I wouldn't want someone else to empower me over their psyche...that would be a bit dark. Yet I can hardly force them not to, if their going to make personally damaging, limiting choices.
I had a boss who cause a lot of other employees anxiety, including myself. I did myself a lot of favors when I reminded myself that he was the last person I interviewed with, he offered me the job. It also helped when I showed him by action that there were subtle boundaries to his requests/demands in the workplace. I showed him that I cared about doing the duties defined for me, and I showed him that I didn't care if he was looking for was impossible or implausible according to what I was capable (as a human being, unable to divide myself into two separate individuals and work on two things at the same time). I didn't berate him by expression or words, or implicate that I felt tension or judgment of his command style, I let him come to his own conclusions about reasonably going about allocation of tasks and calls for customer assistance. I disregarded anything that seemed ego driven as much as possible, and focused my own side of a conversation on what I could do for the workplace and the whole working team.
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