TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: (yawns) I guess also I'm really exhausted. I had a hard time falling asleep before coming here. Today I went in for my very last final session of physical therapy and I talked to the physical therapist about what I can do, etc. and what is kind of stressful about that is they said the answer to when I can be working full time at work and other things is, basically, when I'm strong enough, and I'm not yet, so I'm anxious about talking to the various disability people about that. [00:01:18] I guess I don't know if the answer "we'll see" – like it may be a month or two months – is going to be okay. Hopefully it will. The other thing is, on Monday, I met with a diversity recruiter. This is another person, not the dean of diversity, because that's all of Cambridge. This is just [...] (inaudible at 00:02:09). I e-mailed her because of the hiring of the [...] work. [00:02:18] I met her Monday at 11:00 and it was a super-frustrating, upsetting conversation. In a lot of ways I wasn't – I mean, it would be frustrating in some ways, but it was more than I thought, so she is an older black woman, who is nice. I was like okay. She has a very narrow focus of what she does and wasn't interested in anything outside of that or really talking to me about it. [00:03:16] She was like blah, blah, and her response was sort of like, "Yes, and what is your problem? Where are you concerned here?" Really. I didn't expect that. I thought she was going to be like, "Oh, yeah. That's kind of weird that that happened." So I drew it out a little bit for her. I'm concerned that this wasn't a diverse pool. Her first responses were to ask me if I'd applied for any of the librarian jobs and I said no. She said it's a catch 22. If you don't apply for them, then it's not a diverse candidate pool. I was like, "Okay, but I'm actually not qualified yet and these are all one-year contract positions, so I would be worse off. [00:04:29]

THERAPIST: Right, and that had nothing approximate to do with why you came to talk to her.

CLIENT: Yeah. And also I thought it was weird to make it my fault for not applying, but that wasn't my concern. So I was trying busily to rephrase and was talking a little bit about various issues like racism in my workplace. She was like, "Well, you have to talk to an HR person about that." I'm like, "Okay, but," She kept saying, "I can't do anything about the past, we'll just have to look forward." But if nothing is changing, why am I looking forward? Also, she basically never acknowledged that there was a problem or a reason for me to be concerned during the whole hour. I thought there would be like, "Oh, it's too bad." Part of me was expecting something like, "Oh, that's really difficult. I'm sure you tried very hard." [00:06:01]

THERAPIST: At least a little more of "I can see where you're coming from".

CLIENT: Yeah. I think they flip it back that it's my fault for not applying, even though that's not what I was talking about. Then she also said part of it is librarianship; five percent, five people. She was sort of like "Well?" There just aren't that many librarians, which also wasn't my point. So we had that conversation, which was super-frustrating. Then I was going to talk to her about general [...] (inaudible at 00:06:48), and she didn't want to talk about that because she wants to look forward. She's dealing with recruiting people and getting 16 people of color into a higher grade position. [00:07:09] But the higher positions she was talking about aren't high grade, particularly. The salary range is probably like – it's nothing to sneeze at, but it's maybe like $50 – 70,000; maybe a little bit more.

THERAPIST: And she's interested in...?

CLIENT: She's like, "I really want to get more people of color into that range." I was like, "Well, it's really kind of... "[00:07:37]

THERAPIST: Not aiming real high?

CLIENT: Yeah, it's not, because it's grades 5-7, which is the bottom of your professional employee and not even a member. That's the bottom of the salary. If I was willing to not be a member, I would be in one of those salary grades. I was offered a job in that range in Cambridge in the library and I didn't want it. [...] (inaudible at 00:08:18) It's probably not even managing, like maybe you'd manage one other person, but nothing very impressive. [...] (inaudible at 00:08:40) She was like, "Well, you know..." She didn't really respond to any of the other things I was talking about, and then she said, "I don't know about these positions in particular. The library has a recruiter and I can talk to that person if you want," but she was very dismissive about that idea. [00:09:02] She said I should talk to my HR representative and if my HR representative has had any concerns about racism before. So she didn't want to do that, which she didn't really care or take in or respond to. Her other topic of conversation was jobs that are designated affirmative action jobs. Maybe there are ten open jobs and two of them are designated affirmative action jobs. Those are the jobs that she works on to try and make sure the candidate pool is diverse and the people are getting interviewed are diverse. [00:10:01] She doesn't have anything to do with hiring. One of the diversity pools that will count is gender, so four or five librarians are still diverse because they're all women, theoretically. She wasn't involved with these jobs. I was thinking that even if this wasn't in sciences – sure. (laughs) But we're not. I also thought it really, really should, again, be affirmative action jobs, but they didn't. Then she sort of back-pedaled. "Of course, we have diversity goals for all the jobs that everyone is trying to achieve, it's just that – you know..." Hand wave. Hand wave. [00:11:07] Cambridge's hiring processes were actually creepier than I thought and more disturbing in a way because, to me, what that says is we have decided that 5 percent of the jobs are diverse and the rest of them – whatever.

THERAPIST: I see. Yeah.

CLIENT: And we talked about our path in non-profits and I said, "Yes. My roommate and I worked at a non-profit." I was talking about Ashby. Her goal was to keep the job open for a certain period of time if she's not getting a good diverse candidate pool. She was like, "Oh, we're not going to do that. We would never do that." [00:12:09] Her follow up was, "You know, that would take too many men from above, and that's not really the situation we have here." That was a lot more blunt than I was expecting. None of it was helpful or comforting or like, "No, we're totally trying to improve things." It just felt really awful and it felt like she was saying it was somehow my fault that I shouldn't complain about lack of diversity if I didn't apply for the job in question, even though that wasn't what I was talking about. [00:13:13] She didn't want to talk about any problems that I've had in the past. She was like, "You just need to look forward and what kind of job career you want to have in the future. And if you want to be an advocate, you can do that, but really you should just move forward." She said I should talk to my HR person again. (sighs) Yeah, it was a lot. I didn't think it was going to feel that bad.

THERAPIST: I think you're describing her letting you down at pretty much every possible opportunity. Not just not answering your questions or not being supportive, but kind of actively shutting down or, in effect, dismissing what you came to her about. [00:14:16]

CLIENT: Yeah. And she did it for a while. That was the other thing. I was in there for an hour and got nothing, except that if I applied for a job that was potentially a diversity job, I should contact her because she could help me with that. I requested that she talk to an HR person about diversity hiring and she said she would. I don't know that she will. I don't have confidence in that. [00:15:13] I felt so incredibly defeated and just really sad the rest of the day. We had this meeting at like 11:00 and just the rest of the day I felt like I was on the edge of tears all day. I went home and I felt the same way. Everything would upset me. I don't know. [00:16:02] I felt bad about it. I came home and Ashby had gotten home early because she had therapy that day, and so she did a bunch of unpacking in the living room and part of the kitchen. She's been saying a lot, "All the boxes drive me crazy. I hate having these boxes around." I apologized and said, "I really can't do this right now." And she said, "No, no, no. It's okay," but I still felt really guilty and bad about it. (sighs) And then she was in this very hyped-up – she really wanted to find the over-the-door coatrack that we'd packed somewhere because she really, really wanted to hang her coat. That was the most important thing. [00:17:06] She said, "Where should we hang it? Should we hang it here or here?" I was like, "I don't care." She was like, "But, but I did this for you." I'm like, "I don't care. I'm really sorry, but hanging my coat is not a priority at all." Then also she was like, "I need you to pick out what we're going to have for dinner." I was like, "Okay," and I thought of something. The other thing was that we have utilities in our new apartment. They're like, "Oh, no. You have a $300 balance from when you last used [...] (inaudible at 00:17:53) that you have to pay within the next ten days or you get your utilities dropped." That's really weird because we haven't used you since 2007. They're like, "No. We'll send you the [...] (inaudible at 00:18:08)." I'm like oh, my God. [00:18:10]

I got it and was going through and was just like I don't know, it looks like we paid everything. I don't know about the last payment, but I remember paying blah, blah, blah. They said it looked like we missed a payment in April and then the balances never quite evened out. Blah, blah, blah. Okay, I guess. She really wanted to know if I could figure out when I'd last paid them because the utilities were in my name. [00:19:03] She was like, "Well, I don't want to pay you for the utility if I've already paid you." I get that, but that was in 2007 and I don't keep bank statements that long. I managed to dig up some of my online bank statements and they matched payments. I really wanted to know about this earlier, like March. She was really not like, "No, it's okay but I really want to know." And then I felt she was saying that she was annoyed or mad that she was going to have to double-pay the utilities and it felt like she wasn't willing to pay half of the unpaid bill. [00:20:13] It was really stressing me out because I had no way of looking. My online banking started in June. That's when I can see the statements, and she told me, "Well, what about this earlier month?" Then she said, "No, I just want to know out of curiosity. I'm not upset." And I think she was upset, but I was like, "Fine. I will accept your statement." [00:21:00]

When I came home I was very sad and, after she finished obsessing over the coat hangers, asked me what was going on. I was talking to her about it and feeling really frustrated in that. I'm not sure what I wanted her to say, but we were talking and she was like, "Well, sometimes it's really hard to get a diverse candidate pool." I was like, "Yes, but I don't care." And I mentioned how when she was hiring, basically her joke is, "I will do anything to avoid hiring a straight white guy," I was like, "Good job." Her last hire, she was very frustrated. They often have people who speak different languages, so they get diverse candidates because they use Spanish speakers or people who speak creole. [00:22:05] The last job she was like, "This candidate is just not diverse. Grrr." She was really like, "Am I going to have to hire this really annoying, 24-year-old white guy?" At the last minute she didn't know it, but one of the candidates in the pool was this amazing, black guy, who she hired, who was an alien. She was very excited about that. But she was like, "that was an accident. I had no idea." Blah, blah, blah. I was kind of like, "I hear that, but I don't care." Also, you're hiring process is different from Cambridge because of scale. Plus she was kind of minimizing what they were doing about diversity. She was like, "Well, we automatically get a diverse candidate pool because we have to have Spanish language speakers or we have to do this or that." [00:23:11] It kind of felt like she was missing why I was upset. I just felt like we were talking across each other, where I was upset about this and this, reasons why I was upset this person shut me down, and she was like, "Well, but you know they may have had a hard time getting candidates or blah, blah, blah," which wasn't really her point.

THERAPIST: No, not at all. Partly you're upset because, for whatever reason, part of it is they just hired four women. Part of it is nobody fucking cared. Even the recruiter, you would think if there was a point person on this, it would be her. She seemed more interested in shutting you down than in demonstrating concern. [00:24:58]

CLIENT: Yeah, I was so totally overwhelmed by her not caring or not pretending to care.

THERAPIST: I wonder if some of it has to do with her being black and your feeling like the thing you talk about sometimes where it can be worse if you're at a party among friends or, in this case, in her office, thinking it was more likely that she would be somehow more in her role.

CLIENT: Yeah. Before, when I was waiting in the whatever area, I was really worried what is this diversity effort? I don't really want to talk to this person and then I'm like thank God. This person will be somewhat sympathetic, and then totally wasn't. [00:26:06] She was also a relatively new hire to Cambridge, so it wasn't like she was here for 30 years and entrenched. I have no idea why she was shutting me down so hard. Some of the people I've encountered who have shut me down on a lot of things I've been like, "Yeah, I see you're ready for retirement and don't want to rock the boat. I see how you're really invested in the idea that you're not racist, but I'm like why? You're new. You're all of these things. Why is this such a brick wall? I felt like she was saying that because I didn't apply to the job, it was my fault they didn't have a diverse candidate pool. [00:27:23]

THERAPIST: Right, that's something you described before.

CLIENT: So I mentioned something about the diversity conversations and I'd mentioned that I'd been out on medical leave and that I would be coming back. I was sort of like, "I saw that you had a Macintosh here." She asked me if I had attended any of the lectures and I said no. She was very disapproving of that as well. [00:28:10] I didn't understand. It felt the same way when she said, "If you didn't apply, then you can't complain the candidate pool isn't diverse." It sort of seemed like if I didn't attend these lectures, then I can't complain about it. It isn't my fault that we aren't offering diversity more because I didn't attend.

THERAPIST: It's sort of blaming you or being critical, as though you're being whiny but not really wanting to do any of this.

CLIENT: Yeah, that's how it felt. It felt very why aren't you applying for these jobs and why aren't you doing this and why aren't you...? And why don't I have a game plan for how I'm going to advance? One of the things I brought up is that one of the many reasons why having [...] (inaudible at 00:29:21) getting hired getting me upset was that it made me feel like my [...] in the job market were going to be pretty crappy. Her response to that was to say that if you don't apply then nothing will change, which is not an answer to my question. [00:29:45] (sighs)

THERAPIST: You also present her as being pretty much a knucklehead.

CLIENT: [...] (inaudible at 00:29:48)

THERAPIST: The point you're making about why you didn't apply to these jobs seems very straightforward and she just couldn't seem to get it.

CLIENT: It felt more like, not that she didn't get it, but that she didn't want to engage me in it.

THERAPIST: Like you don't go there?

CLIENT: Yeah. It felt like, "I'm not going to answer your questions. I'm not going to talk about that."

THERAPIST: I see, in a similar vein to we really have to look forward. We can't be concerned about what's happened up to now. [00:31:01]

CLIENT: Right. Exactly. But looking forward, you've got it. Yes but...

THERAPIST: Like some kind of denial here?

CLIENT: Yes. And I was like, "I also had an employee at Computer Services who was really racist and everything." She was like, "Well, did you talk to your manager?" Yes, and I explained how it didn't help. Her reply was, "Well, you should really move forward." I found it weird that she was so entrenched in the party mind that she's only been here for probably a few years, and to be that intensely into the party line if this is what Cambridge is doing, is all very weird. [00:32:13] I usually encounter that – when people are just refusing to talk about whatever – it's usually I feel like people who are at Cambridge for a very long time. Or like, "I've got two years until retirement, so fuck off." That doesn't describe her. She was very determined to not engage in what I wanted to talk about. The other thing that I expected, especially when I came in and she was a black woman, I had been thinking really along encouragement and not feeling very discouraged. I thought that I would get some of that, like "But no. Cambridge has really changed. In the future we're all totally... " I'd seen some kind of like "Buck-up, young woman," and then didn't. [00:33:31]

THERAPIST: Yeah. Not at all.

CLIENT: Yeah. And also for the last couple of weeks I'd been looking for – I want to find a black librarian blogger. I would like to find something. Here's the Internet. There are a shit-ton of librarian bloggers. The answer to that, the answer why I couldn't really find any, is that only 5 percent of a librarian with MLS or black... okay.

THERAPIST: Still, if there are that many librarian bloggers, you would think my God.

CLIENT: Yeah. No, I found one. I found one blog that was created this year and then never was funded. I found a blog about black librarian facts, which was nice – like historical facts. Then I found blogs from some African-American specialist libraries, like [...] (inaudible at 00:34:57). That was kind of it. I found the ALA [...] (inaudible at 00:35:05) had awarded someone who's not a librarian, but works in a library and had done work connecting marginalized communities to computer facilities and libraries that can find jobs. I was like that's great. [00:35:24]

THERAPIST: It's not what you're looking for but...

CLIENT: No, I'm looking for [...] (inaudible at 00:35:26). (pause) (sigh) I don't know. I guess part of it is I really want someone encouraging, that they'd be like, "No, it will be okay. In two years your degree will be done and you'll be able to do these awesome things." I'm just really not getting that. It makes me feel more and more reluctant to ask for it. That was the other thing. On Monday I had someone call me as I was on my way out asking for help with the mediascape tables because they weren't working. I was like, "Jesus Christ." And, of course, I couldn't get it to work with one computer. I found out she was working on a computer that shouldn't have worked, but whatever. [00:36:35] One of the things that was interesting was that a former manager of mine was in the room at this table. There was this class with a professor and there was a student there. There's another table where there were three senior manager-y people. There was this manager of mine, Edmund, and I was kind of like, "Hey, Edmund. Hi." Then they got up to do whatever. He was the manager of the computer help desk when I was there and he's now an assistant dean. I was like, "Good job."

THERAPIST: That's a long way up.

CLIENT: Yeah. I was like, "What the fuck are you doing here now?" I meant to be like, "Hey, what's up? What are you doing?" Foolishly at like 1 AM, after drinking, I decided to e-mail him. (sighs) I woke up this morning and the e-mail was relatively coherent. It was still 1 AM, but it made sense. The sentences were complete. (pause) [00:37:58] In one of the questions I was like [...] (inaudible at [0:37:59] "Are you looking to buy more of the god-damned tables?" (laughs) [...] "What were you doing in that meeting? Are you looking to buy any tables? I wrote all the documentation on them. I could be a good resource." Blah, blah, blah. But secretly thinking, "Oh, my God. I hate these things so much." I also e-mailed someone that I know who kind of has a library job that I want – like conceptually, not literally. [00:38:42]

THERAPIST: No, she's her job is – and she sort of totally created it by accident. She checks out new technology, new media resources, uses them for a while and tries to establish if they'd be useful to either the library or to faculty, and then either talks to the faculty or the library staff about it; why it might be helpful or not. I was like, "Oh, that's a neat thing." So I e-mailed her asking, "Can I see your resume? Do you have any suggestions on..." how could I have your job, basically. [00:39:38] Unfortunately her response was, "I didn't have to apply for a job in over a decade. I don't have a resume. I have SAD. Also I kind of accidentally made my job." And then weirdly she said, "On the outside it seems like the Cambridge library is doing a lot of cool things." I was like, "No. They're not." Weirdly, somehow the [...] (inaudible at 00:40:08) got a burst of buzz recently because the Public Library is using it, which isn't an appropriate use. That's what people were talking about. (whispering) [...] Cambridge students. Also Cambridge threw money at two recent public library lab job things that didn't create anything concrete, but they did make a pop-up library lab somewhere in mid-November or December. [00:40:50]

THERAPIST: What's that?

CLIENT: (laughs) As far as I can tell, it's conceptual. They took a very glassy, glass-walled, storefront-y space, where the bookstore used to be, and are like, "Computers, technology, you can play with it. It's pop-up. It's cool." They put you on as part of a design-school project. As far as I can tell, it was visually appealing, it sounds interesting, it involved a lot of money, and you can use a lot of very nice buzz words about it. Theoretically, it could have been interesting, except that what it seems to have been mostly was, since that's what grad students kind of playing around in the space and graduate students wanting [...] (inaudible at 00:42:15) and playing with some tech toys . I can't figure out that anything concrete came out of it. [00:42:27]

THERAPIST: A lot of this you're sort of really, unfortunately, experiencing being misunderstood it sort of feels like as far as being very hurt and very critical and you're sort of [...] (inaudible at 00:43:23) painfully at the meeting with the diversity recruiter, but also by Ashby and in a way it really wasn't the same but it felt a little bit the same with this woman that you wrote to. It doesn't sound like she was being mean or meant anything bad, but she wasn't helpful and she sort of stumbled into "well Cambridge seems to be doing cool things", which is sort of forgivable to say, but it totally sucked because you're the opposite. [00:44:10]

CLIENT: Yeah. Cambridge is spending some money on some things very effectively or, rather, they are spending money. The second part of it was I was like, "Actually it's a disaster." Blah, blah, blah. And I mentioned that I'm having a hard time because what I have to say is not getting heard. Her response was like, "Wow. If they're not listening to your ideas, you really should leave." It was just like oh, fuck. I hear that, but I want to finish my degree on Cambridge's dime – at least partially. I'm feeling completely involved in it. I don't feel confident I can get a job at all right now. I do also hear that if my workplace is really bound and determined to ignore me, then [...] (inaudible at 00:45:26) at Cambridge with all its Cambridge-ness. I'm not going to win. [00:45:38]

THERAPIST: There is a ton of data so far that says that you're not going to win. In other words, in general, of course you're right; but also you're having a hard time.

CLIENT: Yes. It's sort of a combination of there being all of these times when I was bucking against Cambridge and Cambridge bucked back. Also Cambridge is like the David and Goliath story, except David is this (sniggers)... Cambridge really is that Goliath – which can be cool in some ways, but not when I'm butting heads with it.

THERAPIST: We need to stop for now.

CLIENT: I will see you tomorrow.

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