Legal scholar Leah Goodridge wrote an award-winning essay on how professionalism has become a tool ... [+]
Professionalism can be conceptualized as “the state or practice of doing one’s job with skill, competence, ethics, and courtesy.” Many of us feel like it is something that we know when we see but we fail to realize how professionalism has morphed into a tool of oppression. When evaluating the level of professionalism a person possesses, we are often thinking from a white-centered lens. Legal scholar Leah Goodridge is a litigator and educator that explored professionalism as a racial construct in an award-winning UCLA Law Review essay that has received a lot of traction online. Goodridge, who hails from the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn New York, sat down to discuss the essay, what prompted her to write it and how our warped perceptions of professionalism impact the workplace.
Janice Gassam Asare: Could you just share a little bit more about yourself for the readers who are not familiar with you?
Leah Goodridge: Sure. I have two titles. I'm both a tenants' rights attorney fighting gentrification, and I am also one of 13 commissioners on the New York City Planning Commission.
Asare: So, could you share a little bit more about the article you wrote about race as a professional construct and why you were moved to write that piece?
Goodridge: I was moved to write it after a bunch of experiences where I realized that professionalism is a one-way street and I started to question what the purpose of professionalism was for and for who. For example, I'm a lawyer...I'm a Black woman and many times when I enter court, my opposing counsel is white and sometimes they may yell, berate me, and do all sorts of things that are unprofessional and the judge might not...the judge won't act. The judge will never admonish them. But if I had done the same behavior, it's clear that the same would not be true. And so, I realized that there are two different standards of professionalism.
And then when I unpacked, well, what if I actually professionally push back against this misogynistic and the misogynoir, then the response would ultimately be, you're unprofessional in some form or fashion. I began to see that professionalism itself was a mechanism to put people of color in place in the workplace.
Asare: Absolutely. And so, how do you feel like that shows up in different ways in the workplace when it comes to standards of professionalism and how do you think that harms us?
Goodridge: It shows up in many different ways. And one of the primary ways it shows up is in the expectation for people of color to have to endure abusive, toxic, racist behavior. And by doing so, the prize is to be perceived as the utmost consummate professional. And I think that that's problematic. There is no actual prize. You don't actually win anything, other than perhaps being in a therapist chair after experiencing a racially oppressive environment like that.
So, one is definitely the bias threshold...this ideology that you have to have a thick skin and also that you're prized for having a thick skin and for putting up with. But the whole purpose of it is if you're actually supposed to endure and that makes you this tough, consummate, seasoned, polished professional. And I think that's incredibly problematic and it's very one-sided.
"Professionalism itself was a mechanism to put people of color in place in the workplace."
Asare: How do you see it manifesting in the legal field, specifically for Black women?
Goodridge: I wrote it talking about my experiences for the legal field. Most law review articles are read mostly by legal academics. I was bold in writing this because I thought that this was going to be a hidden law review. And what ended up happening is it wasn't. People read it and then it just went viral and then it became a much larger deal because...people of all professions, people of color in all professions said, ‘This applies to me.’ So, even though I wrote it just for the legal field, it became clear to me afterwards that this isn't just for lawyers. And that for me, has been very empowering.
How it applies in the legal field in particular is that lawyers are taught to strip away our emotions and we are taught about the reasonable person. And the reasonable person is literally supposed to be someone who is raceless, genderless no culture. I think that, in and of itself, is problematic because we know that what ends up happening is that then it ascribes to a white normative. The first thing is even the way that lawyers are taught to think. We are taught to strip away emotions, which means that let's say if you are a person of color and you're encountering racism as an attorney, to be a professional attorney is of course to rationally ignore it. Let's not have any emotions about it. That's how we're taught. The second part...is something that's endemic to the American workplace, that is especially pervasive in the legal profession, which is this very archaic idea about civility and workplace civility. And what that means is that you don't actually discuss anything that's deemed politics but the problem is that...anyone that's not a white male is considered a political identity. Just talking about after George Floyd, like what's happened, that's considered political. Talking about anything to do with race that doesn't involve whiteness is considered political. So, that's a problem because all of that is then rolled up into a ball and made out to be unprofessional to discuss.
Asare: How do you think the readers can push back against this? What are some ways we can deconstruct this all together?
Goodridge: I think the first thing is to validate people's experiences and the experiences and feelings of people of color who have told you that they have just endured racism in the workplace. What I mean by that is after they've told you, don't say, ‘Bob, he treats me well. Are you sure?’ I hate when people say, ‘It is what it is in the workplace.’ It's just another form of keeping the status quo. And it is another form of telling people to have a thick skin. It is what it is, so don't do anything. I would say to avoid that.
And the second big point I would give is to speak up and name it and use the words...I specifically created a lot of terms in this essay to...empower people to be able to say, ‘No, this is actually the bias threshold.’ So that people can push back against it.
Asare: What would you like the readers to take away from the piece?
Goodridge: I think for me, the main takeaway is to challenge the way that we see professionalism as really a cover for racism. Because at the end of the day, if in one workplace a white employee can act in racist or misogynistic ways, and an Asian colleague can push back against that and the same workplace will deem that Asian colleague unprofessional because she's actually raising this as an issue as opposed to the behavior that she's reacting to, I don't think enough people understand that that dynamic is incredibly problematic. I think a lot of people have accepted that because that's what we've been taught.
I think for me, the main takeaway is to take a step back and understand that we are all participating in furthering white supremacy in the workplace, that we need to stop. Including people of color. That's why I said we, because it's something that, again, much like white supremacy, we've all been taught this. Everyone has a stake and everyone has a role. And I want people to walk away from this understanding what the beast is and then further understanding how to attack it.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
