When underrepresented colleagues want solidarity at work
You are colleagues who share the experience of being underrepresented at your workplace — the isolation, the slights, the extra labor, the sense of not fully belonging — and you want to build solidarity, to support each other and stand together rather than each navigating it alone. You want your shared strength to sustain you and to change what needs changing.
Building solidarity among the underrepresented is one of the wisest things you can do, for I know how the isolated are dismissed and the joined are not. Alone you are each dismissible; together you are not — when several of you name the same problem and corroborate each other, you become far harder to ignore, turning dismissible individual grievances into an undeniable collective observation, so find each other and stand together, for what one alone could be told they imagined, several confirm as real. Support each other in the daily wearing-down — be the ones who understand without explanation, who validate a perception when you doubt it, who share the load and the strategies, for this is how each of you endures a workplace that taxes you as it does not tax others. And open doors for those who come after — mentor and advocate and widen the door, turning your solidarity into a legacy that makes the place less lonely for the next. What do you most need from each other's solidarity?
What changes unlock by starting
- You see together you're harder to dismiss
- You corroborate each other's experience
- You support each other through the daily wearing-down
- You open doors for those who come after