I've always dealt with having to prove, work, network and push harder than my counterparts. It's not because I'm an expert or an egotistical ass; unfortunately, my challenge is my skin color. I'm not white enough.

My father never quite understood the issue himself, being born with classic "white privilege" that he didn't know he had by default. Nordic, green-eyed, Germanic surname and a slight Euro-accent, he was easily accepted even as a foreigner in America. However, he was also was a full, 100 percent German who married a Spanish woman and produced a son who was brown by genetics. While he saw me as white because anyone in his eyes who wasn't Asian or Black must be white, he was frightfully ignorant of how specific "whiteness" in in the business/corporate world, especially in the U.S. It didn't relate in his brain, having been raised in post-war Europe. Only Blacks suffered racism in the America. Surprise.

Now, the first thing some of my readers might say is, "Oh brother, another race card sob story here." I don't want or expect your pity or charity. I've already spent too many decades working with unequal odds and winning, regardless. So, keep your sympathy or mea culpa for being white if you think that's your reaction before reading this piece entirely.

Instead, this article is simply about seeing the latest evolution of the bullshit I've had to deal with for years in the work world. I'll sum it up with a story - when I would go for job interviews, the first layer would be the typical paperwork. Send in your resume, fill out the application, get screened for the right buzzwords and make it past the minimum requirement review. Then you get to the second level, which is typically the interview. By the 1990s phone interviews started to be the norm as companies were looking for ways to save on recruitment costs, and I did fine in those. I speak and communicate like an educated American, using all the right phrasings, colloquialisms and jokes. So, again, I passed that filter as well. Move on to the third level. Now comes the in-person interview. Typically, what would happen is that the interviews for new greenhorns would be bunched the same day, and companies would route people to waiting room near or in HR. You would show up, wait for your name, and go into a small panel interview. Up to that point, the panel and HR only knew you by name and paperwork. When they called your name, that was the first time the actually saw your face. That's when the bullshit began.

The first signal that would repeatedly occur that I knew something was wrong was they would call my name, I would stand up and respond, and the person would still keep calling my name. When I got close and made it clear I was the person they were calling, they would be surprised, and literally look me up and down. When you have an Anglo-European surname, it was apparent that the corporate world couldn't fathom someone might something other than blonde and blue-eyed. 

Once in the interview, the body behavior of the panelists reinforced the same nonsense that occurred in the waiting room. Do we have the right name? Was there a mistake in the candidates' appointment setting? Oh, I'm sorry, we were expecting someone else...

Really, someone who, someone anglo-white?

The nonsense continues even when you do have a job. You go in meetings, someone asks for an idea, you propose it. They go, that's garbage. Then, ten minutes later someone, obviously lighter-skinned and closer to the corporate image says the same idea, and the management in the room applauds such wonderful ingenuity. But they still keep coming back to you when the shit hits the fan and they need help at the 11th hour. Many of us who are not blessed with a "Nordic" complexion have put up with this baloney for years because, as we have to rationalize, we're still getting a paycheck to pay the bills. 

So, now we fast-forward to 2023. Much of the job and freelance work world has changed. Most of it is digital and the 2020 pandemic pushed even more adoption of tools to for managing labor resources. However, a pervasive nonsense continues to keep working its way back in - the idea that somehow seeing a person's face and their physical characteristics somehow improves evaluation on a person's skillset and performance capability. Even researchers pressed to test cases void of anecdotal stories have found disturbing trends in the entrepreneur capital-funding side of business.

Where before it was dubbed "completing your profile" now it's getting categories in know your customer or KYC requirements as well. Businesses and employers are well within their rights to require government-issued identification, both for labor and tax-reporting purposes. However, there is no technical need for an employee or freelancer to have to display their personal phase on a social or communication profile except for one thing: I want to know what they look like. And, given the poor, long history of institutionalized racism that has long been present in organizations in how they assignment work, choose and promote, requiring a face profile simply allows companies to sidestep all the rules and pick people they like based on appearance.

The counter-argument to the above is that with rampant online fraud, companies need to know who is working for them. Yes, that's what the government documents already provided. "But, but...we need to know we're dealing with the real person." You are, and again that was proven by the same government criteria already established. "But, but, I want to look in their eyes and make sure they understand my directions." If you can't write clear directions as a manager, maybe you shouldn't be in your own job. 

Now, in the employee-employer environment, there are constraints to the above behavior, especially in the form of EEO investigations and penalties. However, for freelancers and gig workers there are no such protections whatsoever. And platforms that require such visual profile criteria simply open the door for a return to the same bullshit I deal with during the 1990 interviews. "Oh, you aren't who we were expecting..."

Of course, if tech continues to pull "I want to see your face" garbage on freelance platforms, then freelancers are a creative bunch; it's why we are regularly chosen to get work done that employees can't seem to pull together fast enough. We will simply use AI to produce fake images of ourselves. It will be like playing the Sims, just in real life instead of a game.

Oh, wait, this is a game after all. Reboot.

Postscript: This article I found published in the LA Times and shown on Pocket after I wrote mine only proves my point further. The work world is still based on your face first, then skills. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-08-08/remote-work-racism-reprieve-return-to-office?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us