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Episode: Ask Code Switch: Am I the "token" at work?

Author: NPR
Duration: 00:11:29

Episode Shownotes

This week on Ask Code Switch, we're getting into the question a lot of minorities face when climbing the ladder at work – am I rising because I'm talented or because I'm tokenized?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Summary

In this episode, we explore the experiences of Robbie Strunk, the only Alaska Native employee at a renewable energy lab, who grapples with feelings of tokenization and questions whether his qualifications or identity influence his career progression. Tai provides reassurance and context, emphasizing the importance of indigenous knowledge and encouraging open dialogue in the workplace about race and representation. The conversation sheds light on how tokenization affects minorities and the complexities of workplace dynamics influenced by race.

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Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_02
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00:00:21 Speaker_05
Hey, y'all, I'm Lori Lesarraga, and this is Ask Codeswitch, the show where we answer your questions about race and identity. Today's question comes from Robbie Strunk, a college student calling from his home in Alaska.

00:00:39 Speaker_01
Hi, my name is Robbie. I'm from a rural Yupik village in southwestern Alaska with a population of under 800 people. The closest city is 400 miles away and only accessible by plane.

00:00:52 Speaker_05
Now, this may not surprise you, but we don't get a lot of emails from rural Alaska. Robby is from one of the most remote parts of the country. So that got my attention right away.

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Robby said that a few years ago, he moved to a city in Alaska to go to college. And that's where he got his first job as a research tech at a renewable energy lab.

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As the only Alaska Native person on staff and one of the few who've experienced life in rural Alaska, I was invited to lead tours for visitors of our research lab.

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I agreed because that's why I wanted to work there in the first place, to make a positive difference for my community and be a voice for Alaska Native people and rural Alaskans.

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Robby said that getting this job was an honor. But when his supervisor, a white woman, came to him with a concern, things kind of changed. She'd been told by other co-workers not to tokenize him, not to make Robby the quote, token native.

00:01:53 Speaker_01
She asked me if I felt tokenized, and at that point I hadn't, but I very much knew the demographics of my coworkers and knew that I'm the only Native person in this white-dominated science field. I didn't know what to do.

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All I know is that I now second-guess everything I do at the lab, wondering if I'm working on projects because I am Native or if it's because I'm actually qualified to do the job.

00:02:16 Speaker_01
What should I do in this situation, and what have people done in the past? What would you do when you feel like the token at the workplace?

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Robbie strikes a very familiar kind of emotional chord within me. I think a lot of us will have no trouble remembering being this young and this eager, only to later see ourselves as the diversity hire.

00:02:42 Speaker_05
But Robbie's story isn't just a conversation about tokenization like you've heard before. He's working on renewable energy for Alaska in Alaska. And still, somehow, the lone Alaska Native person feels like the outsider.

00:02:58 Speaker_04
Tokenization isn't something that happens by the person being tokenized, if that's the situation. It's being done by the supervisor who's making the decisions.

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A former tribal chief unpacks how the history of Alaska Natives plays into power dynamics for people like Robbie in the workplace. That's after the break on Ask Codeswitch. We'll be right back.

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00:06:01 Speaker_05
I'm Lori, this is Ask Coatswitch. To answer this question from our listener in Alaska about feeling tokenized, I reached out to someone with a bit more perspective on navigating the white workplace as an indigenous person. I gave him a call at home.

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You could walk, you know, 70 miles in any direction from my village, and you're just in nature. It's a vast wilderness, and we still live in a relationship with the land.

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That's Nitsai Tai. He's a senior scientist at the Center for Alaska Native Health Research at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

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I come from a village called Vashanko. In English, it's called Arctic Village, Alaska. It's in the far, far north.

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A lot of Tai's work focuses on the preservation of his native language.

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I did not grow up speaking my language. I was probably the first generation of Gwich'in people from my village who were not spoken to our language.

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Tai has done a lot of work to learn about the history of his community in Alaska, too, and to share that history with others.

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So what have our indigenous communities actually been through with this history of assimilation, with the history of oppression, segregation, denied our right to our way of life that we've lived for thousands of years?

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So there's a lot that we're still fighting for, for our basic human rights, but also in the realm of protecting our young people. It's all connected.

00:07:36 Speaker_05
I was really eager to play Robbie's call for Tai and to get his reaction to hearing Robbie's voice and his question.

00:07:46 Speaker_01
What even is tokenization? Like, what the heck? Am I, am I doing these tours because I'm Native? Am I doing it because I'm doing good work here at the lab? It made me feel like I wasn't worthy of working there. What should I do in this situation?

00:08:06 Speaker_05
Any initial thoughts, Ty?

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Oh yeah, for sure. I'll just say to him directly, you are absolutely qualified. Otherwise, you would not have been hired into the position that you're in. So that is something that you should not question.

00:08:19 Speaker_04
And I would go even further to say that you probably have qualifications

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that exceed many of the other people who may have went through the same kind of Western educational program that you went through to gain your qualifications because you are coming with the whole wealth of indigenous knowledge that you've acquired through being engaged on the land in Alaska within Alaskan communities.

00:08:41 Speaker_04
So I really think that, you know, what this sounds like to me is basically a supervisor who just was themselves inexperienced in handling situations like this.

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And I think they could have handled the situation, you know, a little bit differently for sure, in a way that wouldn't have created this dynamic then for Robbie to have to be second-guessing himself.

00:09:01 Speaker_05
Can you talk to me about what people outside the Alaska Native community might misunderstand about your experiences or history?

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Like even us as Alaskan people, I didn't know until I was in college that there were boarding schools. I didn't know that Alaskan people had this experience. Wow.

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But that's not knowledge you grew up with.

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No, we didn't grow up with it. And so it wasn't until I was in my twenties that I sat my mom down and said, did you know about like these boarding schools and all this stuff? And that was the first time I learned that my own mother had been sent away.

00:09:34 Speaker_04
as a child.

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Wow.

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And it wasn't until I was in my early 30s till like all this stuff really, really sunk in.

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And I started to connect the dots between, you know, a lot of the social challenges that we face and a lot of the addictions that persist within our communities and a lot of the pain and suffering that these different generations had experienced and went through.

00:09:54 Speaker_04
with racism, with boarding schools, with segregation, with, like, all these experiences, then I think there's just so much pain in them that a lot of our parents' generation and grandparents just didn't want to talk to us about what they had been through.

00:10:06 Speaker_04
And so for a lot of folks in my generation, we didn't know. And because of my health research work that I do, we're now seeing a lot more clearly how language, culture, identity are protective factors for our young people.

00:10:24 Speaker_04
And I think that that's the one thing that I'm so appreciative of with this younger generation, is that even conversations like we're having right now are a lot more transparent.

00:10:36 Speaker_04
It is fully okay for us to bring our full identity, language, knowledge into the workplace, no matter what that workplace is.

00:10:44 Speaker_04
And it's okay for us to contribute and share because I think that, I know that Indigenous peoples within our knowledge systems and our experiences have a lot to teach and share the broader community. Absolutely.

00:10:58 Speaker_05
More than anything, Ty, what is your advice for Robbie? I mean, what should you do when you feel like the token at the workplace?

00:11:06 Speaker_04
So I think one of the most important advices that is quite simple, but that was provided to me when I first became a young chief by one of our elders.

00:11:14 Speaker_04
I was really excited because I thought he was going to tell me a story like he usually does, but he basically told me, don't quit.

00:11:21 Speaker_04
And I got this message right away, which is like, OK, as an indigenous person becoming a professional, becoming a leader, you're going to face moments and situations where you're just going to feel like this is too much.

00:11:33 Speaker_04
I don't want to have to deal with this no more. So it's a balancing act of kind of like in situation by situation determining like, is this one that it's really important for me to stick with?

00:11:44 Speaker_04
Or is my time and energy better put somewhere else so that I could be more productive for what it is that I'm wanting to contribute to for our community, for our people?

00:11:57 Speaker_04
So I think, you know, look at things as an opportunity to grow and navigate through a situation that might be making you feel uncomfortable. But also, don't doubt yourself.

00:12:07 Speaker_04
You know, it's so important for us to trust our intuition, our heart, what it is that we're feeling, and also to have the courage to communicate in a respectful and humble way when we feel like something is not right.

00:12:25 Speaker_05
I can tell you, Robbie, I understand how hard it can be to speak up when things don't feel right. But I'm really, really glad that you did and that you sent us this question.

00:12:37 Speaker_05
I hope that Dai's advice resonates with you and that you'll keep in touch with us. We want to hear from you. Until then, that is our show. You can send us your Ask Codeswitch questions on Instagram at NPR Codeswitch. The email's more your thing.

00:12:51 Speaker_05
Ours is Codeswitch at NPR.org. You can subscribe to the podcast on the NPR app or wherever you're listening right now. If you'd like to support our work, you can sign up for Codeswitch Plus. It's small, but it really makes a difference for us.

00:13:05 Speaker_05
And you get to listen to every Codeswitch episode without any ads. You can check it out at plus.npr.org slash codeswitch. And thanks to everyone who is already a Codeswitch Plus subscriber. This episode was produced by Skylar Swenson.

00:13:21 Speaker_05
It was edited by Courtney Stein. Our fact check was done by Barkley Walsh. Our engineer was Kweisi Lee. And a big thanks to our listener, Robbie Strunk, for sending us your question.

00:13:34 Speaker_05
Also want to say a very special thanks to Lauren Gonzalez, our project manager, as well as Cher Vincent, Yolanda Sanguini, and the entire content development team for helping make this series possible.

00:13:48 Speaker_05
Finally, a big shout out to the rest of the Codeswitch Massive. This is Ask Codeswitch. I'm Lory Lizarraga. Call your work bestie.

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