My biggest learning experience this year: reporting harassment
By: Naaz Sibia
Tags: Immigrant Children, Work Environment, Harassment, Teachers

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

My family immigrated to Canada from India when I was 11. The shift in cultures was massive for me. My English accent, vocabulary, pronunciation, and general preferences were all very different from the children at my new school in Canada. Surely, I was harassed for it.

I’m sure you’re wondering why I mention this now. I’m 22; this harassment I talk about was around 11 years ago... I shouldn’t possibly be affected by such experiences now. But, I recently realized that somehow these experiences still affect me. The experiences tie me down like chains at times because, at some point, I internally normalized them. One of the ideas I accepted was that someone making me feel like “[I] don’t belong” is okay. This year, I realized that it’s not.

A teammate I happened to work with this year made remarks on multiple occasions that dissuaded me from feeling like I belonged in the same team as them. Their nitpicking, blame-shifting, and power harassment made me feel like walking out of the team. I didn’t want to report them, because my past experiences with reporting harassment in school were always unsuccessful. Except for one extremely supportive teacher almost all my teachers turned a blind eye towards my complaints. In fact, some teachers were a part of the bashing themselves. I woke up everyday dreading to go to school, pleading to my parents to take me back to our home country and telling them that “we don’t belong here!” (eventually we opted into homeschooling for a few years)

Eleven years later, I noticed similar patterns. Instead of reporting the harassment I faced, I decided to walk out of the team so I didn’t have to deal with a demeaning teammate. I notified my team lead about my wish to leave and told him that I was doing so because I didn’t feel like I belonged in the team. An hour later, the team lead got back to me and told me that he thought I belonged to the team. In fact, he thought I was a big contributor to the team. This may seem insignificant to you, but to me it was monumental. I realized that there were teammates who thought that I belonged, and I decided right away that it was the harassment and toxic behaviour that didn’t belong. And so, I reported the behaviour to the team lead right away.

Thankfully, this time my complaints did not go unheard. The team lead made it a point to warn the teammate and made sure I never experienced the same treatment again. After the experience, I can happily say that I don’t wake up dreading to work with the team anymore. As a matter of fact, I am more enthusiastic than I’ve ever been to contribute to the team as a member who belongs here and earned this position.

As 2020 comes to an end, I am motivated to continue standing up to harassment. I would encourage anyone reading this to do the same — for yourself and everyone around you. It isn’t normal for someone to make you feel like you don’t belong.

I hope people don’t ignore harassment complaints like my teachers did. Instead, I hope everyone uses these as an indication to be more attentive towards the work environment like my team lead did.

Cheers!