DEI and me: a job I didn't deserve

Thanks to LBJ's EOC, a better woman won.

“You’re pretty,” Buz reassured me. “All you have to do is pronounce proton and neutron properly and you’ll get the job.”

It was October 1963, and I had just arrived in Berkeley after living my first 23 years in New England—the last couple of them immersed in the hopping Boston/Cambridge folk music scene. I had “dated” (slept with) a steady stream of lanky guitar pickers and wasn’t half bad on the guitar myself, but the parental pressure to grow up and get married was palpable.

On the banks of the Charles River, 1962

A lanky guitar picker would not a reliable husband make, however skillfully he made music. I had to get away, and Berkeley was the next best place. Besides, my former guitar-picking boyfriend, Buz, had already moved there and assured me he could help me get a job at the Rad Lab, where he was working.

The Lawrence Radiation Laboratory was and is still an important national research facility, sitting in the Berkeley hills above the University, and spread across at least 90 buildings when I was there, including several particle accelerators. (It’s now called the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory—a project of the US Dept. of Energy and operated by the University of California).

The views from the Hill hooked me—all the way out to the Golden Gate Bridge

My secret agenda: The Rad Lab employs many guys with PhDs in physics, chemistry and engineering. Surely they’re more reliable husband material…

True confession: I knew and still know NOTHING about physics or chemistry. All the way through high school and college I avoided any class that covered something I couldn’t see, touch, hear or relate to in daily life. I still regret this, but that’s a topic for another day. Nevertheless, Tani, the personnel director seemed to like me (we bonded over a passion for our black half-Siamese cats)—and she didn’t care about my pronouncing proton or neutron.

My first cat, Beatrice, and one of her kittens

I was hired as a “scanner”, which entailed examining slides in a stereo microscope to record certain kinds of atomic particle collisions that had occurred when the slide matrix was traveling on a rocket. After a day’s training any idiot could have done the job, but it paid well. However, we did our scanning in a dark sleep-inducing room with eyes pinned to our double-lensed microscopes. If you’ve ever nodded off sitting upright, you know how your head can jerk…

After a few months, I was tired of giving myself two simultaneous black eyes.

I went back to Tani in personnel to request a transfer. We shared more cat stories. She placed me as an administrative assistant in the electronics department in Building 90.* My favorite part of that job was careening around the sprawling campus in a little 3-wheeled vehicle every Friday to collect time cards from all the buildings where our department had electronics engineers and technicians.

Then Tani called me. “I want you to apply for an exciting new job being created by the public relations department—tour guide for visiting muckity mucks—I think you’d be perfect.”

Of course, I’d be perfect! I’d visited and knew people in almost every one of the ninety buildings on the Hill. I knew all the shortcuts on the route. I was also charming and pretty (Buz said so).

I was already planning how I’d spend my raise when Tani called again. “They hired someone else. I’m sorry. New affirmative action policies from President Johnson —we need more Black people in prominent positions.”

At first I was crushed. Then I met the new hire, a black woman with a masters degree in physics. Not only could she pronounce proton and neutron, she actually understood and could talk about them. The muckity-mucks she’d be showing around were internationally-known scientists and dignitaries. I would have been an embarrassment to the Lab and to myself. No way could I have answered their questions intelligibly, unless they wanted to know the fastest route between Building 27 and Building 46.

In the decades since, I’ve served on the boards of two non-profits (Planned Parenthood in San Francisco and the YWCA in Vancouver WA) where diversity, equity and inclusion were top priorities along with the main mission of the agency. In every way our work was strengthened by our DEI focus.

To call someone a “DEI hire” is an insult to the person’s humanity, to their abilities and to the importance of their perspective. Just because a person is white, (male), Christian, heterosexual and able-bodied does not make them a better hire. I hope the incoming administration gets its ass kicked on this one.

* I eventually met a lanky engineer who worked on the floor below me in Building 90. And we did get married.

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On a light note…

Crowing about crows: You responded with strong opinions about crows when I wrote about Portland’s current crowsplosion a few days ago. Yesterday I listened to this cool story on This American Life about a nature-loving man’s stormy relationship with a couple of crows. And while you’re there, the first story in that episode, The Big Nap, is an hilarious whodunit spoof recorded at a current Broadway show starring John Mulaney and Fred Armisen. So clever!

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Put yourself in the way of beauty

Ok, this isn’t visually beautiful, but HOT DAMN, is it beautiful in the mouth! Rendered salt pork is the yummiest thing since dark chocolate. Salt, fat, crunch. Garnish almost anything with it. Including your fingers.

I hope you will leave a comment—let me know what you’re doing to maintain your sanity and optimism. I always respond, even if it takes a day.

The only way others get to enjoy Alive! with Joy is if folks like you share it. So feel free to do so. Subscriptions are free.

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P.S. Did you know I wrote a book? Yes, I did.
It’s called The Cherry Pie Paradox: The Surprising Path to Diet Freedom. It’s about Thin Within, the intuitive eating process I created back in 1975—two full decades before “intuitive eating” came on the scene. The book walks you thru the experiential process of getting more in touch with food, your hunger, the pleasure of eating and thinking of yourself as a “fat” person. Both the process and the book are actually more fun than you might expect. And it works; you’ll never diet again.