Sidekicks Wanted

As you read this, please ignore me. I am a voice in a corner, an invisible narrator. And I need to be for this to matter the way I hope it can.

I write under a pen name, in part, because my hope in writing is to give voice to stories and issues that don’t always belong to me. If it becomes about me, something gets taken away.

I am not a minority, but I have worked for a minority community for most of my professional career. Within the organization, I am a cog, a peon. A sidekick. And this is how it should be.

As a sidekick, I get to bring ideas to the community I work for about how it could be done. If I had a hero cape, that would be that and we would do it this way without thought.

Instead, my sidekick outfit lets me hear from the people I’m trying to help, lets them take the lead in asking the important questions. I get to present my ideas and then listen as they ask:

• Does this method match our cultural values?
• Will this reduce or increase our reputation within the community? Will it spur divisiveness?
• Who will be helped by this and who will be hurt? Is the hurt unavoidable or can it be mitigated?

What is important to them is not always what I was told, growing up, should be important to me. I did not grow up in a place where people thought generation to generation instead of paycheck to paycheck. I was not raised to revere my elders as wise; they were old and out of touch in many cases. I had a lot to learn when it came to helping.

It took a long time to earn the trust of the community I work for. The reasons why made more and more sense the longer I worked here. When I do public outreach in the larger community, some people see my non-minority features and confide in me the worst stereotypes about the community I work for. They seem to think that I must be the most frustrated of all, working so close to this group, and that all the assumptions are true.

The inner me with a hero cape wants to yell at them, shame them, set them straight. But this is not the way of the people I work for. They must always be better behaved than others to be heard. And as their sidekick, I must do the same. My words must be gentle, my ideas subtler. I must counter with kindness and stories of the good that they do that contradict these stereotypes. And when they can’t hear these ideas, I must leave it there. Even when the extent of silent racism haunts my dreams.

As a sidekick, I have gotten to be a part of this community that I was not born into. It has taught me incredible lessons about how to help those with different backgrounds than mine. Here are some of the biggest lessons that it has taught me:

Get Your Hands Dirty

If you want to support someone as a sidekick, volunteer your time and labor, not just your forwards and likes. Do jobs that are not your own. Do the boring jobs that nobody wants to do. Ask how you can help instead of inserting solutions. If you think you have a better idea and are told “no,” ask why and then take the answer at face value. If you still think you're right, show up anyway and do it their way. It takes time to earn the trust that comes with accepting new ideas.

Accept That You Won’t Understand Everything

Listen more than you talk. Design your work to make others look like the hero, not you. If you really want to help, then making others shine is the goal. Every year I learn new things about the community I work for. Most of them astound me.

Learn as much as you can about the struggles of others and accept that, because you are not them with a lifetime of experience in this group, there are things that you will never fully understand. Don’t blame them for this but keep trying to learn anyway. Some subtler things will take decades of empathy and attention to fully learn.

Understand the Values of Your Group When Proposing Solutions

The community I work for moves for slow but permanent change. They believe in accords and not disruptive actions. They attempt to help others first and use community goodwill to provide lasting change for their members. They speak ill of nobody but are slow to trust newcomers from the outside. If you are new, you’re quick with a negative word or you believe in zero-sum wins, your ideas may not be welcomed. If you will work with and for them but not attend their community celebrations, you will remain an outsider. If you don’t understand their goals of improved quality of life for their children, their elders and their families, you are missing the point for them. If you want to bring ideas to this group I work for, you must think about sustained community joy over one-time profit.

Maybe these fit your goals and maybe they’re a bit different. It doesn’t matter if you’re a sidekick.

What I Get Out of It

I am an introvert- you won’t find many selfies of me on social media and when I write, I prefer to ghostwrite or use pen names. So maybe I’m well-suited for this kind of job. Much of my job is behind the scenes anyway (rules, regulations and paperwork is involved- boring but soooo necessary to making lives better).

But there’s more that I get out of being an advocate than avoiding a spotlight. In my case, my beliefs align closely with those of the community I work for. I get to wake up and do a job with purpose every day. The group I work for values their people in many ways. They are flexible when my life and work conflict as long as I get my work done. If someone from the outside complains about my work, they are quick to support me. Since I work for a place that is designed to make the lives of a community better, they offer the same opportunities to their staff. I get to see past the stereotypes of a group I have deep respect for and into the struggles and joys of their daily lives.

Best of all I get to see how the lives within my adopted community get better as I work.

Sidekicks Wanted

This piece really isn’t about me and the work I’m doing. I’m pulling the hood down from my cloak of invisibility, instead, to reach those who want to help further a cause they believe in but don’t know how.

Perhaps my story can help you, perhaps you’ve got your own path to blaze. But help is needed everywhere, especially from sidekicks.

Heroes sometimes miss the inner needs of communities; they blaze in with money or ideas and press releases but don’t stay to make sure the details are taken care of or find ways to make a windfall sustainable. These things are great if you have political clout or financial resources or millions of followers. But they are often transitory and much more help is needed behind the scenes and on a regular basis.

Sidekicks pick up the pieces when ideas fall flat. They sweep the dirty floor when you can't afford to hire a cleaning crew. They share kindnesses about those they admire, even when confronted with hate groups. They show up, every day, even when they don’t know what they can do to make it better.

They start to make it better by letting the community itself prioritize its own needs. Sidekicks just need to act as the helping hands to get them there.

If this resonates with you, act. Someone near you needs help. You just need to ask them how. And if they don’t know, show up anyway.

You’ll probably look great in tights.