dear employers, i'm a great diversity hire

(originally published 5/4/2022)

My high school career counseling center recommended 13-year-old me to become a farmer.

After sitting in the sterile computer lab of my STEM academy high school clicking through webpage after webpage of Myers-Briggs tests, enneagram alignments and other Jungian prophecies, I was told that I would be best fit for a career in agriculture.

I waited for my dad to come home to break the big news. I approached him in the kitchen, a double for his home office, and announced to him that through ground-breaking technology, I was chosen to become a farmer in my adult life.

My father, staring up from his black brick of a company-assigned computer, glanced at me through rimless, rectangular lenses and said only two words.

“That’s bullshit.”

We continued crushing each other's dreams: I gave up on my childhood goal of working as a software engineer at Google, and he gave up his role of being a supportive father in preference of being progressively obsessed with alt-right propaganda.

At one point, I walked into the kitchen to him shouting at his laptop. Too hungry to care, I asked my mom what was for lunch. She handed me a small bowl with a scoop of rice and a splash of soy sauce.

“Here. Your dad was too busy ranting about Communists to cook food.”

As I saw him putting up Trump 2020 flags and Turning Point USA posters on the refrigerator, pantry, and walls of our hallway, I knew that from now on, I had to maintain a purely need-to-know basis with him.

On a summer evening in 2020, I had forgotten to shut the door to my room while I was working, which my father took as an open invitation to enter. He had just finished watching the latest Tucker Carlson segment.

"Are you still studying media?" he asked. Knowing the conversation that lay ahead, I gave a noncommittal nod. He maintained his stoicism, but I noticed his brow furrowing slightly.

"This media thing… it's all corrupt. Everything in Hollywood has to be so PC now. They're being forced to include transgender people and talk about gay rights and all this bullshit. I mean, everything's changed. I hope you know that this is where your career is headed."

If I had known that my current newsroom would still be struggling to gender me correctly even after two semesters of repeated correction, I would've told him that he didn’t have to worry about inclusive media anytime soon.

I didn't take the bait. A strained groan escaped his throat.

"Look, if it's going to fund media criminals, I'm going to reconsider using my money to pay for your tuition."

As I provided no response again, he decided to not hold back.

"You know, I should be more violent to you. Like those BLM protestors you like so much. Maybe then you'll get the point."

At that time, my dad had purchased two assault rifles, with the threat of gunning down any Communist Democrat liberal he saw. It occurred to me that it didn’t matter whether I got outed to him as a queer or as a journalist first. Either one was sure to prompt a disowning of someone sympathetic to the left.

Looking down the barrel of my dad’s AR-15, I realized that the time had probably come for me to leave. Having known this day would come, I gathered up the money I had saved up since I was 15 and moved out.

As marketable as that experience was, I couldn't tell the Walt Disney Studios hiring managers that, so I said that my biggest challenge was directing a docuseries by myself instead. They seemed to like hearing that.

I consider myself to be a pretty good liar; my parents still think that I'm majoring in film and that the Korean girl who suddenly attached herself to me at the hip is nothing more than my roommate. So when the two white men asked me why I wanted to work for them, I didn't bat an eye.

"I respect Disney’s commitment to imaginative storytelling. I didn't see how your entire employee base staged a walkout two days ago because you fund violence against people like me. I haven’t been boycotting Disney franchises for the past four years."

I told them about all the achievements I could never tell my parents: that the CBS News internship I had secured at 18 years old was through a racial diversity fellowship, that I had covered Joe Biden’s visit to a nearby college campus and had been harassed by the same people my parents had probably rallied with in Orange County, and that I had received statewide recognition for my videos on, of all things, corporate soda and queer journalism.

All the while, I wondered what kind of Disney-themed pride flags they hung in the lunchroom during June. I wondered about the kinds of excuses they’d give me for not being able to use they/them pronouns. Whether the queer people working there still felt like everything they did to get there was worth it.

Imagine how much less running I'd have to do if I were cis. If I were straight. If a world that enabled companies like Disney didn't exist. The smile on my LinkedIn page might have been less forced.

Before I knew it, the video meeting ended, and I found myself writhing in a skin of dread that has not left. I added my pronouns back to my profile and shut the computer off.

At the time of writing this, I applied for a total of 18 internships in the past semester. I’ve recited the same story to the five that reached out to me. I have told all of them the same lie: that I work this hard out of some righteous pursuit of passion just like everyone else. I don't. I work out of spite.

The more my co-workers misgender me in the newsroom, the harder I work at producing content that wins awards they could never dream of. Every time I hear about queer violence or housing insecurity or inaccessible healthcare, I become angrier about the circumstances we were put under. I'm going to prove that we deserved better. I'm going to prove that I was better than the people who made my life a living hell.

Every award, every accolade, everything I have ever earned, is drowned in spite.

The morning after I announced that I had decided to decline Disney’s offer, I received a text from my dad—a screenshot of a far-right commentator’s post about the company’s decline. Underneath: “Disney is very woke these days anyway… So screw them.”

I'm an excellent candidate. It wasn't my choice.