I was raised to treat people as people. Not as symbols. Not as representatives of a group. Just people.

That simple baseline has become oddly controversial.

I’ve noticed that when I say things like “my best manager was an African American woman” and “my worst manager was also an African American woman,” some people get uncomfortable. They start looking for subtext that isn’t there. They assume I’m making a statement about race or gender when I’m not.

I’m making a statement about behavior.

Their race and gender had nothing to do with my judgment. How they showed up did. How they treated their team did. How they handled accountability did. How they led when things were hard did.

That distinction matters. And apparently, it’s unfashionable.

What’s really happening here isn’t a disagreement about fairness. It’s a clash between individual judgment and identity-first frameworks. In those frameworks, identity is supposed to be centered at all times. Ignoring it is treated as denial, erasure, or quiet resistance.

When you evaluate people as individuals, some hear refusal instead of neutrality. They hear you stepping outside a moral script they believe everyone is obligated to follow.

There’s also a category error baked into these reactions. Judging someone’s performance is not the same thing as judging their identity. Criticism of a manager is not criticism of a demographic. Praise of a leader is not praise of an entire group.

Collapsing those things together is intellectually lazy, but emotionally convenient. It allows people to avoid complexity.

Saying that someone can be excellent or terrible regardless of race or gender removes a protective shield that identity sometimes provides. It forces the uncomfortable truth that excellence and failure are human traits, not demographic ones.

That makes people nervous.

There’s also social signaling at play. In some environments, neutrality is treated as dissent. You are expected to perform allegiance through language. You are expected to foreground identity whether or not it’s relevant to the conversation at hand.

Treating people as people doesn’t earn social credit in those rooms. It doesn’t flatter the narrative. It doesn’t give anyone a script to applaud.

Here’s the part I’m comfortable saying plainly. I’m fine with being unfashionable.

Because being unfashionable here means I’m not outsourcing my judgment. It means I’m applying the same standard consistently, even when it costs me approval. It means I refuse to flatten people into heroes or villains based on categories they didn’t choose.

It also means I assume agency. Accountability. Individuality.

Ironically, that’s more respectful, not less. It treats people as adults who can succeed, fail, learn, and be evaluated on their own merits.

Some people mistake that for insensitivity because it doesn’t come with the right slogans. I see it as moral steadiness.

I can hold respect and criticism at the same time. I can praise excellence without turning it into a demographic achievement. I can call out bad leadership without turning it into an indictment of an entire group.

If a standard still applies when identities are swapped, it’s probably a fair one. Mine does.

So yes, I’m unfashionable. On purpose.