Brief rant: The public interest superiority complex is infuriating
My little rant. Feel free to ignore. I’m a public interest student, FYI. Again, I respect people in the profession, and know not everyone is like this, but enough people are like this for me to make this post. I’ve also personally seen this trend from people of all financial and racial backgrounds.
I’ve noticed a lot of genuinely weird ideas or just horrible thoughts in the PI field in general.
Here are some examples: - I’ve noticed PI lawyers use a lot of bullshit phrases like “holding up the mission” ?? What? Can you just say what you worked on please, Kevin, and be normal?
Abolition is a generally common idea- but it has pretty much no forward-looking plan. I talked to one man who wanted to abolish foster care, and said a replacement would be for the community to “put in the work” and “lift children up.” Basically, he re-described foster care, a system where community members (and other family) agree to take in children. I’ve been trying genuinely to read actual solutions posed by people like him and can’t find any that would be relevant to severe abuse or neglect cases.
Stresses equality nonstop, but somehow makes a lot of situations worse? For example, some lawyers would be fine sending their female interns to the most dangerous neighborhoods in an urban environment with no transportation voucher, then would accuse them of being racist when they expressed minor discomfort at being in a place where they clearly do not belong, and were vigorously sexually harassed. Meanwhile, the people insinuating the interns of being racist ubered to and from the location in question.
Talk nonstop about inequality but then blatantly disregard things female colleagues say and encourage females (female minorities specifically) to take notes
Extreme neuroticism about things like email drafting, while being neglectful about major things like choosing a competent, non-racially stupid psychologist for their case
honestly, just weird judgment in general. You’re not supposed to adore all of your clients, but they seem quick to befriend extremely unsympathetic and borderline dangerous clients (sexual predators or DV abusers with strong cases against them). I’m sorry- I have no desire to casually message a dude that likely punched his gf in the teeth. I have friends.
Bad social skills - So many people alienate their classmates because they’re unpleasant and rude for no reason, but expect to have great relationships with underserved populations they have nothing in common with, then get surprised when their clients don’t love them. I’m sorry, but if you can’t get along decently with PEERS why is this random client who can’t even choose you, going to like you? Someone got competitive with me because a client’s sister preferred to talk to me and not them. She even tried to turn it into an office-wide problem, and was quickly shut down. Huh. Shocking. Maybe the client’s sister didn’t talk to you because you talk to her like she’s a disabled puppy, perhaps