The Whistleblower Identity

The Whistleblower Identity

I think this is the way it worked with me:  I found a problem while doing my job, and my boss got upset.  That irked me.  Then I raised another issue which had been around for a while and I knew would set her off.  I took a moral stance and got blown back.  I decided I was, and had to be, a whistleblower.  It ended badly for me.

For a long time after I made my first disclosure about HomeFirst Services at the end of 2013, I thought of myself as a whistleblower.  It was part of my identity.  It explained why I had been fired.

Erik Erikson introduced the concept of identity in 1950, and public interest grew quickly.  Erikson, who trained under Anna Freud, applied it to a stage of youthful psychological development.  He described a process of integrating roles and skills with an eye toward how one will perceived as an adult – its social dimension.  Identity, he wrote, provides a sense of continuity and sameness – its internal dimension. 

The concept evolved.  Recently, Kwame Anthony Appiah offered a new formulation.  Identity comes with labels, he writes, and ideas about why and to whom they should apply.  It shapes our thoughts about how we should behave and how others should treat us.  Whether we have a right to claim an identity and to receive particular treatment may be contested by others. 

The whistleblower identity is attractive to some.  It helps justify our actions after we defy expectations of our employee identity.  It seems to promise protection, even if the promise is eventually broken.  But its contestable nature is key to the organization’s defense after it retaliates against us[1].  Despite my eight allegations of HomeFirst violations, my retaliation complaint, and my 150+ page rebuttal to HomeFirst’s defense, the State of California still determined I was no whistleblower.  We had different understandings.

Some balk at the idea of being a whistleblower.  They say they were just doing their jobs.  That was Adam Wapniak, an audit officer in New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, when he called out poor payment practices and other problems.   That was Cynthia Cooper before she leveraged her WorldCom whistleblowing into a speaking career. 

Sometimes the identity is assigned for the simplest things.  Terry Chapman and Guillermo Toledo, who worked with the Kern (CA) High School District PE program, spoke up at a Board meeting.  They were promptly labelled whistleblowers by a local news station.

Multiple identities can coexist in a single individual.  They do in Appiah who can be read as Ghanaian, British, or American.  They can intersect: a black man’s expectations differ from those of a Christian-black-trans, for example.  Because of this fluidity, democratic societies have fractured into ever narrower identities, according to Francis Fukuyama.    Each identity demands recognition and a proper measure of respect, he says.

Terry Albury’s double identity as an FBI agent with Ethiopian origins created a problem when his office started going after Somalis.  He added whistleblower to his identities and was canned.  Jennifer Denk was an employee of PharMerica, but the oath she swore when she graduated from pharmacy school led her to file an FCA suit against her employer.  The suit succeeded although PharMerica denied doing anything wrong.  Siobhan O’Connor was also torn: she cares for her boss Bishop Malone, who allowed sexual abusive priests to stay in ministry, but she is a faithful Catholic who felt God called her to leak documents about Malone. 

Identities can emerge or recede over time.  I did not always see myself as a whistleblower.  I didn’t in 1992 at MAI Systems or at Catholic Charities in 2005 when I witnessed violations but stayed silent.  I became one only in 2013. 

I came to see myself as a “whistleblower” at HomeFirst, but before that I was a “highly valued member of the team.”  I doubted, though, how well I was valued.  Some of my professional opinions didn’t seem respected at all. I didn’t like the way I was treated.  That valued employee identity wasn’t working for me.

Groups often don’t get the recognition they want.  Then they organize; they take action.  One result, Amy Chau writes, has been identity politics, which became a hot topic in the context of Donald Trump’s election.  In the lead up to 2016, identity politics was a problem the Democratic Party would have to overcome or recover from.  It’s safe to say that whether Democrats focus on it or not, identity politics will be vexing for years.

Whistleblowers, though, don’t organize and are weaker as a result.  The National Whistleblower Center aims to help whistleblowers, but, resources being limited, it helps only bigger-time guys than me.  Same thing for Government Accountability Project.  But combining our efforts as whistleblowers – or even consoling each other – is difficult because we are constrained by confidentiality requirements and the threat of lawsuits from our (former) employers.

The whistleblower identity can be dysfunctional.  It can get us into trouble without solving anything.  Still we do it.

In Dangerous Minds Ronald Beiner describes the threat that ideas of Nietzsche and Heidegger pose to liberal society.  They helped fuel fascism on the right and left, white supremacists, and other poisons.  Nietzsche’s übermench and those privileged with access to Heidegger’s ineffable Being may face struggle, danger and death, but that’s the source of their emotional appeal, Beiner (citing George Orwell) says.

We are challenged to be sure that our confidence in our special causes is not another dangerous idea.  It would be nice to know that we really are attracted to do good rather than engage in struggle, danger, and the risk of (career) death. 

At the end of our project, when we view it all from a distance, our efforts can appear foolish.  The idea that we have a moral obligation to blow the whistle can seem silly.  Maybe it’s better for us, our families, and society if we just walk away from the jerks.  That sounds a little like Howard Roark, but maybe.

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[1] For example: Terry Albury, Eric Borcik, Martin Desmond, James Friedlander, Paul Somers, and Reality Winner.  And famously Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning.  The State of California determined that I, too, was not a whistleblower in good faith.