Op-Ed: I’m on a Mission to Dismantle White Supremacy. Don’t Start No Sh*t with Me at Work.
By Jessica Wise
Working while black changes everything. The corporate sentiments and desires for improved diversity give hope, but also make room for lip service and broken promises should they not follow through. Corporations need to understand their responsibility goes beyond a “We support diversity email.” It goes beyond the black worker’s realization that the very leadership making new promises to protect them does not even look like them. And it goes beyond black workers being “hurt” when diversity workshops turn out to not truly address or even recognize racial issues.
Why must this issue be sugar coated with round-of-way words like “diversity” and “all” and “inclusion?” Why must the black worker be further isolated and hurt that their peers can’t just say “black?” Why must the black worker be painfully content with one workshop that never happens again, yet there are no consequences when a racial incident inevitably occurs later?
With pain comes rage.
Do companies have any idea what black people go through on a daily basis? It’s not just the direct racism that gets caught on recordings and the traumatic videos of yet another random black person being murdered by police. It’s a series of microaggressions that economically and socially affect black people from the day we are born.
It’s being followed in a store.
It’s being stopped by police in the neighborhood you have lived in for more than a decade.
It’s calling a coworker out for being malicious, but you’re the one accused of being “angry.”
It’s going shopping and spending an hour trying to find just one foundation that matches your skin without looking chalky.
It’s a white woman clutching her purse when you walk by and an officer putting his hand on his weapon when he sees your face.
It’s going to ballet and having to dye your shoes to match your skin when your white classmates already match the “pink” tights and slippers.
It’s researching what racism in a country might be like before visiting.
It’s going to a restaurant and being sat by the bathroom.
It’s textbooks written by white men that say your 400 year history can be jammed into 28 days.
It’s the villainizing of deep thinkers like Malcolm X and not knowing who Claudette Coven is until you get to college.
It’s going to college, and being asked if you’re a student when you’re trying to study at the library.
It’s welcoming your father home from serving the country when the Korean military allies wouldn’t even salute him.
It’s pulling up to a gas station and counting how many black people are there to see if it’s “okay.”
It’s avoiding driving through Mississippi Goddamn once it’s dark outside.
It’s civilians think they have the right to tell you that you don’t belong somewhere.
It’s not allowing your children to be carefree and loud in a store, because if you don’t grab them up and discipline them, somebody else will. And they might not be so kind.
Then, and only then, do you get the cherry on top—seeing another black person being murdered by police. There are unarmed protestors met with riot gear, when just last week white anti-quarantine folk stormed the Capitol with assault rifles and a silent police force.
The list gets longer. Are you tired yet? Us too.
Then, after all that, you are expected to come to work, perform, smile, and don’t talk about race or politics. Another microaggression within itself. The very world you live in, that decides if you’re next or not, is built on race and politics.
This is war. This is an inherited existential crisis. Every day I venture outside my home and come to work is a rebellious act and a mission accomplished. Until corporations and even small businesses understand how they directly or indirectly contribute to microaggressions against their black workers, they are just as guilty as the woman who clutches her purse when I walk past. And I am no longer afraid to take the angry black woman label, nor are many black millennials today.
So please, do not provoke me. A passive-aggressive message in Teams can’t fly. An outright display of distrust in me to do my job can not be tolerated. Management failing to defend me when a coworker has wronged me can not go unnoticed. Because this is not an incubated situation. This my world, and my black peers and I are on the frontlines everyday.
When I come to work in the morning, understand that I am on two missions:
Make it home alive.
Defeat the forces and structures that try to stop me.
