My co-workers just discovered I’m black. Up until now they were content with me performing whiteness daily. They found my efforts to be endearing, entertaining, “cute” and wildly reaffirming to their unchecked sense of dominance. However with the recent reinvention of my blackness, they are starting to realize that I am not like them, that I am in fact different which in their eyes means other, lesser, subpar. Since their sudden discovery of my melanated identity, they are behaving differently around me. I am no longer the “safe negro”, the one who pantomimed whiteness and held up a mirror to their superiority. They like those kind of blacks. I am now the kind of black man that they fear. The one that is confident, intelligent, articulate and not here for the bullshit. The kind that calls them on their bias, their white racist shit and tells it like it is regardless of their fragile feelings.
I realize in many ways I protected white Americans from my blackness. I would play small, be agreeable, cooperative. I saw this as being a good person and as a way to foster team cohesion and unity of intent. My white colleagues enjoyed this because it supported their delusions of dominance. It made them feel superior. It wasn’t until I vocalized a difference of opinion did I realize how sick my work environment really is. I realized that my co-workers don’t really like me. They like me reflecting back to them what they are. They like me being like them. This makes them feel safe. This is why they were so kind, so helpful, so judiciously sweet.
I’ve come to realize two things about white people in my experience with their bias. For one, some forms of white kindness can be so fake and performative. This is especially true within predominately white work spaces. Many forms of white kindness are inundated with hidden motive and agenda and in professional settings, such “kindness” is often times used as a cheap ploy to secure the loyalty and devotion of other staff and crew. Once this happens, it is only a matter of time before they turn on you.
The second thing I’ve learned about some white people in professional settings is that they are averse to dealing with difficult things. They rather bury their head in the sand and pretend hard things don’t exist. Their privilege has afforded them the impoverished luxury of doing this. They rather gloss over difficult situations and hide behind fun outings and trips. I realize that they struggle with getting to the heart of things because they rather enjoy the fruits of ignorance.
I realize that when I played small and drowned in the bile of my own counterfeit humbleness, they enjoyed this. I curried their favor and warranted their kindness. When I was akin to that one black friend who performs apologetic whiteness, I was safe because they thought I wanted to be like them and so they kept me around for the sake of their ego. But the blacker I became, the more I brought my own food to the plate, the more I owned my beautiful black ways that is when they started acting different towards me. They started to change. The more I started to get my footing and articulate my knowledge, the more I noticed the microaggressions and attempts to undermine my confidence with snide comments and veiled insults. Truth is maybe these dynamics were there all along. I probably didn’t notice them because I was too busy trying to get along and find community and solidarity with people who were not solid.
Thing is this, when you are the only black person at your job, you will feel invisible. Your culture, your foods, your identity will not be celebrated but rather tolerated and seen as other. At the table that you worked so hard to secure a seat at, you will notice various power dynamics come into play as you begin to assert your blackness. You will see passive aggressiveness, you will see an undercurrent of resentment and covert rage as white people literally scramble around trying to assert dominance and uphold white supremacy. They will unduly challenge you at every turn with their uncooperative spirit and contrariness. They will try to undermine your ideas with their off-hand comments that on the surface seem harmless when really their toxicity is just leaking slowly, attempting to do its work to exterminate your confidence.
My coworkers just discovered how black I am. Wait till they see how black I can get…..
