Dear Black Social Workers, You Will Never Be Fully Supported Working Within Predominantly White Spaces So Create Your Own!
As the only black male social worker working at a predominately white agency, I feel like I’m not getting the support I need in order to grow. I feel like I am not learning the things I need to know inorder to be the best social worker I can be. Admittedly, I also don’t know all the things I need to know inorder to be the best social worker I can be. It’s like inorder to get the right answers, you first have to ask the right questions and sometimes I don’t feel like I know enough to even ask the right questions and trusting my white coworkers to provide me with accurate information is an exercise in futility. Sometimes I feel so alone and it’s really starting to wear on me.
It's not that I hate my white coworkers, I just don't trust their intentions towards my black life. I don't trust them to honor and support my advancement as a black social worker. I find their words and actions to be dangerously incongruent and nauseatingly disingenuous. On the surface they appear to be helpful, generous and kind yet when they see that you possess an air of confidence, authority and influence, they become threatened by your power and begin to engage in covert tactics to try and undermine your agency.
Working within a predominantly white agency, I’ve learned a couple of things about my white coworkers that bear much consideration. For one, they are extremely insecure. They don’t have low self-esteem, they have NO self-esteem. They always feel this need to try and compete with one another and prize competition over collaboration at every corner. When congregating at the table for daily meetings, they are quick to bolster and highlight their achievements/contributions in an effort to outdo, outshine and one up each other. They seek glory and praise and rarely do anything just for the sheer sake of doing it. There has to be some external reward, some immediate benefit for them to do anything. Additionally, if someone has good news or some special thing happening in their lives, another white coworker will try and hijack their moment by centering themselves and monopolozing the discussion. White folx stay trying to find their own autobiography in your testimony. Which leads me to yet another realization: White people love to center and insert themselves into EVERYTHING! It’s as though they feel they own everything in this world. They suffer from severe entitlement issues and are threatened by anyone who they feel has more talent, skill and ability than they do. They seek to destroy such people either through character assassinations, watercooler gossip or petty mean girl antics. Did I mention how exhausting they are, especially white women. White women are so exhausting! It’s to the point many agencies don’t even want to hire them due to their incessant complaining, fault-finding and weaponization of company tools and policies.
As diversity efforts move into full swing within my agency, I’ve noticed a couple of very interesting dynamics start to emerge. For one, as more black people are hired, many white employees are beginning to resign. White flight at its finest. Additionally, I’ve noticed that the white employees that are there often direct their comments, responses, attention and even their gaze at other white employees. They rarely if ever look at black employees unless they are trying to subjugate them with benign requests in an effort to bolster their own ego and assert a veiled form of psychological dominance.
Also I’ve noticed that as more black talent begins to emerge within predominantly white agencies, white people begin to get scared and start to literally dig in their heels. In an effort to maintain the status quo, they will oftentimes try to center their own lives in every transaction. They never ask you anything about your family, your friends, your life, nothing! The minute you talk about your experiences, they quickly shift the focus back onto themselves as if to say your life, your experiences, your interests and hobbies are unimportant and therefore inferior to their own. They can be downright rude, dismissive, disingenuous and impossible to really engage with as deep down inside they struggle with an inferiority complex that causes them to compensate by acting superior. I usually avoid such colonized conversations that try and recruit me in the position of being caregiver to white grief. I find such conversations exhausting and pointless to say the very least. I keep all interactions short and brief. Precision with a mix of concision has helped with the goal of maintaining my peace.
Did I mention how passive-aggressive white people are? The rock throwing hand hiding techniques of white employees at my agency are astounding. They instigate arguments, trigger disagreements then try and pretend they don’t know what you mean when you confront them on such behavior. They often times engage in what I refer to as "death stares" where they will look at you with an intense fixed gaze inorder to try and intimidate you and get you to look away. They love hiding behind a veil of feigned ignorance in order to absolve themselves of any responsibility. They will shelter their vindictive intentions under a veil of white innocence thus making you appear as though you are overly sensitive and imagining their covert cruelty when in fact, you are not. Such gaslighting is one of their prime tactics used in their passive-aggressive warfare.
Also I've noticed this phenomenon with my white coworkers where they will not like or even get along with one another however in an attempt to discredit and go against you, they will join forces and team up with a white coworker they can't stand with the goal of proving you wrong and undermining your knowledge, skills and abilities. The moment you accuse them of anti-black sentiment, they will remind you that they're not racist and direct your attention to the black clients they serve and work to help daily. However, it is my belief that most white social workers try to align themselves with black pain in order to enhance their own feelings of superiority. Their supposed "help" is just their duplicitous way of helping themselves to black suffering as a way to feel better about themselves and their own miserable lives. They really don't give a damn about black people and have no genuine interest in empowering them. It's all an act. White people in this country like to feel better than everyone and what better way to do that than to align yourself with a group of people who are disenfranchised, on the fringes and deemed "defective" by society. The comparison offers a quick ego boost.
Additionally I feel that my white coworkers try not to provide me with the information necessary for me to excel in my position. They act as the guardians and gatekeepers of information necessary for me to access and navigate various systems. They want to be the only ones to have special knowledge and information as this makes them feel superior so they intentionally withhold vital information that is crucial to my advancement. I literally have to learn my role through osmosis. Usually you are provided mentorship while on the job but when you are the only black male at your job, you will not be adequately supported. You will be dismissed, disregarded, unduly challenged, provided inaccurate information and seen as a threat.
As a social worker, I love what I do. But as a black social worker, I’ve made peace with the fact that I’ll never be fully supported while working within predominantly white spaces. Bias is real and as long as racial bias persists, I will never be supported within these spaces. I’ve made it my aim to support myself and look for supportive spaces outside of the agency. This is how we survive. This is how we have always survived—by creating our own.
