Too Black For the Workplace?- Dealing with Racially Insensitive Co-Workers

By: Nicole Lourette

As a 25-year-old woman of color with two fine arts degrees, I consider myself lucky to be employed. I found a decent office job right out of college, and while it is not in my field, it is something I can see myself growing with, something that can provide many opportunities down the road.

That being said, I am currently one of three people of color in an office that has roughly 30 employees. I am also one of the three millennial-aged employees; all of which started around the same time I did. It’s an industrial contracting company: a blue-collar office rooted in the steel industry, nestled in the middle of the Steel City of Pittsburgh, so naturally it is full of baby boomers with a handful from Generation X.

My first day on the job, my mentor was the only other young black woman in her twenties. The relief I felt having her would carry all throughout my first month of training. She and I bonded almost immediately, going out for drinks, salsa dancing, and she even became my go-to cat sitter when I was out of town. She was an activist, which meant her face was frequently on the front lines of protests and demonstrations downtown. I praised her in everything she did, and understandably kept things quiet around the office when it came to the things we stood up for after 5:00. Our older, white employees just wouldn’t understand.

I knew this because current events frequently made their way into lunchroom discussions. When the Black Lives Matter movement first took off, I was a solid year into my job. And it was then that I began seeing a number of my coworkers for who they really were. In a small city like Pittsburgh, you have a fair share of people who have lived in the same neighborhoods their whole lives. They’ve interacted with the same people, listened to the same news sources, and never questioned any of it. It’s the only life they’ve known.

Then you have someone like me. I grew up in a liberal household where the idea of diversity was taught as importantly as the alphabet. I am well travelled, well educated and will be the first to engage you in a discussion that is apt to push you to your comfort zone. The only thing I cannot bring myself to do is the ability to understand how close-minded some people can be.

Every office has their fun stories to tell, those initiation-like icebreakers that show off the personality of the people behind the work. And most of them are endearing. One that our accountant loves to tell is how a receptionist a few years back (a woman of color) liked to decorate her desk space. Like most receptionists, her desk was the living room of the entire office. And like most people in committed relationships, she wanted pictures of her loved ones surrounding her. Her most loved one was incarcerated at the time, so the picture hanging in our office’s living room was a mug shot of her boyfriend. Not the first impression that corporate America wants to greet its visitors with.

To nearly all of my coworkers, she is considered the most “ghetto” employee they have ever had, and they would like to stay away from hiring employees of that caliber in the future. When I hear these stories, I smile politely and agree that a mug shot hanging practically on an office’s front door is not something they would like to practice. But this immediate jump to considering something of bad taste, as “ghetto” is neither good practice, nor correct. But what do these aging white folks know when they are firmly stuck in their ways?

I mentioned that I am one of three women of color in my office. It was two just a short time ago, as my friend quit last year to devote herself fully to activism. The other is our accountant; also a good friend, but a Baby Boomer; so while she supports black causes to an extent, it is almost never between the hours of 9 and 5.

The third woman of color was just hired recently. A growing company requires growing staff, and so a few new job positions were made available in my department. My boss told us her name, and like any good millennial I hopped on Facebook to see what she was like. She was in her twenties, and she was black. Praise the Lord.

The moment I found out, I ran to find the accountant to share the great news. She was in another coworker’s office, but that made no matter.

“Our new hire! She’s black!” I squealed and danced around with joy. “We’re finally getting some diversity up in here!”

“Well I just hope she’s not too black,” the co-worker whose office we were in, piped up.

I could have sworn hell has just frozen over for the words that just came out of this woman’s mouth.

Now, let me tell you a little bit about this woman. Let’s call her Sue. Sue was born and raised on the same block she lives on now. She got her high school degree, married a man and popped out a couple babies. She’s worked for this company for more than 25 years. Most of the time, Sue is adorable. She’s everyone’s embarrassing aunt that gets her skirt caught in her panties at least once a week, cannot hold her bladder to save her life, and knows next to nothing about things going on that aren’t covered in her local news at 11:00. You just sigh, and say “Oh, Sue” on a daily basis.

Had Sue been anywhere near my age, I would have lost my job that day. Had Sue been to college, been to graduate school, or educated herself on black history whatsoever, I would have been escorted out of the building for turning a debate into a fistfight. But Sue has not done any of these things. To this day she does not think that anything coming out of her mouth can be construed as offensive. She simply does not know any better.

What do you do in such a situation? What does any young, passionate black woman do when faced with the basis of ignorance while in a professional setting? This is the same type of woman who asks to touch your hair, who marvels at the complexities of your curls, and wishes that she could tan as well as you do. Naturally, you try to educate her. Educate all of them, even though it is not your job to educate any of them. You do this to maintain your own sanity, because you want to keep your job, because you simply cannot fathom how there are people in this world who think this way.

What did she mean by “too black”? She of course, was thinking about someone who hangs mug shots of their boyfriend at their desk, but what else? Is wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt too black? Is wearing kente cloth too black? Is proudly wearing your afro around the office too black? So far, it is not. At least not according to Sue. I suppose I simply have to find that balance, the same as corporate
America does. I discuss and engage and educate to a certain extent, but at the end of the day when faced with someone who will go to their grave thinking the same way they have thought for 25 years, you just have to sigh and say, “Oh, Sue.”