On Schadenfreude, Bigotry, and Job Interviews

Image description: A male of pallor is shown in a workplace meeting, making their melanated colleagues highly uncomfortable.

One of my favorite things in the world is watching bigots being outed by the public, losing their jobs. I have no issue with hateful Karens and Chets losing their jobs after their beliefs are shared with their employers by people in the community. But while I love allowing the schadenfreude to wash over me like a gentle autumn rain, I can’t help but think about the one party in these matters that is never held accountable: the companies that hire these people.

I’ve been recruiting and interviewing people for over 20 years. I’ve conducted hundreds of interviews and led dozens of recruitments. Please believe that Karens and Chets don’t suddenly wake up one morning and decide they want to be hateful people. They are and have always been hateful people, and it comes out in their job interviews. The way they answer questions, the way they show up in spaces. The red flags are always there.

And companies hire these people anyway.

I can count on my fingers and toes multiple times how often hiring managers and department heads have willingly ignored red flags around hate and bigotry and pushed someone through a recruitment process because they “really like them,” are “a person I’d grab a beer with,” or they “remind me of myself at that age.” Why?

Because it’s easier to ride with the comforts and familiarity of white supremacy than it is to take a stance and not bring people into your organization that pose a risk to your employees and the people you serve.

It has been proven that people hire people with whom they feel comfortable. Bigots, or people who are comfortable with bigotry happening in front of them and not calling it out, hire bigots. Chets and Karens hire other Chets and Karens. It’s white supremacist workplace culture 101. And it’s never a workplace issue until that bigotry gets attached to the company name in a public way.

Chet and Karen have been doing and saying horrible things at work for years. They’ve been reported to HR and their supervisors for their harmful words and actions for years. But as soon as their hateful nonsense spills out into the public in a way that gets them screenshotted and recorded? Then it’s an immediate dismissal and a well-written PR statement touting how the company doesn’t support these views and cares about equity and inclusion. Meanwhile, everyone who has had to work with and be harmed by Karen and Chet every damn day for years has to sit with the learned understanding that their company has never really cared about equity and inclusion and has no issue with gaslighting their employees around supporting these views.

Be mad at Chet and Karen. Be glad that they’re getting their comeuppance. But save some of those side-eyes for the jerks that employed them in the first place, who now want to absolve themselves of their responsibility in giving these people a paycheck.

[Image description: A male of pallor is shown in a workplace meeting, making their melanated colleagues highly uncomfortable.]

On Rep. Nicole Collier, Texas, Democrats, and Black Women on Sabbatical

Rep. Nicole Collier, a Black woman and representative in the Texas legislature, was locked in a Texas state House Chamber overnight with her colleagues Gene Wu and Vince Perez because she and her colleagues rightfully refused to sign what was essentially a permission slip to be shadowed and surveilled by Texas law enforcement until Texas Republicans got their opportunity to vote on approving gerrymandering tactics that will render any non-Republican votes in the state damn near invalid in every election from now on.

If she signed the illegal "permission slip," Rep. Nicole would’ve had officers posted outside her Capitol office and following her everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere. Democrats in Texas have shared that these police "escorts" tailed them on their Monday evening drives back to their homes after spending much of the day posted in their offices and watching their every move. One Texas Dem said their "escort" went with them for a staff lunch and even down the hallway with them for restroom breaks.

Rep. Nicole Collier was one of only three Texas Democrat who refused to sign. And her colleagues who didn't sign? Also from communities of color. Not a Representative of pallor to be found.

And so Rep. Nicole sat in a House Chamber with two of her melanated colleagues, overnight, standing up for her constituents who live in a majority-Black district that will be silenced with this hateful gerrymandering. Meanwhile, her other Democratic House colleagues, who were happily soaking in the cheers when they landed back in Texas after leaving the state in protest, signed the "permission slips" and left her and her colleagues who are actually about something to sit there, overnight, in a locked room. None of them thought she, Gene, and Vince were worth standing in solidarity with in the face of hate and oppression. Nope. They signed their "permission slips" and moved on with their day. I'm sure Rep. Nicole had things in her life she wanted to get back to and loved ones she wanted to be with last night, but she understood what her presence means for her constituents. So she was 10 toes down while her colleagues bounced.

Later, you can guarantee her colleagues will act like they respect Rep. Nicole's "bravery" before going right back to inactivity and virtue signalling. And in a week it'll be like none of this ever happened. Texas Dems, Dems in general, will learn nothing and apply nothing to how they operate in the future or how they show up for Black women and Black communities.

Rinse and repeat.

And y'all wonder why Black women are on an indefinite sabbatical from saving y'all.

On "Breaking the Ice", Stereotypes, and Montell Jordan

Hey, people of pallor! Happy Tuesday! Just wanted to give you a quick reminder that you can find commonality with Black, Brown, Indigenous, Global Majority, and non-white folx without having to resort to stereotypes and things you think are our identities. Just because you can't fathom the notion that melanated folx are more than the elements you'd need to pick up at your local Spirit Halloween store to build a racist Halloween costume doesn't mean we have to want to engage with yo' ass around this kind of "icebreaker" nonsense.

Just because you figure out that I like R & B doesn't mean I want to talk with you about how Montell Jordan's "This is How We Do It" changed your life.

Just because I'm a Black person who cooks doesn't mean I want to "bond" with you over your "recently discovered love" for collard greens (which, might I add, most of y'all be saying as "collared greens", a pronunciation that makes me choke on my LaCroix every time I hear it) and black eyed peas.

Like, read the room and check yourself. Geez.

I'll be in a Batman shirt and y'all will look at me and be like, "I just watched this riveting documentary about apartheid!" WHAT?! How in the Hell are we not having a comic book conversation?! That's an instant “in” for a chat!

UGH. Do better.

On Juneteenth and Four-Day Weekends for People of Pallor

I will never feel OK about Juneteenth being a federal holiday.

It will never feel right to me that people of pallor pulled a performative flex to give themselves a day off to "celebrate" what is essentially the impacts of their ancestors' enslavement, exploitation, and subjugation of Black bodies on stolen land.

Trust me when I say that 90% of the people of pallor who have today off from work aren't learning, reflecting, or giving their time or money to support Black communities in their cities. I can guarantee most of 'em are using this as a four-day weekend.

Making Juneteenth a federal holiday was never about acknowledging the generational trauma inflicted on Black people, discussing and learning about the ongoing systemic struggles that Black bodies have endured on this stolen land for centuries, or observing the documented end of Black bodies forced into chattel slavery. Making Juneteenth a federal holiday was about people of pallor with power and positionality making themselves feel like "good people" through grandiose performative actions to curry favor from Black folx without having to put in the work necessary to atone for centuries of harm. But ultimately? Making Juneteenth a federal holiday was really about people of pallor with power and positionality making themselves feel like "good people" through grandiose performative actions to curry favor from other "good" people of pallor who want to feel good about themselves.

And knowing that will never allow Juneteenth's status as a federal holiday to feel right in my brain or body.

I wish they had just left it alone.

On Adriana Smith, Anti-Blackness, Experimentation, and Disregard for Black Uteruses and Black Women

Trigger warning: Descriptions of anti-Black woman hate and harm, anti-Blackness, and reproductive trauma.

Adriana Smith and her family should've never had to endure this horrible and traumatic public experiment in postmortem childbirth.

What Georgia did to Adriana Smith would never happen to a person of pallor with a uterus. And there's nobody out there that can tell me otherwise, because trying to deny this fact is an openly raised middle finger to the history of the mistreatment and bodily harm done to Black women and Black bodies for centuries on stolen land.

Even in a country that is on the fast track to remove reproductive rights and body choice from every person with a uterus and jail people for making personal choices that have nothing to do with the state, there is no way this would've been allowed to happen if Adriana Smith were a person of pallor. The news would've been running stories every damn day. Reproductive rights lawyers would've been coming out of the woodwork. But that didn't happen, did it?

And we all know why.

So instead of people of pallor and pallor-led legal aid organizations with power and positionality who claim they care about reproductive rights partnering with Adriana's family to fight for her rights, as they would with any cis woman of pallor with a uterus (because, let's be real, that's about all they would stand up for), last Friday, Georgia performed a C-section on a Black woman who was declared brain-dead in February and forced to be on a ventilator to conceive a child because, you know, laws and sh**.

And now, this 1-pound, 13-ounce child whose deceased mother was kept on a ventilator, unable to provide the nutrients needed to fully nurture his growth and development, is now fighting for his life in the neonatal intensive care unit because, you know, laws and sh**.

Cis women of pallor love quoting The Handmaid's Tale to describe the level of danger people with uteruses are in while openly choosing not to sit with the undeniable fact that Black women and Black bodies have always been subject to centuries of Handmaid's Tale-level sh** at the hands of people of pallor since colonizers forced Black bodies into chattel slavery.

Adriana deserved better.

Her child deserved better.

Black women deserve better.