Monday's Opening Thought: October 4, 2021

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This week's opening thought: Can we all agree that companies and organizations need to throw their values statements in the bin? Like, who is working for a company living up to all of these values they've written up and placed on their company websites as performative public gestures laced with white supremacist workplace ideology and compliance? Any of us? How about your co-workers who place white supremacist workplace ideology up on a pedestal but love to trot out the company values when a person of color or marginalized person calls them in or out?

No company or organization is living up to these "values." Why? Because to live up to these values is to create an environment where white supremacy cannot thrive without dismantling itself and becoming something different and more inclusive – and we can't have that now, can we?

Companies need to start doing more than making a list of ideal values and posting them on their websites to regale and fool the public. Your values need to be codified into every aspect of your workplace culture and processes in tangible ways. Your leaders need to be held accountable for not utilizing your values in how they lead. And anyone who uses your company's values as weapons of oppression toward marginalized employees needs to be sent packing. I mean, if you're serious about your "values" having meaning and purpose and all that jazz.

P.S.: Make sure you throw your anti-racism and anti-discrimination policies in the same bin as your values statements because y'all ain't livin' up to those either.

I call 'em how I see 'em.

On Grocery Lists, Karens, Chets, and Apple Crumbles

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I have had to check a whole lot of white people this week. Like, a whole lot. That's not a bragging point or badge of honor.

It's a declaration that I and other Black folx and people of color shouldn't be able to get to the end of our work weeks with the ability to build a damn list of white people we've had to check.

Some of y'all white folx need to start checking other white folx because I shouldn't have to mistake my checked white supremacists' list with my grocery list. Damn near bought a bunch of Karens and Chets instead of cardamom for my apple crumble.

And I refuse to let y'all mess up my apple crumble.

Scared

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Two days ago, I was told that the white people with power and positionality at work are scared of me. I was then told that I make them uncomfortable because I talk about racism, oppression, white supremacy, and dismantling hatred and oppression in the workplace and our communities without baby gloves.

...I just wanted to share that. Don't really have too much to add to that. I mean, that speaks for itself, doesn't it? I knew they felt this way. I've known since day one. I know that most white people think this way about me. But having a white person with more power and positionality than you tell you this out loud in a meeting with a nervous chuckle because even they are scared of you and hope you don't call them out really hits you a particular kind of way. I sat with it for a couple of days, talked with my therapist about it, and I'm doing OK. It's out of my control. It is what it is. White people gonna white people. And Pharoah's gonna keep being Pharoah. Que sera.

Happy Thursday.