"...And they'll wish they never met you at all!"

[Image description: Stills from Carl Thomas' "I Wish" music video. In the first image, Carl Thomas can be seen looking out of his car window while driving. He has a look of despair on his face at what he is seeing. The second image shows Carl leaning back in his seat. He looks sick to his stomach as he holds in a deflated breath. He has a defeated look on his face. Both pictures are captioned with "White people when they share something wild they've said or done to a person of culture, look to another person of culture for validation or a cosign and realize they're about to get checked."]

[Image description: Stills from Carl Thomas' "I Wish" music video. In the first image, Carl Thomas can be seen looking out of his car window while driving. He has a look of despair on his face at what he is seeing. The second image shows Carl leaning back in his seat. He looks sick to his stomach as he holds in a deflated breath. He has a defeated look on his face. Both pictures are captioned with "White people when they share something wild they've said or done to a person of culture, look to another person of culture for validation or a cosign and realize they're about to get checked."]

On Conflation and the Universal Workplace Experience Myth

There aren't enough people willing to comprehend and admit that just because they feel safe and supported at work doesn't mean everyone feels safe and supported at work. This goes double for the place you currently work.

Just because you're having a good time at work doesn't mean everyone you work with is having a blast.

There is no such thing as a common or universal workplace experience. And if you think there is?

You're conflating your experience as the only experience that matters.

You also might need to evaluate your relationships with white supremacy and “professionalism” and the perks your lack of melanin or willingness to engage in homogenization or assimilation to erase your skin tone provides.

This Week's Opening Thought: September 18, 2023

Image description: A one-panel comic strip. An older person wearing glasses and a suit and tie stands at a podium in front of the silhouette of an audience. A person in the audience says, "I want my kids taught about the past exactly as it happened in a way that also mythologizes this country's achievements in particular while portraying bad actions as aberrations in order to instill a sense of civic pride but is not in any way opinionated." At the bottom of the image is the sentence, "My nightmare: having to write public school history curricula."

This week's opening thought: THIS. This is why I decided to go on an indefinite sabbatical from doing anti-racism and equity work with organizations.

There is no positive spin for original sins.

There is no way to learn about or have difficult conversations about U.S. history, colonization, the abuse and enslavement of Black and Indigenous peoples, and the near genocide of Native and Indigenous communities and make people of pallor "feel safe" or willingly allow people of the white persuasion (genetically or aspirationally) to run with the "not my ancestors" narrative unchecked.

Don't waste my time. Don't waste the time of facilitators, educators, and other people you expect to teach you or our youth if all you want is to feel you and your ancestors are on the "right side of history."

Those who want to rewrite history tend to have no issue repeating it and partaking in its bitter fruit.

Just admit you prefer the fruit you know and aren't interested in you or your kids planting new trees and digging up the old ones.

[Image description: A one-panel comic strip. An older person wearing glasses and a suit and tie stands at a podium in front of the silhouette of an audience. A person in the audience says, "I want my kids taught about the past exactly as it happened in a way that also mythologizes this country's achievements in particular while portraying bad actions as aberrations in order to instill a sense of civic pride but is not in any way opinionated." At the bottom of the image is the sentence, "My nightmare: having to write public school history curricula."]

On Work, Safe Places, Safer Places, and White Supremacist Workplace Culture

I am 41 years old and have never felt safe in a workplace.

I have held down a job in some capacity since I was 13 years old, and I have yet to work in an environment where I’ve felt safe.

Not safe. Not safer. Nothing.

I have yet to inhabit a workplace where I feel safe, hell, safer, and can share an opinion or viewpoint contrary to what white societal norms deem acceptable and not have the sword of Damocles swinging over my head.

I have yet to inhabit a workplace where I feel safe, hell, safer, enough not to have to make sure I’m carefully wording my counsel and advice to others in ways that will not have anyone calling me racist to white people or “unwilling to understand what white people are going through.”

I have yet to inhabit a workplace where I feel safe, hell, safer, enough to do the work that I went and obtained student loans and a degree for in a way that centers the humanity and mental, physical, and emotional well-being of others and challenges leaders to lead with empathy without having one or all members of the senior leadership team question my skillset or “fit” for “their” organization.

I have yet to inhabit a workplace where I see other melanated, under-represented, unserved communities feel safe, hell, safer, enough to seek support when they are being harmed, they’re witnessing someone being hurt, or their needs aren’t being met without someone asserting they are “trying to stir the pot” or being told that they are the issue, not the workplace culture.

I have yet to inhabit a workplace where I feel safe, hell, safer, around the idea that accountability is expected of everyone, not just those impacted by not having power, privilege, positionality, and proximity to or assimilation of white supremacist hierarchal ideology.

I have yet to inhabit a workplace where I feel like I’m doing anything but putting together survival plans and trying to make it to Friday.

Before the white “professionals” and those who covet the comfort and faux safety of white supremacist ideology chime in with their advice, I want to let you know that I’ve heard your advice, often unsolicited, since I’ve been a part of the workforce. It is always centered around assimilation or options with a history of not benefiting the melanated and marginalized. So, I’ll pass. I’ll also pass on the notion that, somehow, I’m the reason I don’t feel safer in the workplace, like my existence and unwillingness to sit idly by and allow myself or others to be harmed in “the problem.” I’m not “the problem.” People who look like me, talk like me, and bring their embodied identities to work like me are not “the problem.”

“The problem” is the systems and structures of whiteness created as the foundations of work that present us with the boxes we’re forced to fit into.

”The problem” is that so many people do not feel safe, hell, safer, anywhere, yet we have to get up every day, try to earn a living, and survive in another space where we cannot rely on safety and stability.

At 21, I began understanding that workplace culture in the United States works as designed.

At 31, I intimately understood that workplaces were not designed for someone like me.

At 41, I firmly understand that I will never inhabit a space designed for someone like me.

And I know that if I want any form of safety, it will be up to me to build it because I will never work anywhere that will dismantle or create a new design because of the whiteness-driven revolt that would ensue.

Challenge accepted.

This Week's Opening Thought: September 11, 2023

This week's opening thought: A white "professional" recently asked me why I often describe what I was wearing when I share my daily encounters with racism and anti-Blackness. It's simple.

I want to negate the "talking point" that somehow my dress or choice of clothing could be construed as "dangerous" and that it's somehow my fault that people of pallor feel like they're "in danger" when they see a Black man with pink headphones and a Kill Bill t-shirt walking toward them, smiling and saying hello.

I want to negate you telling me it's my fault if the unmelanated kill me for no discernable reason.

How detailed I am in describing what I'm wearing in a potentially dangerous and life-threatening situation shouldn't be what troubles you.

Black people having to build a damn detailed court case to convince you that we did nothing wrong, yet still have to defend our right to safety and survival because whiteness by default feels like we had to do SOMETHING to incur the wrath of whiteness because, you know, whiteness has never harmed or killed anyone with melanated skin without cause should be what troubles you.

But what the hell do I know?

I’m just a Black man with pink headphones and a Kill Bill t-shirt.