So there I was...
I work at a a part time office job. I
don't have a lot of other Black coworkers, which doesn't really
bother me because that's been my life and I know how to blend. I'm
very Suburban. I've stopped saying that I have “White” traits,
and instead I have Suburban traits. I realized recently (it shouldn't
have taken me this long) that being Suburban is not tied to being
White, and I should do stop perpetuating that line of thinking. There
are plenty of Black people from the Suburbs, there are entire towns
of Black Suburbs. You should see my Whole Foods!
So like I said, me and this girl rarely
work together, but every time I do work with her she always has
something slick to say about our backgrounds. At first I thought I
was imagining it, but I soon realized that 1. there was definitely
shade coming out of her towards me every shift, and 2. she had no
idea she was doing it. First there was the religion talk; she's very
religious and talks about it fairly constantly. When I told her I
wasn't religious, there were judging looks, but I let it go. I
thought we should be friendly, and I'm not about workplace drama.
Then there was the day she was talking about her lineage. She knew
all about her background and ancestors. She stated to me, repeatedly,
how HER family were NEVER slaves. I said I don't know much about my
family past my great grandmother. She was incredulous that I didn't
know more, again repeating that SHE was NOT descended from slaves. I
told her that it seemed like she was judging me about that. Even my
White coworker said something about her insistence on that point. She
denied it. I let it go.
Yesterday was the last straw. I go in,
friendly as can be to everyone, including her. Again, I try to foster
some kind of office-civil relationship. I was looking through
Facebook and saw a funny Color Purple meme (the details are
irrelevant, but trust me, it was Hilarious.) and I show it to her.
She laughs, I laugh. Pleasant moment right? She then proceeds to
explain TO ME the joke that I HAD JUST SHOWN HER. She literally asked
me if I knew that it was from “A movie called The Color Purple.”
At that moment I had a moment of clarity where I realized she had
been what I can only call Blacksplaining* things to me from day one.
She was constantly explaining Black culture to me, a Black man. I
told her point blank to stop doing it. She didn't feign ignorance;
her ignorance was quite genuine.
I make jokes about being White all the
time, but they're MY jokes about ME. That is not license for others
to do so unless we are good friends; me and her are definitively not
friends. When other people make inferences or statements about my
Blackness I get REAL serious REAL quick. She kept laughing and
smiling and saying she was sorry. I told her she wasn't sorry and
that I was offended. I said it three times, and each time she said
“Ohhh, don't be offended.” I was clearly offended, which she
should have recognized because it's not a common feeling I feel in my
feels. It's incredibly hard to offend me, so when I am, I don't let
it go. Still, she was laughing and asked for a hug. I told her to
back off. I told her she's been doing this from day one, trying to
make herself feel like the Superior Black Person at my expense. Her
apologies were both condescending and belittling at the same time.
She kept trying to explain herself, and I had to, again, repeatedly,
ask her to stop because she was just digging the hole deeper.
First she said that she thought she had
to explain to me the joke I had just showed her like I was one of our
White coworkers. I asked her why she would think that. She said
because I have worked in places with a lot of White people. Like the
place we were currently sitting and talking in. The job she had
actually had longer than I have somehow imparted Whiteness onto me
and not her. She was flustered by now, and kept laughing and said
something about me growing up in the Suburbs. She is from Philly, and
I grew up in Woodbridge, NJ.** I guess that made her more authentic
than me. Except for right now she lives a town a few miles from me IN
A MUCH NICER AREA THAN I LIVE IN. At this point the irony was
strangling me. She kept trying to convince me that it was all a
misunderstanding, a joke. I was not laughing. Kept asking if I was
offended, and I kept saying yes. Kept saying it wouldn't happened
again, and I told her that it would because she had no idea that she
was doing it and, I believe, did not even understand what she was
doing wrong. The condescension in her eyes was still there. After
several more insulting comments she left, but the insult stayed with
me. It's still with me today.
It is ironic that as I am writing this
there is a discussion on Twitter about Black nerds being bullied in
HS. I was never bullied, but I was, I guess mocked is the best way to
describe it. I was mocked by White kids, but it didn't matter because
I felt intellectually superior to most other kids. Their words meant
nothing to me. Yeah, I know how it sounds, but it saved me years of
therapy. When I went to school in a different town were there were
other Black kids, the mocking was more hurtful because I was so happy
to be around more kids who looked like me, and they were not happy to
hang around me. Yeah it hurt, which is probably why I'm still
sensitive about the subject. Thankfully as I got older I met more
Black people who accepted me for who I am, and I thought that part of
my life was over. Imagine my surprise when now, at the ripe old age
of 38, I still have to deal with judgment and people policing my
Blackness. It had become so rare that I thought maybe I had imagined
it, maybe I was being oversensitive, but no. This is a real thing and
it has to stop.
I've seen that some people deny this
happens, or tell people to just get over it. Having core pieces of
your identity questioned by the very people you identify with is not
something one just gets over. In fact, it's time we as Black people
and American culture in general stops blowing off other people's
feelings and experiences. I'm not saying spill your emotions all over
the place, have some dignity for God's sake. I'm kidding mostly, but
invalidating the feelings of someone who is opening up about a
subject important to them is a major dick move. As I've said, this is
a sensitive subject to me, but I can't imagine any Black person would
respond positively to this treatment. Likewise, blaming everyone for
the actions of a few is weak as well. In fact the reason this is
bothering me so much is that I thought I was done with having to deal
with this stuff. I don't really have a point, or a conclusion or
anything. Just, don't be the dick that does this to other people.
*I looked up the internet definition of
“Blacksplaining” and was horrified. For the purposes of this
essay “Blacksplaining” is when one African American
condescendingly explains a part of African American culture to
another African American.
**Exactly what it sounds like. A
collection of the most average suburban sprawl towns you could
imagine.
