Posted on 11/21/2017 12:07:42 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
It was the thick of Black History Month and I worked as an art administrator for a program in Baltimore City. The site I was assigned to was managed by a white woman who cloaked her racism with a bright smile and photos on Facebook with Black students that garnered “ooo’s” and “ahh’s” from the white liberal peanut gallery in the comment section. I once told her that since we celebrated Latinx Heritage Month, that we should celebrate Black History Month with our students. Her response, dripping with anti-Blackness, was that celebrating Black History Month would be “too overwhelming”. I was stunned and felt my stomach knot up in the most horrific way.
At most of our team meetings, I was the only woman of color. Since the students we were working with were minorities, one would think that I would be the voice they tune into the most. My ideas and suggestions were often met with a, “Yes, Rachael we hear you, but that is not quite what we are looking for.” I later found out that the white woman running these meetings told another white woman colleague that “the stereotype about Black woman was true”, and she topped off her racist statement by saying Black women are “difficult to work with”.
White women have harmful biases about Black women that bleed into the workplace and beyond – white women are far from innocent of perpetuating racism. The narrative around white women is one that paints them as America’s poster child, void of any wrongdoing. In my conversations with Black men about racism, white women are overlooked with regard to how their racism affects Black women specifically. We always end up talking about “the Man”.
Beloved, “the Man” ain’t the only one keeping us down. White women are able to exercise their racism just as freely as white men.
Creators like Issa Rae are bringing conversations about white women in the workplace to the forefront. In her show Insecure, Issa (Issa Rae) works with a white woman named Frieda (Lisa Joyce), in the pilot episode, Issa and her co-worker Frieda are in a meeting presenting an idea to their co-workers at the non-profit that they work for. Frieda thought it be a good idea to jokingly mention Issa’s love life, then present statistics about how Black women find happiness in their work more than activities outside of our careers. She was illustrating some ole’ missus type shit right there.
This racist mindset plays directly off of the romanticized happy slaves/mammy myth. This form of racism likes to pretend it came up with the idea when you know damn well you suggested that idea three days ago while you all were on lunch break. White women have a way of assuring us that we are visible while simultaneously burying us in what they believe oppresses them. Girl, do you know the wage gap between Black women and white women? According to the Guardian, in 2016 Black women earn 19% less than white woman, that’s a 13% increase in the wage gap from 1979 – that’s right. It’s getting worse.
The prevalent images and ideas of white womanhood makes their racism cozy, their womanhood gives them the privilege to ignore intersections of race and gender that can lead to untimely deaths of women and femmes of color – our Blackness and womanhood are a “threat” to their humanity.
We see it in how they talk to us, how they reprimand us versus our white woman colleagues. We see it in their performative Blackness, in passive aggressive emails and in-person micro aggressions and the list goes on. They would rather see us down than to see us uplifted, especially if this means standing alongside them in a way that does not serve or center them. White women’s racism will cut you in the dark and then ask you why you’re bleeding.
White women need to address and take responsibility for their role in the oppression of Black women. Their feminism might not demand this of them, but our feminism does. White women are still white. This means that they have the capacity to operate in their whiteness to the harm of women of color. White women echo the sentiments of the white feminist hero, Susan B. Anthony when she said, “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.” Cut it off, girl.
Black women cannot escape this reality. We work with white women and will be for the rest of our lives, so how do we deal with them in workspaces? I believe it starts with transparency. We are worthy of respect and common decency. We have the right to call out racist white women, no matter what their position might be. Calling them out or even reporting them will expose who they are and more importantly, who we’ve known them to be.
Taking this on does not come without consequence.
We know the lashes of white supremacy are swift when challenged, but how else do we expect to change work culture? Reform will not happen with us keeping our heads down. Zora Neale Hurston so fervently puts it like this, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
*****
Author Bio: Rachael is a writer based in Baltimore who loves to disrupt society and engage in conversations that challenge us to be better humans. Rachael’s work centers Black women and our experiences. On her down time she performs, floods your Instagram timelines with selfies and eats fish tacos.
Excellent editing.
White Liberals in general tend to believe they are the only ones who know what black people want.
Lincoln was putting a fleet of ships together to expatriate the freed slaves.
Who knew a Trump win was going to drive all the liberals batfish crazy? It’s been a year and the mushroom cloud just keeps getting bigger.
“This isn’t the country I was born in. “
If we keep letting millions of low-IQ, parasitic, violent, third-worlders in, it will be the end. That was the reason for Ted Kennedy’s white genocide act of 1965.
I’m so tired of these people. Peaceful coexistence with them is not possible. We should stop trying.
L
Is “Rachel Edwards” Michelle Obama’s new nomme de plume?
They’re the worst, because they look at non-Whites as “pets.”
More like opportunities to make themselves look virtuous.
We had a Diversity Summit when I was working at a large corporation. Mandatory. My black coworker tried to get out of it. I didn’t know why until he sat next to me. He claimed “Suddenly, white people want me to sit with them. I was nothing to them last week”. Several other MALE black coworkers sat with us in the back so they could provide entertaining commentary and for the same reason.
The black speaker asked for questions and the guy next to me stood up and asked “Do you think white people take you more seriously because you are light-skinned?”
Oooooooh....I dropped my pen and it took me 5 minutes to find it while the CEO glared at us.
Is she a “femmes of color “?
Cat fight. Black women know black men prefer white women and it drives them insane.
IIRC, he was going to send them back to Monrovia, Liberia, but the plan was scuttled in US Congress.
“. Girl, do you know the wage gap between Black women and white women? According to the Guardian, in 2016 Black women earn 19% less than white woman, that’s a 13% increase in the wage gap from 1979 – that’s right. It’s getting worse.”
Well, when some twit decides to drop out of school, have infants they can’t afford or raise, go on welfare and spend the rest of their life moaning about it, so? That gets factored in the income figure. No schooling, nothing more than minimum wage.
My pity doesn’t go that far, nor it does stand for any girl of ANY color who takes the short road.
I’ve worked with black women, and black supervisors and the work place was fine. Everyone was competent, did their jobs, and by the end of the day, went home and took care of business. We had disagreements over procedures, maybe a tiff or two when someone slacked off, or a bitch fest occasionally. It was a work place, for Pete’s sake!
What is was not, was a hotbed of liberal goop or people looking to be offended.
What we had to deal with was difficult and many time, emotionally wrenching. Not a place for hot house flowers who looked for slights.
How about "Shut Yer Dirty Gob, Ya Racist Bitch"?
The only reason she’s working with instead of for white women is Affirmative Action.
Black women are “difficult to work with”.
Who said that? not me!
From reading this, it's hard not to agree with "the white woman running these meetings".
I’ll say this- the author and the woman she describes in the first paragraph absolutely deserve one another.
People who think like the White woman are the main reason people who think like the Black woman exist.
Blacks do not know their own history other than the liberal history of slavery. I asked a black who was being confrontational about black history when I asked him who were these five black people and what were their contribution to America and he had no clue.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.