Calling in black is essentially an excuse for a day of self care, wrote Slack engineer Erica Baker in a Medium post called "Processing." ... "Sometimes, I don't want to deal with the emotional weight of having to explain my feelings to someone who couldn't possibly understand them, no matter how hard they tried," she wrote. ... The phrase "calling in black" has been around for at least a year, when "Evelyn from the Internets" posted a video on YouTube advocating the need for a mental health day. ...