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The Burden of Being the Only Black Guy at Work
Does the comfort of my White colleagues matter more than my own? (That’s a rhetorical question!)
For the most part, I’m pretty good at doing me. But If I were to step outside my body and watch myself in situations where I’m the only Black guy in the room, particularly at work, I’d see me doing a me that’s not quite me.
Though I don’t use African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in my everyday life, I constantly code switch around White people when I’m on the clock. I adjust my behavior. I soften my edges. I like to think of myself as being a fairly congenial person, but I’m passionate and opinionated — and I can be loud, too. When you’re passionate, opinionated, loud, and Black in a room full of White people, it can be unsettling to them.
I don’t want to be seen as the scary Black man — the one that has haunted White people’s nightmares since the days when a Negro uprising was a Southern slaveowners biggest fear, which made the latter even more brutal. It’s the reason why so many unarmed Black men get shot by cops, the reason why the very idea of a Black Lives Matters protest offends and frightens some White Republican politicians more than those videos of the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
It’s the reason why I watch my tone at work. I don’t censor myself. I say what I have to say. That said, I am always sure to keep my voice down and make my points as if I were a friendly college lecturer. I could watch Fred Hampton speak for hours, but most White people didn’t want to hear a Black man keeping it that real in the late ’60s. I believe that kind of realness coming from us still makes a lot of White people squirm.
