On being a very visible minority among less visible minorities aka the Blackest in the room

It is interesting the spaces in which one finds hidden allyship and outright animosity. There is no real middle ground to me. I have talked about the trials and tribulations of being a visible minority in a small way on this platform of mine. Recently, I have had other things happen. Both of these things left me feeling less than and like I didn’t belong, and both these things happened with members of what society broadly labels as Persons of Color. I am starting to see that we might have to come up with a label that captures the idea that maybe it should be black people and the rest. When I say black people, I mean those that are clearly recognizable as black. No racial ambiguity thank you very much. Just the dark skin and the features that usually go with it like the coily hair. 

I say this because so far with respect to working in Canada my allies and support systems so far have not really been people who look like me or any of the other minorities. I get a sense of there is room for only one of us so fuck off from those I least expect it of. You shouldn’t be in here.

I hesitate to give any real detail about the interactions because I don’t want needless trouble, you know, not to make crazy waves. Put your head down, put the work in and bounce. But I guess I can share one. My first week in my new workplace, I went to the communal kitchen to heat up my food. I was nearly turned away by “one of my so-called own”. I now get what the bible meant by “his own knew him not.”

This mixed-race black woman refused to listen to me and just said “you can’t go in there.” I had to raise my voice and pointedly show her my badge, like lift it to her face before she got out of my way. To say I was enraged is an understatement but I controlled myself and smiled. I even said goodbye when I was done and leaving. 

I am reminded of Maya Angelou’s line adapted from the 1896 poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear the Mask,” in the following spoken-word poem:

We wear the mask that grins and lies.
It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes.
This debt we pay to human guile
With torn and bleeding hearts . . .
We smile and mouth the myriad subtleties.
Why should the world think otherwise
In counting all our tears and sighs.
Nay let them only see us while
We wear the mask.

We smile but oh my God
Our tears to thee from tortured souls arise
And we sing Oh Baby doll, now we sing . . .
The clay is vile beneath our feet
And long the mile
But let the world think otherwise.
We wear the mask.

When I think about myself
I almost laugh myself to death.

My life has been one great big joke!
A dance that’s walked a song that’s spoke.
I laugh so hard HA! HA! I almos’ choke
When I think about myself.

Seventy years in these folks’ world
The child I works for calls me girl
I say “HA! HA! HA! Yes ma’am!”
For workin’s sake
I’m too proud to bend and
Too poor to break
So . . . I laugh! Until my stomach ache
When I think about myself.
My folks can make me split my side
I laugh so hard, HA! HA! I nearly died
The tales they tell sound just like lying
They grow the fruit but eat the rind.
Hmm huh! I laugh uhuh huh huh . . .
Until I start to cry when I think about myself
And my folks and the children.

My fathers sit on benches,
Their flesh count every plank,
The slats leave dents of darkness
Deep in their withered flank.
And they gnarled like broken candles,
All waxed and burned profound.
They say, but sugar, it was our submission
that made your world go round.

There in those pleated faces
I see the auction block
The chains and slavery’s coffles
The whip and lash and stock.
My fathers speak in voices
That shred my fact and sound
They say, but sugar, it was our submission
that made your world go round.

They laugh to conceal their crying,
They shuffle through their dreams
They stepped ’n fetched a country
And wrote the blues in screams.
I understand their meaning,
It could and did derive
From living on the edge of death
They kept my race alive
By wearing the mask! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

If my own treated me like I had no business being in a workplace what then can I expect from the others who do not look like me?

The second person is one of the heralders of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in this workplace of mine and yet their treatment of me has been the worst. This situation is a great example of the space between walking the talk and just talking the walk. Every single meeting they take part in, they make sure to raise questions of EDI. What about how you treat the darkest skin person already beside you? Yet you want more diverse hires? So that you can establish your own fiefdom to rule over? Do you attack me because I appear to be low-hanging fruit? Big mistake. Maybe I should have become a lawyer, after all I have both a law degree and a bloody Masters of Law with the thesis to go with it as well. 

But what’s the point when the idea of practicing law deflates and exhausts all feeling and life from me?