How Long?

Several years ago I used to work at a corporation that specialized in counseling for corporate types. I came by this receptionist job through a temp agency which ironically was in a building just a block or so from where I work now.

I worked as a receptionist there, doing data entry, answering calls and all that clerical stuff under the direct supervision of a woman who wore fur coats, had glass nails and ate sushi for lunch. The president of the company was an asshole who always had a cigar stuck in his face and was named Bob Levy.

Working with me as the full time office assistant was a woman of color (I believe she was West Indian but I do not remember the exact island of origin) who all but ran that place single-handed and sometimes with her little son behind the desk with us.

There was one particular day when I brought Mr. Levy a written message which he found illegible (I admit my hand writing sucks) and became furious at me cursing inappropriately or at least I found it inappropriate to be cursed at over a badly taken phone message. Young, and inexperienced at ass-kissing (I still suck at it)I gave him the cold shoulder for a while which was all I could do to stand up for myself.I may be kidding myself bit I believe he felt it. I was highly offended. Up until then, I had never been spoken to in this way before by anyone.

I remember relaying these events to the maverick female office assistant who incidentally told me see used to eat her lunch in a phone booth. I'll never for get what she said to me.
She said, "Do you want to be treated like a nigger?" I forget exactly what came after that statement but I feel it had something to with instructing me on ways on which to avoid being treated this way and how to learn from he experience, since, as she impressed upon me, I would surely be treated this way if I did not take certain precautions. I was so shocked that she had become accustomed to such conditions that I probably made up my mind then and there that I would not be staying on. I left that job to work full time at City College a few months later.
Now, in my present position with CUNY it has begun to occur to me that I am still struggling against being treated like a nigger but in much subtler and more dangerous forms. And the fucked up thing is I learned about this process here at this institute in classes about Poverty and Affluence, Urban Cultural Diversity and Race Class and Gender in America! And whenever I think about escaping to someplace "better", more "civilized" to work with mature people, I realize that I am fantasizing possibly about someplace that does not exist Because, some form of tyranny and racial prejudice will exist no matter where I work and for whom. And I feel trapped.

I know what the truth is. I don't feel crazy or misunderstood. I just feel powerless. And my facade is cracking. I've never known this part of myself before, this angry, frustrated, violent, stuck person and I feel myself behaving in ways I resent, often towards those I care about most, those who don't deserve it because I feel powerless to rage against those who are blindly going about bulldozing their bullshit agendas over those who they perceive as compliant. But I don't know how much longer I can go on doing that.

What I fear the most is really and truly losing it. I would like to be smart. I would like to not give in to that rage. But that seems so much like not doing anything at all. Like checking out. I'm not ready to do that yet. But what am I ready to do? I don't know.

Walk the Walk

"Because racism is so ingrained in the fabric of American Institutions, it is easily self-perpetuating. All that is required to maintain it is business as usual.
I sometimes visualize the ongoing cycle of racism as a moving walkway at the airport. Active racist behavior is equivalent to walking fast on the conveyor belt. The person engaged in active racist behavior has identified with the ideology of White supremacy and is moving with it. Passive racist behavior is equivalent to standing still on the walkway. No overt effort is being made, but the conveyor belt moves the bystanders along on the same destination as the White supremacists. But unless they are walking actively in the opposite direction at a speed faster than the conveyor belt—unless they are actively anti-racist—they find themselves carried along with the others."

-Beverly Daniels Tatum
“Defining Racism”