​Office Racism

For decades, I was the only black male manager that my company, the U.S. office of a well known publisher based in the UK, had ever employed. There were several hundred staff members in New York City and its suburbs depending on the year, although there was always a much larger main office in the U.K. with satellite offices around the world. Employees of color worked there as well as in the U.S. 

However, for a long period of time the positions of black staff members in the American offices involved support, such as receptionist, mail clerk, marketing associate, editorial assistant, warehouse/inventory, etc., but none were managers or directors. In later years, diversity increased and included persons of color in the IT (Information Technology) department, Human Resources (formerly called Personnel) and several large specialized departments. But American black males, other than myself, were never present in management or higher in the office in Manhattan.

The Role of Race

Race had no relationship whatsoever to my actual job. I never brought up race to 99% of our staff. There were several practical as well as philosophical reasons why a black manager such as myself would want to avoid initiating discussions about race with white coworkers.

I spoke more openly about it, but still not often, to a very few other black and Latino employees who sometimes freely and casually mentioned race as a topic in our private conversations. The rare times I participated more freely in discussions about race with white staff members were at off work locations when I became personal friends with one or two of them and we socialized beyond the office (bicycle riding, camping, etc.) as well as visited each other in our homes. But in the long run, race was an infrequent topic.

Generally it was known that I viewed myself simply as a manager, not as a black manager, of a specialized small but important department with one full time assistant and occasionally one part time assistant reporting to me. Race remained basically irrelevant to any task or interaction I performed as part of my responsibilities and I was never the first to mention it to white coworkers.

Opportunistic Conversations

Regardless, race was a subtext in several communications with a few white managers and non-managerial staff members who deliberately created opportunities for themselves to bring it up to me. It was mentioned to me many times, overtly and covertly by them, an effort to inject race into our conversations which allowed them to insert their opinions. They sent verbal messages of their desire to discuss race with me that were clear without being too explicit, in order to avoid the risk of having their statements escalated by me as complaints to Personnel/Human Resources, requiring that they be formally addressed. The occasions when they engineered race as a topic were sly if still offensive. Their comments were designed so that I wouldn’t miss the implications and meanings.

Race On Their Minds

The incidents in which coworkers spoke about race to me specifically, as the one and only black manager, were too numerous to describe them all here but a few examples are as follows:

— A young white male who I hired as my assistant was quite insecure about himself. He decided to try to enhance his view of himself by identifying inadequacies in me and letting me know about them for the purpose of comparison. He saw himself as flawed and thought I as well as others saw him the same way even if he was treated no different than anyone else. He wanted me to know that he viewed me as flawed as well, which made him feel better about himself. In his mind, he decided that my race was my obvious flaw. To pursue this idea and to remind me of it, he brought up not subtle references to race in our work discussions which had nothing to do with race. He mentioned rappers that used the N-word in their music or in their actual names. This went on for a long time. One day, when I was considering how far to go in disciplining him, I asked him bluntly if my race was a problem for him. He said yes, quite openly. I let him know that was an unacceptable position for any employee. This was a person who I had chosen (it was his first job after graduating college), promoted and worked with every day. I was not a difficult or unusually demanding boss at all and I always encouraged his work and acknowledged his intelligence and successes. But he was going way too far. His words revealed his true thoughts and I decided that I would not work with him anymore. I went to the Personnel Director, a white female, who confirmed that I could fire him for his attitudes and statements, which I had been documenting (unknown to him). He didn’t think his insubordination and racism would affect his employment status because he assumed, very naively, that I would tolerate what he said. At the same time, I knew that firing him would devastate his career and his fragile ego. In the end, I worked with Personnel on an alternative, to find a new job for him in another part of the company, which fortunately occurred. Although he was unaware of it, if he had not agreed to the offer of a different job and had not transferred to the other department, he would have been terminated. Several years later, we had a conversation in which he very mildly showed some contrition but mostly claimed he didn’t remember the things he said. It fell well short of full acknowledgement and regret on his part. He does not know to this day how close he came to being fired.

— A white female manager once came to me and to a few other black employees, only, and asked which map of Africa we all thought should appear on the cover of a book. I was offended at her deliberate selectivity and calculated polling question because she had a reputation for finding ways to bring up race to black employees whenever possible. I should mention that many American blacks, like myself, have never been to Africa and our backgrounds are actually racially mixed. But to some whites, “black” is a purposeful, all encompassing racial classification with no variations. Individuality is ignored because it is considered nonexistent to begin with. Our skin color alone, regardless any personal ancestral circumstances, was enough for her to indulge in sending covert and even overt messages to remind us of our race. It was her sole, ulterior motive in multiple exchanges. She was always determined to indicate that we were different and in her mind each of us automatically represented all other black people on any question. It was a role that she enjoyed imposing upon us. Her pretending to present her question as innocent, legitimate and free of racial consciousness only achieved the opposite because we all knew it was false and she was doing it intentionally.

— But it got much worse. The same white female manager loudly told two of her black, female employees a joke (quoting from a movie) using the N-word, within deliberate earshot of me and my white male staff member, since we were standing about 5 feet away or less on the other side of a 5 foot tall cubicle wall. It was a word I never used in the office and I never tolerated its use among other staff members because of my belief that it was not only offensive but also unprofessional. Anyway, she left immediately on a business trip before I could confront her, which was calculated timing on her part. She wanted to exit the scene quickly before receiving any backlash. I was livid and complained to Personnel, especially since the black female employees were reluctant to complain about her since she was their boss. The Personnel Director, also a white female, suggested that I directly tell the female manager what I thought. To me this was an appalling non-interventionist stance for Personnel/Human Resources which should have instead given explicit support to the complaint and pursued a formal reprimand. The female manager’s offensive statement had been directed at multiple staff members and not just overheard by me. When the female manager returned a week later from her travels, I confronted her in the early morning before most staff arrived. She apologized but actually in a way that was still racist, when she indicated that the offense was “obviously” felt more by black employees, i.e., black employees were in her view naturally hyper-sensitive about the N-word and she generously understood why. In this way, she qualified her apology by implying that we were the ones with the problem.

— The same woman once walked over to my desk and told me that she consciously “drove through” a black neighborhood that she thought I had lived in during my earlier life. She said that she had been “thinking” about me while doing so. I had to let her know ultra-clearly that she had no knowledge whatsoever of my personal and family life.

— A white male manager walked into my office many times over the years to recount the scenes and characters that he liked in television shows with predominantly black actors and actresses. He would imitate the characters while trying to make it seem that he was just laughing about those shows and he assumed that I found them funny as well. I didn’t agree and I especially disliked his mimicking since I knew the TV shows were just another excuse for him to bring up race to me. He always chose situation comedies that contained stereotypical roles for blacks. He also never missed an opportunity to bring up race to me by identifying and exploiting a racial angle as he saw it on almost any topic. When I mentioned that I went to a beach in a more isolated part of Queens, he said that he was surprised that I wasn’t stopped by someone because I was the only black person there. He had relatives who lived in that community and they viewed blacks as suspicious and unwelcome. He explained their condescending, blatant racism by quoting their words and their reasoning: “We gave Coney Island to the blacks and Hispanics” so that minorities would stay over there instead and not leave shore areas that were, in the minds of whites, designated for them. The male coworker never expressed any view that the racism he described was wrong, let alone illegal. And in any case, no one race has the right to “give” a section of New York City to another race with the instruction that they must stay in their pre-approved, assigned place.

— Little things happened all the time. A white sales rep asked me about movies I might have seen recently, but he named only films with black stars and subject matter. He didn’t see anything wrong with how he had stereotyped me. He assumed what movies I liked and he didn’t see me as an individual with diverse interests. In his mind, if you were black, you automatically went to “black” movies only.

These are just a few out of a hundred incidents that took place in the office of this one company itself.

Racism At Other Companies

There were also sometimes extremely racist episodes at other companies I worked at in the past that were aimed at me or that I witnessed.

For example, there was an especially racist situation where I was told by a white male manager at a different publishing company, where I had applied for a job, that he wanted to hire me because I was more than qualified and he really thought I would be a good fit. He made it clear that he personally liked me as well. But his boss, also white, wouldn’t let him hire me because they had once hired a “black guy” who didn’t work out and his boss took the firm position that he would never hire another black male. The white male who interviewed me wanted me to know that he felt very bad about it and that it wasn’t my fault. His boss was simply against hiring any black male. I thanked him for letting me know and I moved on because I didn’t have the time to pursue what was illegal discrimination. Yet I also recognized that, if only to avoid a lawsuit, a prospective black employee would normally never be told the real, race-based reason they were rejected.

Beyond the Office

These experiences are just a few examples of racism inside the office. There are also dozens of other, more intense racist encounters I have had outside of the office.

I have been twice falsely accused, with great hostility, of stealing inside stores while I was shopping and before I even had a chance to pay at the register. I was required to allow my bags or backpack to be checked, inspected or left in the care of a security guard when entering a store but no other customer’s possessions were scrutinized and held the same way. I have been closely followed around by security guards who were convinced I was going to take something without paying. I was told by a security guard who came over to me with a large German Shepherd, intended to intimidate me, that I alone couldn’t stand on a public plaza in front of a famous Midtown Manhattan office building which he described as private property. My girlfriend and I were once refused service by a white waitress at a Midtown restaurant when she simply ignored our table and took orders only from whites who came in after us. I was told by a white salesman behind the counter in an camera and electronics store that I would have to “save up” to buy the item I was considering; he made this statement about my finances just by looking at me (I decided not to buy anything from that store). And of course there were taxicab drivers who didn’t want to take me anywhere.

The police were called on me by a white man for taking pictures of the New York City skyline at sunset from a public park in Queens, when my “expensive” camera was cited as evidence of my doing something unusual to the point where I could potentially be a terrorist (chronicled in my essay “Skyline Guarding”.

I have had race brought up to me almost immediately by doctors who were evaluating health matters that had nothing to do with race. They openly used race as part of their analysis and preconceived conclusions which actually misdiagnosed me completely (described in my article “Race Medicine”.

Historic and Continuing Racism

Of course, many other black people have also experienced racist incidents in America’s offices and beyond. The historic and continuing discrimination involving black people was far worse that what I have described above, especially when it involved violence.

Nevertheless, racism was alive and present in the company where I worked the longest, as well as several other companies in which I worked during my career, and in my daily life. It is usually unanticipated and it arrives suddenly, the furthest thing on my mind when it is encountered and it insists upon confronting me with its negativity. It is always unwelcome and dehumanizing as well as angering, but it intrudes my life and the lives of other black people anyway. In America, no matter how much you want it to permanently stop, it is determined to never end.

(Note: This is one of several articles I have written about race, in the office and beyond.)

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