The Race Card

If you know me, you know that race is not my first consideration--not when things are going well, and not when they are decidedly bad. I know various and sundry forms of it exist (I'm not ignorant or naive), but it often has to dawn on me that misdeeds might be racially motivated because it is not high on my list of self-identifiers. If I were white that attitude might make sense, but I am a Christian woman who is a writer who lives in Baltimore who is black.

I will admit that as a child I had deep self-loathing because of my race--because it seemed only to bar my participation in activities or social circles where I wanted to be accepted. Being black didn't open up possibilities for me, so I saw it as a liability. I had teachers whose racism was so thinly-veiled, they might as well have not made any effort at all to hide their true feelings.

I've weighed my situation with my manager, and at the end of the day, I do believe that race is a factor in this situation. I don't think it's malicious or conscious, but I think that as a forthright black woman, I frighten her and make her feel undermined. Anything that smacks of resistance (her word, not mine) she views as a threat to herself. There is a cultural clash between my poor upbringing in the blighted area of Prince George's County, MD and her privelged, upper middle class, New England one.

It isn't that my persona screams "urban hoodlum," but there is a difference in my default demonstration of strength, posture, etc., that is inherent in my self-expression as a black woman, writer, Christian that she cannot relate to. And she hates it.

The other person that I know of who's been reprimanded in the last month is the other black woman at our company. It doesn't matter that everyone on our team voiced his or her discontent at recent meetings. I'm the one she feels compelled to silence.