One time in college I was the only Black person working in a fine art gallery....
Or, how I knew that we weren't living in a "post-racial" society almost decade ago
My first brush with Anti-Blackness came swiftly prior to Senator Obama being elected as president.
While I was not a believer in our supposed “post-racial” utopia, I wanted to hope, like we all did, that enough distance from being chattel might just allow me to be treated humanely by those around me. I had not lived in the Midwest very long before I began to notice that the eyes that watched me constantly perceived me as an object, once for sale, now attempting personhood. I was working at a photo gallery in Chicago’s River North neighborhood. It was a posh, ‘upscale’ neighborhood dotted in hip restaurants and expensive boutiques, but what I loved about that particular intersection at Chicago and Franklin were the art galleries. The gallery I worked at was just above Catherine Edelman’s Gallery and I always took a quick peek inside before heading to begin my internship shift. Her presence in the building was a large reason why I took my internship, hoping to one day meet her in the stairwell we shared, but I was dismissed before that could happen.
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Our gallery manager at the time was perhaps the first person I met in Chicago who not only knew of our soon to be President but dared to brag about being family friends with the Obamas and told me, the sole Black person working at the gallery, every moment she got. I didn't know how to read this woman, she was often standoffish towards me, so I felt more nervous when she would call me into small talk about this Black guy she knew and loved, despite being incapable of extending any kindness my way.
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One morning when the gallery manager was actually at work for once, she rushed out in a huff, and caught me at the front desk, working on a database for an upcoming gallery opening.
“W-what are you doing here?!”
“Oh, hi! Sara didn’t let me know you were here today.”
“You should be in the back office...does Sara have you sitting at the front desk when she’s in?” I nodded up at her while I continued typing address information into the database. She shook her head in frustration and asked me to work in the back office for the rest of the day, so I did. The snacks and drinks were in the back office and I could dick about on Facebook without worry.
When I came into work the following week, Sara tersely informed me I could no longer do my hours at the front desk. They chose to leave the desk unmanned lest a prospective buyer sees a Black person breathing air inside the gallery. About a month later, the studio manager terminated my internship, with no explanation. I only had two weeks of the internship left.
Two weeks away from a college credit I had suddenly forfeited.
At nineteen, I had no idea the white women I would continue to come across in the workspace would step on me at every chance they got, simply because they could.
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Eleven years later, I'm ruminating on just what it means to occupy the liminal space of both victim and oppressor (hey white girls!) and trying to find a way to process — for once and for all — these psychic wounds embedded in my soul for too long. Marcus Aurelius once said, "The impediment to action, advances action. What stands in the way, becomes the way." It seems fitting to have framed this year with words from an emperor-philosopher from a declining empire while reflecting on a decade of experiencing anti-Blackness while coming into my own as an adult, living in the United States — an 'empire' also in serious decline.
I'll be sending dispatches from time to time, about what I've learned from having to face anti-Black racism in the workplace for the last decade of my life to make a way even when I'm being met with resistance. I think there is a lot to be learned from these unfortunate experiences. What I've learned has become a guidebook for my successes as these instances have forced me to think critically about how white supremacist ideology shows up throughout history and how those methods have transformed over time.
Particularly, how can we change labor as exploitation in the 21st century? Specifically, how can we learn to better value labor produced by marginalized, formerly colonized bodies? And does that valuation of othered labor have the potential to help end the racial caste system in America, for good?