Monday's Opening Thought: August 9, 2021

This week’s opening thought, specifically for white people but also for people of color with power and privilege in white workplaces: I don’t owe you a smile.

No person of color, no Black person, no Brown person, no Black woman or femme, no marginalized person owes you a smile every day at work.

I don’t smile all the time, many of us don’t smile all the time, because frankly, we have to sit at white work all day long with faux white liberals and toxic white folx doing and saying hateful things that we know we can’t call out without incurring penalties. We watch people of color who have a thimble-full of power perpetuate and participate in hate and white supremacy. So I, we, try to roll with it, grit through it as much as we possibly can. But often by mid-week, I’m tired of y’all. WE are tired of y’all. And we can’t stop our faces from showing our exhaustion with you. That’s the point in time where y’all say things to us like, “You should smile more,” or “I like you when you’re happy.” That’s also the point in time where we have to stop ourselves from snapping on y’all because once again we know we can’t call y’all out without incurring penalties.

Y’all are exhausting; draining. Your systems, your “we’re a family” work cultures, are exhausting and draining. I don’t smile at or about things that exhaust and drain my soul and stomp on my ability to seek joy and thrive in my work. Smiles aren’t a given. Whiteness is still on some chattel slavery sh— when it comes to people of color and work, pushing that smiling and nodding and agreeing with being oppressed are unspoken rules for working while Black and I am not here for it. And I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.

I don’t owe you a smile. WE don’t owe you a smile. But you damn sure owe us a way less toxic and hateful work experience. You also owe us way less white fragility and white violence, especially when y’all claim to be “allies” while upholding oppressive work cultures.

Time to pay what you owe.