Monday's Opening Thought: February 21, 2022
Image Description: A graphic listing of what job search engine Indeed considers the 10 qualities of professional people. The list, in order: reliability, humility, etiquette, neatness, consideration, dedication, organization, accountability, integrity, and expertise.
This week’s opening thought: Someone tells me I’m “unprofessional” at least twice a month.
I’ll let you guess the race and melanin (or lack thereof) of the people who say this to me.
Sometimes it’s in an email. Now and again, it comes up in a meeting. I see it when I’m in a meeting, and I’m not wearing business casual, opting instead for a Kamen Rider t-shirt and jeans. I know how white people feel about me when I’ve had an afro or facial hair that didn’t fit their belief system. I can see it on their faces, read it in their body language. I see them cringe when I use words like “y’all” instead of “you guys.” I sit and listen as they try to find the right words to make me uncomfortable with how I show up and exist in what they view as their space, trying to use broad general statements that say “we are professionals” when they really mean “you aren’t a professional.” I observe y’all going out of your way to push me into conformity with “professional standards” to inform me that I need white validation to be viewed as good or great at what I do. Here’s the thing, though:
I don’t need white validation to feel like a “professional.”
Why?
Because I’m not the white vision of a “professional.” I’m MY vision of a professional.
I’m a highly-skilled melanated brother doing high-level sh-- in my profession.
If we’re flipping definition coins, I think I’m doing pretty damn OK.
Do you know what two of the core definitions for the word professional are? According to Merriam-Webster, being a professional is “characterized by or conforming to the technical or ethical standards of a profession” and “exhibiting a courteous, conscientious, and generally businesslike manner in the workplace.”
Yeah. I went there. Pulled out the dictionary and sh--. Sometimes you’ve got to blow the dust off of it and serve up some knowledge nuggets.
Note the language used in these definitions. Conforming. Ethical. Courteous. Conscientious. Businesslike. Then think about the lens with which those concepts are being spotlighted and examined. Then think about whom that lens behooves. The definition of professional that most white people use only benefits a particular subset of white people. It only barely benefits people of color with power and positionality who believe conforming and assimilation is either the only way to work or the only way to survive. It caters to code-switching, loss of identity, depression, anxiety. So, if I have to work in white workplaces, I’d rather exist as myself, anime t-shirts and all, and let the chips fall where they may than try to achieve an unachievable white supremacist concept like “being a professional.” And the funny thing is, I am the primary definition of professional, which boils down to a person pursuing or being active in a chosen profession. And a profession is defined as a “calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation” or “a principal calling, vocation, or employment.”
I check those boxes.
Many Black and Brown folx, Native and Indigenous folx, Latinx and Hispanic folx, folx from AAPI communities, and people of color in general also check those boxes.
I think y’all need a new definition for professional, white “professionals.” While y’all are working on that, I’ll be minding my Black business, excelling in ways y’all only dream of because y’all have constrained yourselves to stiff definitions. Why?
Because I’m a highly-skilled melanated brother doing high-level sh-- in my profession which, unlike many white “professionals,” isn’t defined by or tethered to white supremacist language.
Maybe one day some of y’all will feel like you can wear a Kamen Rider shirt to work and still be seen as awesome at what you do, too.
I’ll ask one of my religious homies to pray for you.