On Work, Safe Places, Safer Places, and White Supremacist Workplace Culture

I am 41 years old and have never felt safe in a workplace.

I have held down a job in some capacity since I was 13 years old, and I have yet to work in an environment where I’ve felt safe.

Not safe. Not safer. Nothing.

I have yet to inhabit a workplace where I feel safe, hell, safer, and can share an opinion or viewpoint contrary to what white societal norms deem acceptable and not have the sword of Damocles swinging over my head.

I have yet to inhabit a workplace where I feel safe, hell, safer, enough not to have to make sure I’m carefully wording my counsel and advice to others in ways that will not have anyone calling me racist to white people or “unwilling to understand what white people are going through.”

I have yet to inhabit a workplace where I feel safe, hell, safer, enough to do the work that I went and obtained student loans and a degree for in a way that centers the humanity and mental, physical, and emotional well-being of others and challenges leaders to lead with empathy without having one or all members of the senior leadership team question my skillset or “fit” for “their” organization.

I have yet to inhabit a workplace where I see other melanated, under-represented, unserved communities feel safe, hell, safer, enough to seek support when they are being harmed, they’re witnessing someone being hurt, or their needs aren’t being met without someone asserting they are “trying to stir the pot” or being told that they are the issue, not the workplace culture.

I have yet to inhabit a workplace where I feel safe, hell, safer, around the idea that accountability is expected of everyone, not just those impacted by not having power, privilege, positionality, and proximity to or assimilation of white supremacist hierarchal ideology.

I have yet to inhabit a workplace where I feel like I’m doing anything but putting together survival plans and trying to make it to Friday.

Before the white “professionals” and those who covet the comfort and faux safety of white supremacist ideology chime in with their advice, I want to let you know that I’ve heard your advice, often unsolicited, since I’ve been a part of the workforce. It is always centered around assimilation or options with a history of not benefiting the melanated and marginalized. So, I’ll pass. I’ll also pass on the notion that, somehow, I’m the reason I don’t feel safer in the workplace, like my existence and unwillingness to sit idly by and allow myself or others to be harmed in “the problem.” I’m not “the problem.” People who look like me, talk like me, and bring their embodied identities to work like me are not “the problem.”

“The problem” is the systems and structures of whiteness created as the foundations of work that present us with the boxes we’re forced to fit into.

”The problem” is that so many people do not feel safe, hell, safer, anywhere, yet we have to get up every day, try to earn a living, and survive in another space where we cannot rely on safety and stability.

At 21, I began understanding that workplace culture in the United States works as designed.

At 31, I intimately understood that workplaces were not designed for someone like me.

At 41, I firmly understand that I will never inhabit a space designed for someone like me.

And I know that if I want any form of safety, it will be up to me to build it because I will never work anywhere that will dismantle or create a new design because of the whiteness-driven revolt that would ensue.

Challenge accepted.