A Racial Reality…

Before I even get too deep into this conversation… the one thing that I’d like to address is that this may be one of the most complex things I’ve yet to discuss on this forum. The reason being is because Takeover Tuesday is used as an educational empowerment platform with comedic elements that relate to “Business, Brands and You…” with that being said… The entire situation of race is very relevant in the workplace because that’s where many groups of people come together on a consistent basis and the story that I’m about to dissect comes from… The Workplace.

So here’s the story… An Atlanta millenenial office worker snaps a selfie of himself and a co-workers’ 3 year old child. Posts it as a profile pic on Facebook and then he and his friends then begin a racially charged exchange with comments such as they didn’t know he has become a slave owner, referred to the child as Toby and Kunta Kente and then he even goes on to call the child feral. Result is he gets fired and now the fallout happens with apologies and expressions of unintended circumstances. (Full Story via Fox 5 Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uKIqORkYy8)

Here’s the deal… people have a hard time accepting the fact that they are responsible for their behavior. Some may say this was on a private computer, but when you participate in the exploitation, endangerment and racial degredation of a 3 year old on a social network that reaches billions of people what do you really expect?!? We can play this “Sorry… I didn’t know…” card all day long, but let’s be real about the situation… It’d be one thing if your friends went on this racially-charged route and you shut it down, but then to have you join in leaves too many questions of character and intention.

So let’s bring this back to Takeover Tuesday and what we can learn from this… As an individual, I can’t make people hate me or love me because of my skin color. It is my hope that they see who I am and what I do first, but often times we don’t want to think that deep and to be honest I’m not that naive and wandering off in La-La Land to not understand the harsh reality of the world we live in and the places we work. It’s funny how all of this even relates to things such as current events. Case in point, McGraw-Hill just released a new text book that says that Europeans brought ‘workers’ over from Africa… No. They were workers alright, but it wasn’t like people were put on a cruise ship and just happened to land in America on a permanent vacation…

The problem that we have yet to face is that we continue to put a band-aid and gauze strips on a malignant tumor that should have been fully exorcised 150 years ago. People can’t heal from something that doesn’t get treated and/or exposed. So as a step forward, realize that people aren’t bloodhounds looking to point the finger at sincere racial ignorance, but rather they are very tired of veiled cloaks of lies and malicious behavior that get washed away with an “Oops… My bad.”