On Racism in the Corporate Lunchroom

I had one of those experiences a couple of days ago. One of those experiences that is the reason I usually hide in my cubicle during lunch: racism in the lunchroom. Oh, it all starts so innocently enough. You work at a majority white corporation that makes school materials that aren't exactly harmless, but on the spectrum from the manufacturing of kitten beds to weaponizing lethal diseases, you would definitely say this company is on the "kitten bed" end of the spectrum. And besides, you think to yourself, you're just a temp anyway. You aren't exactly culpable for any of the crap that goes on here.

So you go down to lunch to eat with all the other white temps in your white washed building except for the Bilingual department where are the Spanish speakers dwell (I kid you the fuck not) and everyone is talking about innocent things. Stuff white people like. The Royal Tenenbaums comes up in conversation. Then the next thing the girl next to you who works in Science is talking about how hilarious it is that when she worked at Chuck E. Cheeze, all of the "gangstas" used to come in wearing hot pink jumpsuits and putting on their chapstick. "You're not scary," she says defiantly, following her speech with, "Don't you guys remember when they were all wearing pink? It was so funny, I wish they still were." Then this other girl, a girl you don't like very much anyway because she made you miss the train once, she decides that she needs to mention that she loves it when "they" "swagger." She then describes a man's swagger that she saw the other day on the street. (And this girl once asked me what it was like to go to a liberal school because her parents are so conservative).

The point of this story is: post-racial society my ass, the only words missing from this conversation are "Black people" and/or "Negroes." This conversation hit me viscerally in many ways because these people do not know who I am. The only thing they know is my name, the fact that I'm also a temp for this corporation, and that I'm white. Without knowing a shred about my personal life or my politics, they assume that they are in safe company .

There is this blogger, Harriet Jacobs. Maybe I've mentioned her before. She runs a pretty kickass blog called Fugitivus (click here to get to it) where she has taken on these issues before. I would feel remiss in addressing any of my experience here without quoting her and her wondrous blog capabilities because often she can say what I cannot. I thought of this excerpt when I was in this situation:

"This is what comes of being the “right” race in a racist society. You are an assumed depository for vile, racist conversations and opinions, and your assumed compatriots operate under the belief that this is not damaging, enraging, difficult, isolating, or painful to hear. I do not feel like an overtly radical person. On the spectrum of anti-racism, I consider myself a tick to the left of moderate. But even that perception is radical, because to get there, I’ve had to move my liberal white friends a whole football field to the right of moderate, into “I’m not racist racist, but I am better, smarter, and more rational than the hypothetical dark masses that exist in my brain” territory." (taken from this post)

What I find so noteworthy about my experience in the lunchroom is that I am complicit in racist statements because I cannot argue with them. It's my job and I make it a point not to talk about my politics, social or otherwise. The best I could do was judge them furiously in my brain; these judgments have been sticking around for several days. Ultimately, what bothers me is that these assumptions are so monolithic: all black people do this and all white people are just waiting to have their moment behind black people's backs. (The "isn't it fun to talk like this" moment). I am not interested in participating in these kinds of discussions with strangers. I don't care what color my skin is: my perceived whiteness should not be an excuse to say racist bullshit around me. Not only do I not want to hear what hateful things are dwelling in other white people's brains, I don't want to be part of that whole post-racial, color-blind system that uses vaguer pronouns to say the same things that white people said 50 years ago.

So yeah, I'm pissed about this still. I know that being a white person who is angry that a bunch of other white people assumed stuff about her because she was white really is a drop in the ocean of systematic racism and that my complaints seem meager. But I can't let this experience slide completely unopposed, even if all I managed was a measly blog post.