I knew I was at an all time low point in my current position when while in a meeting between the eggplant, my Supv, and a rep from HR, she accused me of rolling my eyes and neck at her then told them I admitted it to her (and why I'm just now blogging about this, I have NO idea, LOL!!). Now, I was a fan back in the day of the TV show Good Times, but this chick wasn't even alive then, so she couldn't have been using that for her "model" of how Black women behave. But with all the reality trash on TV these days which essentially portray Black women as ignorant, ass shakin', eyeball rolling hootchie baby mama's, it was NO surprise she felt VERY comfortable slinging some ignorant shit like that at me. What was even less surprising for me was that the other 2 people in the room, felt comfortable enough to address the issue she raised.
Malcolm X once said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that no matter how much education a Black person has, many people in the world will still only seem them as a N*gger. Well, I've had 20 years of professional experiences since my matriculation at one of the most historically racists universities in the US to pretty much confirm that's very true. And I relocated from the deep South to Metro DC in large part because I got tired of dealing with that on a regular basis and more importantly, I didn't want to raise my daughter in that kind of atmosphere.
My grandmother circa 1908 whose husband was killed by a angry, white, law enforcement filled mob in 1939, told all of us growing up that we would have to work twice as hard as other people to be considered half as good. And I've pretty much taken that to heart for all of my educational and professional life. It's in the "handbook for educated Negroes", that the absolute LAST thing you EVER do in a professional setting, is ANYTHING that in some way supports any of the plethora of negative stereotypes about Black folks. So for me in a job setting, I've learned to go overboard to avoid being racially stereotyped. Now when this witch played the race card with that bullshit about me rolling my eyes at her, she and I both knew EXACTLY what she was doing and given where she's from (deep South, of course), I definitely "got it". Interesting enough, the person from HR actually DID call her out in that meeting for doing what? Yep, you guessed it, rolling her eyes IN THAT MEETING (and I don't for one second think I could have gotten away with that without at least getting a verbal reprimand, ( [roll eyes], pun intended, ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!)
One of the beauties of having attended and recently graduated from a prestigious and elite university is that I didn't really see or deal with people like eggplant for a number of reasons, the first of which that comes to mind is that educated white folks with money don't seem to have the "social" issues of their less fortunate and less educated counterparts (and yes, I out educated eggplant by 3 degrees). In fact, when it comes to issues of tolerance, diversity, and open mindedness, this university is just world class IMHO, even though it does have a prominent religious flavor. So this very recent experience makes what I deal with now in my current gig all the more crass, unacceptable, and foul but at the end of the day, what can I do?? Suck it up and deal, that's pretty much it. And as I've said many, many times before, I know it won't be long before I"ll "appreciate" this challenge because I'm REgaining valuable "people who are racist jerks" skills which I'll obviously need in the future!!!
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