THE ONLY BLACK GUY IN THE OFFICE
Coworkers, Please Don’t Make Black History Month Weird This Year
And forward this to the whole damn company while you’re at it
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
Today is the first day of February, and I’m officially stressed out. Sure, I’m happy to have escaped the most bizarre January of my lifetime, with only the mild shellshock of a militia-fueled insurrection and the inauguration of this nation’s first Black vice president occurring just weeks apart. But I’ve got a love-loathe relationship with the second month of the year. Black History Month can be beautiful — but for Black employees in corporate America, it can also be awkward as hell.
In the aftermath of 2020 — a year in which the phrase “performative activism” was cemented in the cultural lexicon — I’m wary of the halfhearted, shallow shit that’s in store for Black History Month. I can see these corporations now, launching campaigns that appear to center Black people but ultimately are just blatant PR plays. Or initiatives that fixate more on Black trauma than triumph. There’s a whole breadth of experiences to honor, but when these projects look at Blackness as a monolith, it does a serious…
