THE ONLY BLACK GUY IN THE OFFICE

I Learned That My Co-Worker Is Full MAGA, and Now I Can’t Unsee It

That awkward moment when office politics takes a turn for the worse

The Only Black Guy In the Office
LEVEL
Published in
4 min readOct 12, 2020

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Illustration: Michael Kennedy

Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.

“Yooooooo!”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about text-based communication, it’s that whatever follows an elongated “Yo!” greeting never disappoints. So when I saw one in a Slack DM notification from one of my co-workers a couple months ago, I was sure to swallow my mint tea before opening the message.

This time, the message actually did disappoint. What followed was a screenshot from the Instagram page of our VP of marketing (let’s just call her Alice) pictured standing next to Donald Trump. “You peep this?” my colleague wrote. Trying to seem unfazed, I responded with a simple “Nah.” But since that day, I haven’t been able to unsee that photo of Alice, smiling like a fangirl, alongside Trump, smiling like the ugly racist he is.

Go figure, I just have this thing where I don’t like White supremacists or the people who support them.

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The Only Black Guy In the Office
The Only Black Guy In the Office

Written by The Only Black Guy In the Office

Do you know him? Is it you? The trials and tribulations of a Black man navigating corporate life.

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