The Only Black Guy in the Office
Per My Last Message, Your Condescending Emails Make Me Uncomfortable
Petty-ass colleagues and the undying power of receipts
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
A real man can admit when he’s wrong, so here it is: I fucked up. But she didn’t have to come at me like that, yo.
I never really got along with my project manager, Shereene. Which was a shame, because she’s also a person of color, although she’s not Black. The issue was that she addressed me differently than she did other co-workers — she tended to be curt with me, even callous — and it was so obvious that a lot of my colleagues picked up on it too. I couldn’t help but suspect there was some racial bias at play.
My fuck-up wasn’t even that serious. I’d mistakenly double-sent a marketing email out to prospective customers. An honest mistake, minor as things go, and I owned up to it. As per the protocol for those situations, I emailed the leadership team explaining the incident in a detailed brief, identifying who was affected, and outlining next steps. The only real point was to have a record that everyone had been updated, and keep it moving.
