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THE ONLY BLACK GUY IN THE OFFICE
The Weight of White Guilt in the Workplace Is Too Damn Heavy
My coworkers — bless their hearts — are making a tough time even worse
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
When I received the Zoom meeting invite, I knew something was amiss. All it took was a quick glance at the attendee list, which only included me, a few department heads, HR, and the other two Black employees at the company. Oh, and Nat, our (Black) intern. The agenda: Working Toward a Better Tomorrow. I just knew things were about to get weird.
The timing of said meeting made its motivation obvious: It was scheduled the week after the inhumane killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, just one of a string of state-sanctioned murders that include Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery this year and countless others in the decades prior. In the aftermath of that news — and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests that have been popping up in cities around the world — I’ve noticed that my well-intentioned colleagues seemed to be tiptoeing around me in a way that’s palpable even virtually. There was a thoughtful, companywide email that had been sent, but up until this point, none…
