THE ONLY BLACK GUY IN THE OFFICE
Work Life Has Forever Changed for Black Professionals in 2020
I somehow survived this wild-ass year, and I’m taking these learnings with me
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
I may not be Miss Cleo, but I can make the following forecast about the future with confidence: Anyone who lived through 2020 will have a story to tell about it for the rest of their lives. There are people who are not even born yet (shout out to quarantine babies!) who will learn about 2020 in history classes throughout their public school years. It will be discussed the way today’s generation dissects things like 9/11, the Great Recession, Barack Obama’s historic rise to the presidency, and — whether we like it or not — Donald Trump’s election in 2016. But whereas each one of those events defined the year in which they happened, 2020 feels like a year that defined us. Certainly, it was a year that defined me.
Covid-19 changed life as we knew it — terms like “social distancing” and “flatten the curve” were introduced into the cultural lexicon, you couldn’t leave home without a mask, and remote work became the new normal (another instant cliché). The summer of social…
