The Unpopular Opinion of a Black Woman

Diversity and Inclusion … what exactly is it?

Diversity – “Diversity is any dimension that can be used to differentiate groups and people from one another. In a nutshell, it’s about empowering people by respecting and appreciating what makes them different, in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, education, and national origin”

Inclusion – “Inclusion is an organizational effort and practices in which different groups or individuals having different backgrounds are culturally and socially accepted and welcomed, and equally treated. These differences could be self-evident, such as national origin, age, race and ethnicity, religion/belief, gender, marital status and socioeconomic status or they could be more inherent, such as educational background, training, sector experience, organizational tenure, even personality, such as introverts and extroverts”

Both of these definitions came from the Global Diversity Practice Website – check it out.

We talk about respect a lot in this world, but talk is cheap. We are taught, at least some of us are, to respect our elders, speak when you walk into a room, acknowledge people, hold the door open for a woman, give up your seat if a woman (especially pregnant) is standing. Respect. Aretha sang about it in one of her greatest hits (Aretha Franklin, in case any of you don’t know). And yet some of the people in the world still have a hard time respecting others because of their skin tone. Being different seems to be more of a hardship than a celebratory feature of one’s life. Being different means you have a bigger chance of being shot down by the police in your own backyard, don’t worry, that’s my statistic of common sense, nothing really had to be researched for it, because I live in america.

Too many things have gone on in the world, just these last two weeks alone, that others cannot deny the fact that black people are being racially profiled at every turn, but white people refuse to acknowledge their part. This is my biggest issue in this entire matter. How dare you tell me, a black woman, how I should feel about the killings going on? How dare you try to say, “Well, ya’ll kill each other every day in the hood”.

The Starbucks issue regarding 2 black men being arrested doesn’t stop at Starbucks and in my opinion, while training should be done, you can’t “fix” the way people feel inside, no matter how many harassment videos HR breaks out. What about the police? It seems as though asking simple questions is no longer a part of the police job. You want to take something so important to Black people and say blue lives matter. Everything black people try to build, you flip and find a way to criticize us.

TV host talking down on a child because he applied to a certain number of colleges. Black people are truly the definition of, “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. Then it’s time to break out the “I’m apologizing so I can keep my job, not because I actually realize how stupid and irrational my actions and words were”.

Some white people give Black people reasons to hate them every single day and while we try our hardest to ignore most of the outrageous things you’re doing, it is not possible because we aren’t just being dismissed, we are being killed. We are getting arrest records because another white person felt unsafe.

Now so many people will be “inconvenienced” because Starbucks will be shutting down 8,000 stores for a day of training. From my point of view, Starbucks is doing more than the police department. Gun Violence and Diversity are great topics, people love to discuss it, but no one wants to do anything about it.

Kids are having to fight for gun control because they are being killed while trying to get an education and no one wants to do anything about it. Police are shooting people because they know they can get away with it. Black people can’t even stay home to feel safe. White people are scared, I mean really, how dare 2 black men go inside THEIR STARBUCKS and sit inside a company for 5 minutes without buying something, they absolutely must be getting ready to rob the place!  How would you feel if black people called the police everytime a white teenager walked into a school wearing dark clothes and spiky hair, well, of course, they are about to shoot up the place!

These aren’t made up, these are real situations happening around the world and we are refusing to acknowledge it because it makes us uneasy. But hey, standing for the truth has never been easy.

And once again, another white man has been found without incident, the police didn’t fear for their lives when finding the Waffle House killer, they didn’t shoot 20 times into his back out of fear of their lives. Stop acting like it doesn’t speak volumes that the number of black men and woman you take down dying in your custody, while white killers are sitting in a prison getting love letters and you’re stuck at your desk for a month while your family talks about how great a man you are.

This isn’t a post asking where is HR, because while this discussion needs to happen in the workplace, we’ve moved far away from the workplace harassment problems.

This is a post to ask, when will it be acceptable to be Black in america? You say now is the time, while this unpopular Black woman’s opinion, is never.

I refuse to be angry to the point of holding hatred in my heart, but I won’t sit back and ignore the problems, because it makes you uncomfortable.

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