“Being Black is a Corporate Don’t”

It happens to be true. And especially because it’s true, that line is priceless.

Read about the Glamour magazine incident here.

Apparently, a (white) Glamour editor went to a law firm and told a bunch of lawyers that natural black hair-dos were verboten in the corporate world.

Well.

For the first time ever, I entered the corporate world this January. And immediately felt obscenely Brown and Out of Place among all the white blonds flitting about. I have always worked in law firms prior to this, and had imagined I was working for Corporate America (MUST be capitalized). It turns out Corporate America is a whole different kettle of fish from Law Firms.

I’m also in a female dominated part of Corporate America. I now routinely feel awkward when I run into the rare male in the kitchen, as if I’m remembering what it was like to grow up in an all-girl, strictly segregated school.

And man. There sure are an awful lot of skinny white blonds around here. (Most of them not natural, of course.)

Remember, this is San Francisco – supposed to be diverse. Actually is diverse. Yet I see hardly any Far East Asian women around the office (San Francisco is full of Far East Asians). Blacks? Forget about it. There are more Indians than there are blacks. Yes, they all work in the IT department.

(I’m not an Indian who works in the IT department. I’m a Pakistani who works in the legal department. Thank God for small favours, I guess.)

Anyway, just wanted to make a note of the shameful fact that my employers are not into diversifying their workplace much. And to record, for future reference, the fact that for the first time, I feel just a little uncomfortable in my (lovely) brown skin.

My feelings about working in a female-dominant environment are unexpected.

First, women are no nicer than men. We knew that.

Second, they don’t care if I have nice tits. They’ll instead look at my wrinkly pants and scruffy shoes and make silent judgments. That’s a definite downside to being around women. On the other hand, men have never gushed over my cute stockings and pretty dresses the way women do. Upside. But not a huge one. It only makes me more aware that everyone’s silently taking notes on my entire fucking wardrobe and I better go shopping.

Third, they’re all white, dammit. It drives me nuts. I never thought mere “white girls” would drive me nuts just by being white. But they do. They’re annoying as hell. They’re clones of each other. Some of them are probably like the white liberals I meet around the blogosphere who are so fucking insufferable about liberal issues, such as race. The next time I run into a white person who is getting set to be preachy about race, he gets it in the balls.

White liberals who are uptight and sanctimonious about race are a joke. I’d much rather talk to an honest to God Southern racist who’ll mistake me for a Mexican and wish me back where I came from. Gah.

I’ve never had an issue with whites. I’m married to one. White girls are like anyone else. I realize that.

But I’m surrounded by a certain type of white woman. This is the fashion-magazine reading, guilty-pleasure-seeking, romance-novel-reading, hot-pink-shoes wearing, shopping-loving, big-diamond-ring-wearing, marriage-obsessed, likely-to-be-a-SAHM type of white girl who dyes her hair blond and wears ugly tights with dresses and heels, like this:

I mean! Christ. If you spend so much time thinking about fashion, why would you come out in public rigged like that?

Okay, so I’m exactly like them. I scrutinize their ugly tights, they marvel at my wrinkly pants.

“Ugh, what bad taste.”

“She came to work wearing that?”

“What on earth is she wearing? Good Lord.”

This is the silent internal dialog as we pass each other in the halls.

I exaggerate. But I have to admit I miss having some men around to mix it up. I love women. I adore them. I prefer their company to men’s. But something about an almost all-female environment really galls me, especially if the girls are of the type I grew up with — too much enforced femininity. It reminds me of being a segregated woman again, confined to female spaces, trapped in feminine judgments, no escape from girl-talk – like, ever.

Today, I had lunch with three White Girls and Two White Gay Boys. It was too much. I speak their language – without an accent, even. But I’m damned if I was getting half their high-school type inside jokes. I understood the words. I understood the ironical intent. I just didn’t find it all that witty or humorous. And it hit me: I didn’t go to high school with these kids.

That’s why I’m left out.

I do realize that there are plenty of white folk who have escaped the mental clutches of high school. I have many such white friends. But I’ve fallen into the Pakistani-style shallow white contingent, that never outgrows high school. And high schools everywhere are the same, with the inside jokes varying just enough to let you in on the fact that there is a joke in there somewhere (and why it’s so damn funny), but not letting you completely get the joke.

I’ve always felt like going to work and going to school are almost entirely identical, except that school was less work and I could skip it more often without penalty. Of course, they’re paying me to go to work, but it doesn’t quite make up for waking up in the dark, putting on uncomfortable clothes so white girls won’t judge me for being Brown AND rumpled, kissing Pink-and-White Corporate ass, etc., etc.

High school has found me again in the guise of white girls with dyed blond hair and ugly shoes. God help us.