Corporate America is Racist

Of course it is

Hiii on this week’s delight I’m sharing my experience working in corporate amerikkka (I’m currently very unemployed and I don’t want to go back). Onto the delight…

As I carried out my daily LinkedIn job search, filtering by location, limiting searches to the ones that have been posted within 24 hours, constantly repeating to myself I’m not my labor, I’m not my labor, I ran into an article about a Black woman who created a fake LinkedIn profile of a white woman with her exact job profile to validate her hypothesis that racism was making her job search harder. I hate that Aliyah Jones had to create Emily Osbourne and do emotional and physical labor to prove what she and every Black person knows. Of course it’s because she’s Black.

Dear every Black person on the planet,

If you ever find yourself asking, Is it because I’m Black? It’s definitely because you are Black, unless you are Drake, in which case it’s because you are annoying.

My heart dropped when I learned that Emily Osbourne, Aliyah’s white doppelganger, was seven times more likely to receive an interview than Aliyah.

I know corporate America is racist, if it wasn’t, Elon Musk wouldn’t be its mascot. Whenever America is a descriptor for something, that thing automatically becomes racist, like, American dream or American president. Now you try it. Add America or American to anything and see how quickly it transforms to full blown bigotry.

I intellectually and spiritually understand America, but whenever I learn about an incident of discrimination (which is every day) or I’m the target of racist acts (again every day), it enrages me as it should.

In this context my anger prevented me from continuing my job search for the day and I turned to bell hooks for comfort. I’ve been carrying around my highlighted copy of “killing rage” ever since I faced discrimination from a former boss. I have had someone touch my hair, ask me how I know so much, but never in my life in corporate America did a boss ever send me a racist email until she did. Yes, it was a white woman who probably still worships Susan B. Anthony.