Working While Black: Part 1, To Be Us Productions
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This is the first in a two-part series about the challenge of working in a world where whiteness is supreme. And if you don’t know what that means, if that previous sentence put your teeth on edge, then this episode is probably one that you especially need to hear.
My guests are Tosca Davis and Cedrick Smith, two Black social justice activists, workers and, most recently, filmmakers. Their film, To Be Us, is making the film festival circuit, receiving accolades for telling the stories of Black professionals whose primary disruptive life event is living and working in a world that does not value divergence from the norm of whiteness. The question that they ask all of their interviewees is, “What is your working while black story.”
I am giving it two episodes not because it is easy listening, but because it is essential listening. I’ve seen the film; it is both powerful and necessary and I am eager to be a part of exploring the themes in our next two episodes.
You can find the Handle with Care Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify. And you can listen to the Working While Black episode here…
To Be Us: To Work, Movie Poster
Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Cedrick and Tosca…
There is power to just listening to someone’s story. That is what empathy is all about, giving another person’s story weight and space. The stories that Cedrick and Tosca are telling are not what I daily experience in the workplace of America. Which means that it is even more important that I listen carefully, without judgment and “what-abouts?” and second guessing. If you are White, be aware of what was going on in you as a listener. What sort of responses or defensive postures were coming out in you? Full disclosure, they were happening in me too. This is because we don’t like to hear that the world is not how we want it to be. The next question, for me and for other White listeners, is to ask where these messages might originate from?
The marginalization of Black Americans is not a one-off that just happens every now and then. As I listen to Cedrick and Tosca and the many, many participants in the To Be Us documentary, I hear how much of their life experience has been marked by the long shadow of normative whiteness. The pain is deep and real. And, as I mentioned in the interview, if you are White, you have contributed to the problem. I have been dismissive of Kwanzaa. I remember dancing with a really handsome Black boy at a party and asking him, “So, you must be good at football. Aren’t all of you good at football?” These micro-aggressions create a cumulative weight.
If you are Black and listening to this episode, I hope that there is a heightened sense of community. One of Cedrick and Tosca’s aims is to let Black people know that they are not alone and that they are not crazy. Their film captures this ethos powerfully and I look forward to sharing more of it with you next week in Part 2 of this series on Working While Black.
Tosca Davis and Dr. Cedrick Smith