Working While Black, Part 2: To Be Us Productions
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Screen test
This is Part 2 of an important and timely conversation on what it is to live and work in a world where whiteness is supreme.
Tosca Davis and Cedrick Smith speak about their award-winning documentary (To Be Us: To Work), the long shadow of American racism, why it is infuriating to hear people admonish them to just “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”, and why we all need to get comfortable embracing our limited perspectives in order to grow.
You can find the Handle with Care: Empathy at Work podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. And you can listen the episode here:
Here are three key take-aways from this second part of my conversation with Tosca Davis and Cedrick Smith.
For my White listeners, we must begin by asking better questions and open ourselves up to different perspectives. Did you struggle listening to some of the labels? I know that I still do, there is a part of me that wants to defend myself and say, “No, not me!”. But I really like and appreciate the labels that Cedric and Tosca encourage us to embrace (and use for themselves) is that they use them to signal of the need for vigilance, NOT as a marker for shame. Because shame always has been and always will be a crappy, crappy motivator. This is not about taking on a label as the totality of all that you are, but using them to signal of aspects of privilege that you and I will need to be constantly unlearning.
The unlearning is made up of small and large gestures, letting someone else’s name be placed before yours, giving up power, contributing money to Black women (you can find notes of Tosca’s recommendations in the show notes). Where are you doing this (or not doing this) in your personal life? In your business? And realize that this is particularly hard in a strongly individualistic society like our own. For White Americans, we want to assume that we are entirely self-made and unbound by wider structures.
Realize that compassion fatigue is real. To make a meaningful difference, you have to be committed to the work of equity and justice for the long haul. When you start to feel exhausted, take time to step back, do something that refreshes you or makes you laugh, and then return to the good work of making the world a more beautiful place where everyone can flourish.
Poster for film