Plantation Theory by John Graham

Author:John Graham [Graham, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WealthSpring Investments
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

The World Doesn’t Stop When You’re At Work: Calling in Black

It’s a Wednesday. Two days back at work after a long Memorial Day weekend. The upcoming Friday is another vacation day leading to another long weekend. But this week isn’t like other weeks. Something is off. In two days, I’ve seen a woman weaponize her white tears in Central Park, and the same day, a Black man is killed by a police officer on video by way of a knee to the neck, leading to his death by suffocation. A few weeks prior, we witnessed three armed white men ambush a young Black man in a Georgia neighborhood and gun him down like hunted prey. It’s only Wednesday, and I feel like a war veteran who’s witnessed the atrocities of war. Yet to my white counterparts, it’s just another Wednesday.

Far too often, seeing Black lynchings by law enforcement is the norm in my community but doesn’t even make it to white neighborhoods’ radars. It’s as if we live on two different planets with different news cycles. I wonder if the lack of recognition comes from centuries of blocking Black visibility from view as part of public policy and entrenched etiquette within white communities or is it merely that epigenetics has left white people with an encoded incapability of feeling empathy for Black people based on codified cognitive dissonance? It is a dissonance required to justify four centuries of slavery and Jim Crow institutions.

I remember July 8, 2016. Much like the story above, we were coming back to the office after a long holiday weekend. Having just celebrated the independence of the country, which is bittersweet for Black folks. This day in the office was not unlike any other for my white counterparts. Most of them stopping by my cubicle and asking how my 4th was. Did I do anything or go anywhere? I feigned a smile and forced a surface-level answer because I just wasn’t feeling it that particular day. Today, I could feel my Blackness so palpably that it was almost as if I could see myself as a third-party observer. Today, something was noticeably different. So much so that my boss could tell something was not quite right with me. I appreciated how my manager always made herself available and was candid with me during our conversation. She invited me into her office, and as we sat down, she asked what’s wrong? I sunk back in the chair as if a therapist was questioning me. I unloaded.

I told her about a horrific video I saw the evening before. It was a Facebook live stream by a young Black woman in her car. Her boyfriend was in the passenger seat and their daughter was in the backseat. I remember the woman being so composed. The police had stopped them for a broken tail light. The officer was standing outside the passenger side window with his weapon drawn, screaming frantically in shock. The passenger was slumped over towards the center armrest with a blood-soaked white t-shirt.

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