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I suppose most of what I've gone through is fairly standard. The most common thing, and it still happens from time to time, is when someone higher up talks to people and looks right past me. Like they're talking to the other people in the room and they can't realize I'm standing right there. It's the not very subtle way of signaling they just don't believe I should be there.
A similar thing happened to me many years so. My team was giving a presentation. I was the only black guy as part of the team. The head of the group that was hosting us came up and talked to our team. He literally asked me "How can I help you " as if I wasnt part of the team. I was so offended
I was raised in an upper-middle class Northern suburb, the only Black family in the immediate area. When I got a call from this company about the job I applied for, they said they were impressed with my resume and experience and wanted me to come in for a "final interview" immediately. I got there on time, told the receptionist who I was and what time my appointment was, she looked at me like I has something growing out the middle of forehead, told me to go to Interview Room 1. When the manager came in, she said, "I'm sorry, we have someone coming in for an interview in a few minutes, can you wait in the lobby?" I said, "I'm your interview." She stuttered and stammered a minute, so I helped her out by saying, "I didn't sound Black on the phone, did I?" Face it. Remember when it was okay for the running back and the wide receiver to be Black, but quarterback was out of the question? Same for anything having to do with finances and math. There is a corporate mindset that "Blacks can't do math -- except for multiplying (if you know what I mean)." I got the job, have been promoted twice and am in line for a big promotion later this year. Problem is, you have to get up to bat before you can hit a home run.
Like everyone else mentioned I have faced similar things. I have experienced biases and people makimg rude racist comments. Some wer very overt and others weren't as much but they were still comments that have stuck with me over many years.
I’ve been through so much too, I could probably write a book. It’s the micromanaging, belittling and pushing me into positions I don’t wan but have to take just to survive. It’s too exhausting being a minority, I wanna give up so many times.
Not exactly minority related but the biggest wall I ran into was my first manager assuming I had access to similar resources she had when she started out.
For example, many of her immediate family members are in our field, so she came into the job already having an idea of how to manage the workload & with a support system she could go to for work-related questions. I, on the other hand, had no one in my family who had ever even worked in a corporate job. So I came into it all on my own & pretty oblivious to corporate culture.
There was a lot of help I DIDNT get because of this assumption. When I did ask for help, the assumption turned to- I’m trying to evade taking accountability because “I SHOULD know X, Y, Z”.