At my work, they hired a diversity and inclusion chief. The position was open for quite a while.

On the company website during that while, there was a big Question Mark where the chief person’s picture would be.

Below that, “Coming Soon.”

Further below that, the pictures of the departmental sub-heads.

Both white women, both hired from day 1.

Diversity and inclusion, right? Who’s really included at my work.

I asked myself what happened to the old chief, and why did they quit. Or were they fired? Is there a difference, and if there were, would it even matter.

Nobody wants to be used.

I think sometimes that people leave jobs like that when they realize they’re being paid to be a figurehead, a token. The least of us is he helps the status quo perpetrate.

The jig is up, see.

You dance a Jig, see.

Be a buckwing bootback.

Everyday at work, I wear a Gas mask against their racist fumes.

The smile on my face is not a smile I have strength for.

These people don’t understand systems, man, they live them. They are them. They is Them.

What makes me struggle to understand is the sheer redundancy of it. The hypocrisy of it. The endlessness of.

A black coworker told me the other day, in reference to white management,

“What’s the point of asking me how they can change things for the better if they have no intention of changing anything?

That’s like paying lip service with your ears. You’re looking at me, smiling and nodding, but your body language says otherwise. You don’t want to be here anymore than I do. And you want me to think I’m crazy for noticing any of this.

You want me to just shut up and play along. Smile along as you suffocate me with the same old song.

But I can’t DANCE while you dance on my back. On my throat. On my hopes.

And I’ve been to the future and back, on that mountaintop, and all I saw was desolation.

My people, still in bondage.

Still,

But in bondage.

((Ain’t nobody ever told you dead slaves don’t hold much weight at marketplace?))

All I saw were the chains in your hands, tucked behind your back.

All I saw, still see, was/is/will-be

you selling us further into Subjugation.

By a different name,

Call it Liberation.

All I hear is the voice of Malcolm telling me not to believe you, Mr. Fox. Not to believe you, Mrs. Wolf.

But you own the systems, all of them. And to survive, I have to work in your systems, to pay my bills, to feed my children.

So I show up to work every day and I pretend, at great length, to believe in the falsehoods you spew. I show up to your diversity trainings, even though I’m the only diversity in your workforce.

I pretend to smile when you tell me you understand.

I look back at you with the same fakeness I see in you.

And when I leave this place I’ll breathe a sigh of relief.

An extended sigh.

Made it another day, Skip, we made it another day. Going home to see my family. To relieve my stress.

Take off these masks and look for humanity. Stare in the mirror and piece a face together. Trace the pockmarks, on my cheeks, desolation.”

I looked at my coworker and said sure you’re right.

I nod in agreement. This time I mean it. I really mean it.

At my work I sit and think about the real work. The work I should be doing. I’d rather be doing. That I do, but not often enough. Never often enough. Never enough.

Brother, it’s a struggle and we’re tired of struggling.

But we write, or something like it.