If you are using the word “Sell-Out” to describe another, you must now use the word “Cop-Out” to describe yourself

 

Yesterday, August 6, 2020, I learned something that I would like to share with you. I need you to follow me here and if I lose you at any point please take a few minutes to re-read what is written here and think about it for a few seconds before continuing.

Yesterday I was given an opportunity to try and explain to others how and why I came to believe that my work place was indeed a “hostile work environment”. I had practiced saying what I was feeling several different ways so as not to alienate anyone in the audience and actually thought I had figured out the correct way. Needless to say it did not go the way I thought it would and I left that meeting more hurt, agitated and angered than I did when I stepped into it. For the rest of the day and half the night, I could not understand how something could have gone so wrong and suddenly it occurred to me. The reason it went so wrong was not that I did not do what was right, it was due to certain expectation I had allowed myself to get comfortable with.

You see, I was attempting to try and educate the others in the room why I felt that my work place was a breeding ground for the rule of “perceived racial bias” and how it was not only affecting me as a black man but causing a dramatic drop in morale and a growing increase in turnover. I had myself convinced that two of the other individuals that I would be addressing would surely understand because they were black like me.

That house of cards came crashing down rather quickly and left me in a place where even with them present I felt dismissed and all alone. My immediate reaction was to think of them as a “sell-out” and for a while I felt better until being such an analytical person, that did not make sense and therefore there had to be another reason, a less sinister reason. I just discovered what that reason was and the fact that I did not think of it before not only proved that I was not as mature about all things as I had thought myself to be but that I chose the easy route of “copping-out” instead of figuring out that they had just as much right to disagree with me as I had to disagree with them.

It blatantly occurred to me that even those born in the same household may see things completely differently and that does not make anyone a sell-out, what it does make them is an individual. Consider this, we are all, as the old saying goes “the sum total of all of our experiences” and if we add the words “and our reactions to them”, we should then be able to understand that unless you have experienced, recognized and reconciled what personal racial basis looks like, you will never be able to totally understand. This lack of understand does not make you a “sell-out” or an “Uncle Tom” but present to those who do know what it means an opportunity to educate. Your choice to hate instead of educate is not the fault of those you wish to blame but yours for not doing what is needed for you to do and that is, each and every time we get a chance to allow others to walk a mile in our shoes we need to quickly take them off and help them put them on.

Here’s an example, use the “n” word in front of me and I might serious think about beating you profusely about the head, neck and shoulders but use the “n” word in front of some other black person and you may fair much better. Now does that make me better than the other black person and more “down for the cause”, hell no, what that makes me is a defender of my sum total of experiences and past reactions to them. This is the bases of what we are missing when we refuse to accept that the does not rise and shine because of us and the world does not spin because we are in it. These things will happen whether we are here or not which means that just because you experienced what you experience does not mean that anyone will ever know exactly how it made you feel unless you open your mouth and put voice to it. Our arrogance of thinking just because it is our experience that all who look like us should immediately know what we are saying and why we are feeling that way but we forget or choose not to accept that each individual person has their own experiences and their own reactions that they have every right to use to judge how they should feel about any subject as well as why they feel that way. No two people are exactly the same even though you might have numerous similarities and it’s that difference that makes each of us special in our own right. Pay homage to our similarities but pay respect to our differences.