To be like me is to be told what you can and cannot do.
To be warned: “I wouldn’t, if I were you.”
To be at once ephemeral and enigmatic.
Present and unattainable, because your presence is an amalgamation of misrepresentation and disguise.
“I won’t, because I am not.”
“I can’t, because I can not.”
I refer to one of my bosses as “black boss.” I do not mean this to be an insult, nor do I do it as an act of self-hate or self-deprecation. I refer to her in this manner because she, like me, is black.
And she,
like me,
is navigating a space which is overwhelming white.
In its whiteness it is powerful, oppressive, shaped by codes of conduct untranslated and unchartered by our blackness.
Black boss is never on time.
Her lateness is a marker on my back.
Black boss is singular, her actions and decisions are driven by her unflinching desire to succeed.
She motivates me to be predictive and calculating, to anticipate her brilliance and match it with my own.
Now, my black boss has been replaced by a newer version. Or rather, a recycling and reshifting internally of power structures and schemes such that I, the lowest on the totem pole, ends up with “white boss.”
White boss is never on time.
She is early.
White boss shares the purpose of our meetings days prior.
She interacts with me as if we were a team.
And she,
like me,
Is highly intelligent and capable and able to work independently.
And she,
like me,
Is uncomfortable in her womanliness in a space that is predominantly male.
In its masculinity it is limiting, conventional, shaped by pretense and a system of interactions that are at once informal and anecdotal.
“I won’t, because I am not.”
“I can’t, because I can not.”
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I worked on this project beginning in June, not solely on paper, or type-type-typing aimlessly into a word processor, but I worked on this project as I worked for the “man.”
As I worked on myself.
As I worked on a project I neither understood nor personally identified with, despite the fact that it is centered around something I have spent my adult life working in.
On.
With.
I began my internship with a supervisor who looked like me physically. But, even in that similarity we were still worlds apart. She: cultured, older, more experienced both professionally and in life. She, with an accomplished husband and beautiful family. She, with an outward appearance five times lighter than I. A caramel macchiato to my simple dark roast. These differences are only subtly felt by the broad, “American” community, but have been infinitely articulated and demarcated in the black community for centuries.
After her departure for much bigger and much better things (though I question this sincerity), I transitioned to a white, female boss. I’m not sure if it was the way in which I was tracked academically as a child and conditioned to be around white children, white educators, and by extension-white culture that I felt so…
So….
Close to her.
Or, it could have been her maternal nature. The way she swore. The refined nature by which she supervised and consequently guided me through my internship that I still feel quite indebted to her.
Of course, she left too.
In the interim period, a time which I fondly refer to as “the unknowing,” I had very little interaction with the supreme boss, a white male who I at once admire and inexplicably fear. Like the boss that you get to at the end of a level in a video game, who looks terrifying; a mirrored image of your own failures. And yet, perhaps he helps you. Perhaps he is not so scary as he seems. Perhaps I spent my entire internship, an unending span of 6 months, with my head buried in the sand too afraid to talk to someone I know I admire because….
Because of what exactly?
A social culturing which limits me from pursuing things which might seem normal to someone not of my color, gender, or age-range? If I were the opposite of what I am now, would we have shared commonalities which allowed me to ask important questions of him?
Which leads me to my newest boss, and the most wonderful and awkward experience of all. She, an extremely intelligent and enlightened Latina, caught in the terrifying newness of being new.
How can one supervise….guide me, when one is acclimating to a post already abandoned by many others. In this, we felt and still feel like partners. Like shared eye rolls and shrugs and hushed sighs of frustration. Like allies.
I regret to say I fear that if she stays here she will lose the spark, the courage, the audacity which guides her to do great acts in life. I fear she will accept this unnerving factuality that $$$ and power are the way the truth and the light.
So, here lies my Practicum. A study of the problems, pitfalls and pathetic attempts at happiness found as a minority in a professional (specifically Education oriented) organization.
Enjoy.