by Carmen Van Kerckhove

Watercooler is the section of the blog in which we share with you real-life horror stories from the frontlines of race in the workplace. This week, we have a story from Maria:

I recently left a job where my boss was the worst kind of racist there is: she didn’t seem to have any idea the stuff she said was so offensive. I can’t believe anyone could be so clueless. Or maybe she didn’t care.

She said things all the time, about immigrants in Northern Virginia (where we both live), co-workers from India who spoke with heavy accents, that sort of thing. I mostly ignored her, only calling her out once or twice. Didn’t want too upset the apple cart, as it were. But this took the cake:

In our small department of 5 people, she was the only non-minority. There was a Hispanic gentleman and lady, and 2 Black women, myself and my co-worker. This manager needed to hire one more person and usually brought her interviewees to our department to size them up. One day, she brought an older black woman back to meet us. She seemed qualified and very friendly. She spoke fast and used a lot of slang, I guess in a way that could be described as ghetto. This bothered no one, and we all gave the green light, she seemed like a good hire.

Later, in the presence of only myself and the other Black woman, she mentions that she liked the candidate, but wasn’t sure she wanted to hire her. When we asked why she said that there was no way she could put this in a politically correct way: she had a problem with “the black talk”. My co-worker and I exchanged glances, but she continued to talk and eventually left us alone. She had no clue that she offended us. At all. And for some reason, while we talked about it among ourselves, we never mentioned it to her. And I will always regret that. She knew several other Black women within our company and we all spoke differently. None of us sounded like this candidate. Many were college educated, we were all from different regions with different experiences. Many spoke with a regional accent (I’m from NJ and I stand out amongst my co-workers who are native to Virginia. They think I have an accent. I don’t). How she equated someone who, while intelligent, spoke poorly with “black talk”, I’ll never know.

By the way, in spite of all of this, she hired the woman.

Please email team@raceintheworkplace.com if you’d like to send in a story, put “watercooler” in the subject line, and let us know what name we should use for you. Pseudonyms and first names are totally fine. You can read more Watercooler stories here.