Comfort In Black Spaces
The white Spaces I'm In Are Not Safe
I miss spaces that have been unapologetically Black. Full of those of Melanated decent creating love in moments you’d think imaginable. Laughing through the pain, Joy of the most high.
Recently in the last year or two, I’ve moved more into white spaces for work, which has become my main interaction with the world socially. The stark contrast of moving from Black majority populated spaces to white majority spaces actually is jarring and my boyfriend made some comments the other day to me that really took me aback. I was talking about school because I’m going back to college and some people I’m working with went to the school i’m currently enrolled in. I was bring up that if we’re all ending up working at an art supply store with a bachelor’s degree, What chances do I have? and these coworkers are white. he called these people my friends and that he didn’t wanna hear the experiences of White people. Though, it was just for context to show where a degree can still land you in minimum wage retail, I think there is a very huge point that I had to sit with. I am spending 8 hours a day, with these white people, interacting with white customers for my retail job. I go home just to do it again the next day. I rarely interact with my Black friends, we don’t hang out (That’s it’s own issue), the only other Black person I actually interact with is my boyfriend and we’re long distance. So i’m very alone in my personal life surrounded by enemies. No Black joy in sight.
Within my work life I’ve also noticed something that now kinda bothers me. I have phrases I say throughout my life, they change on what media i’m consuming or what i’m interacting with. Non Black people tend to mimic me and think my speech is entertaining in a HAHA funny way? I could be dragging these situations but last night i was deeply disturbed; like am I a minstrel to you?
The first time It happened I was working in the city and that was the first place where there were more White people I’ve ever had to interact with in a work setting. My manager, POC (From the middle east) started to take a liking to how I was using the word hello. I use it with different tones and cadence to express several different emotions without having to say full sentences. This didn’t really bother me at all, coz even my friend was doing it sometimes too.
What bothers me more is now at my new job where my manager is a white woman, it feels like she’s mocking me and i don’t like how she feels comfortable doing that. Especially off the conversation we were having about big pharma and vaccines. I brought up medical racism and I was absolutely dismissed and was told she doesn’t think it’s just black people having poor medical service it’s just the industry trying to get money. But if she would listen or pick up a book, all this is happening because of white people. If you really want to talk about how medical discovery was big on just trying to prove black people were inferior though science. They did ungodly experiments to us, guise by science and medical studies. They teach people that black people have thicker skin so they don’t feel as much, and just the blatant dismissal of black people when they just appear in the office, They don’t even wanna service us. Let’s not even talk recently a dead black woman has been used as a incubator because she was pregnant and they used this woman as an experiment under the guise of anti-abortion… Like the dismissal of something that actually matters, then the blatant copying of my speech for your own entertainment… rubs me the wrong way.
It made me think i’m giving too much access to them, particularly the pro blackness I am deep within and all I want to do is speak about it. But in turn I am literally surrounded by them all day because we have to work to survive, my community is being swallowed up by gentrification. I also don’t have a close knit Black community behind me to escape to in my real life to talk to about these things; racial injustice, white rage and how to create space for blackness, etc. I’m starting to become really uncomfortable at work. On top of that, working at an art supply store should be fun, I should not know everyone’s drama nor do I want to continue on this anti men hate rhetoric that’s going around. I don’t know about you, But my man is great and he takes care of me in so many ways. I get it, the experiences you’ve been through frame those specific men in a bad light, they’re trash humans, I GET IT… but it’s not all men. don’t treat them like a disease. I’ve had men in my life help me more than women. Not to mention some of them come to me to validate the racism they hear at work…? like I just work here. If you see or hear something wrong, actually call them out on it and stand on that shit. Are you looking for me to fight the fight for you? or just just want to be patted on the back for pointing it out? either way, I don’t want to be involved…
I am tired of white spaces. I do not feel comfortable
I want more Black spaces. I want Safe spaces. Deep Black thought. Radical Blackness. Dismantled whiteness. Black Joy. Black Freedom.
This was deeply felt. The way you laid bare the spiritual weight of being the only Black body in a white space for hours, days, months is something far too many of us are expected to endure in silence. You naming it out loud isn’t just cathartic, it’s an act of resistance.
The mimicry, the dismissal, the anti-Black gaslighting, you described all of it with a clarity that can’t be debated. It’s historical. It’s systemic. It’s daily. And it wears on the spirit.
What struck me most was how you captured the loneliness of being pro-Black in an anti-Black environment, when your voice is strong but your circle feels empty. That kind of isolation doesn’t just bruise, it breaks. And still, you write through it. You speak through it. You survive through it.
I also see the toll it takes when your love for Blackness and need for connection have nowhere to land, especially when community feels absent.
Keep telling your truth. Not for applause but for liberation. For your own becoming. Even when you’re tired. Even when you feel alone. What you wrote matters. You matter. And your voice has power, even when the world refuses to listen. Amazing job sister Aura ✊🏾.
With Love & Respect.