Comedian Baratunde Thurston has a new book coming out entitled How to Be Black, which he describes as “personal essays documenting my own “coming of blackness,” satirical advice on how to be black in certain situations and interviews with people doing black “well,” and in unexpected ways.” One of the essays in the book is “How to Be the Black Employee,” and he has posted an excerpt on Facebook. It’s a great read, and I’m really looking forward to checking out the whole thing. Here’s a particularly powerful excerpt of the excerpt:
The truth is that you have two jobs.
The first is the explicit job, for which you were hired. This is the job you saw posted on the web or heard about through a friend. It’s the job title printed on your business card and in the company directory. It’s what you put on your LinkedIn profile. For the sake of argument, let’s say the job was Research Associate. When you heard about this position, you were excited. Why? Because you love research, and you’re good at it. You prepared yourself. You updated your resume. You boosted your past research experience and added personal details that connect you to the type of research this job requires. You read the company’s website thoroughly. You Googled the business. You may even have done your own research on particular employees, especially management. You are prepared to be an excellent Research Associate, and when you get the job, and sign the papers and show up for your first day, that’s a role you are excited to play.
The thing is, you were also hired for another job: your blackness. That’s not to say you were merely accepted due to some affirmative action quota. If that were the case, nothing more would be expected of you than simply being black and doing job number one above. That would make you a research associate who happens to be black. No, you have another job with specific responsibilities far beyond inhabiting your skin. The people who hired you likely weren’t even conscious of this extra job. It’s not as if they had one meeting about your research skills and another about your blackness talents. Nevertheless, they expect great things from you, even if subconsciously. In job number two you will be expected to
a) Represent the black community
b) Defend the company against charges of racism or lack of diversity
c) Increase the coolness of the office environment by enthusiastically participating in company events
If you dig into this, you might conclude that you have two, three or even four jobs because your blackness duty combines the roles of politician, lawyer and entertainer. Now you’re Jamaican! For the sake of simplicity and sanity, however, we will keep these jobs consolidated under the umbrella of your second job.
The rest of the Facebook note is here.
I’ve heard a lot of stories of weird, hyper-demanding bosses with very specific rules before. (Hell, I’ve also worked for a boss like that.) But this sweet story from author Joanna Smith Rakoff, while about working for someone with a very specific demand, is also really heartwarming. When Rakoff was starting out as an assistant in the NYC publishing world, she was given a very unusual task: keeping Catcher in the Rye author (and notorious recluse) J.D. Salinger’s home address and phone number a closely guarded secret. You see, she worked for Salinger’s literary agent, and while they had direct contact with the author, people would often call the office under all kinds of pretenses trying to get Salinger’s contact information. Young Joanna was warned never, ever, for ANY reason, to let the information get out. Previous assistants had been fired for not hewing to this rule.
