Taking Up Space
Returning to in Person
I’m included in the thousands of people who have joined companies during the period of remote work through a devastating global pandemic–one that continues to claim a disproportionate number of marginalized lives (Source: CDC). One of the many consequences of this period for some has been a forced introspection, leading to a better understanding of who I am and what I need to give my best at work. Working from home during a pandemic has allowed me to create a safe space from which to operate and engage on topics that often lead down emotional or defensive roads. I haven’t had to think about all of the pressures and perceptions and performances that go along with being a Black femme in a homogenous office.
And I’m not the only one, Slack’s think tank published research last year stating that 97 percent of Black professionals in the U.S. said they preferred a fully remote or hybrid workplace (Source: Future Forum). I’ve been resisting the urge to get back to the version of “normal” that left me fighting microaggressions, and outright stereotypes behind a mask that was only allowed a fraction of who I am to peek through.
I am extremely privileged. I live alone in a safe, warm community in Brooklyn. I have the space for a comfortable office setup. I am able-bodied and healthy. I am also a Black femme and a DEI practitioner working in a predominantly white, male company in a predominantly, white, male industry. Working from home has demonstrated the harmony that freedom and responsibility can bring. As an introvert and empath, energy and boundaries are vital to my productivity. I have the flexibility to move meetings and manage my priorities in a way that builds on my strengths and identity intersections. I have space for innovation and creativity. I am hopeful that as we emerge from the period of remote work, there will be imagination and nuance built into how we work and show up for one another so that more people from historically marginalized identities and backgrounds can find this space of productivity, safety, and innovation.
The last time I was in an office was in March 2020. Besides being scared to death of catching a deadly virus, I also developed social anxiety from being a highly visible Black person in an office culture that prioritized white, cis-gendered, able-bodied experiences over all else. Company policies, cultural norms, and social expectations were all tied to a very narrow status quo that did not include me. My presence at that organization was the result of the company’s awareness of the limits of that narrow culture. My entrance into this environment was paid as an offering, to bring me and other women of color in to expand the culture of this organization (or at least the teams to which we were assigned). We were very nearly given those instructions explicitly but never fully enabled to do so. We were asked to provide commentary on projects and policies that never saw the light of day, having the effect of gaslighting us for nearly 2 years. We were made to feel grateful for opportunities that were offered freely to others. And any question about increasing and expanding access to those opportunities in a transformational and sustainable way was met with obstinate institutional force. We were ignored by our teams, undermined by insecure peers, and made to feel a part of a celebration that was nothing more than a repositioning of us within the status quo, rather than the expansion and commitment to inclusion that we were promised.
I’ve worked hard to put that experience behind me. The pandemic-induced introspection was the beginning of unlearning all the signals of unworthiness and meekness that I’d picked up from an early career as a Black woman breaking into a homogenous space. It fueled a sudden pivot in my graduate thesis work about the radical act of Blackness (which would later be described as diversity) entering historically white institutional spaces (Read more). Ignited by this study, I also began a feverish search for a new career opportunity that would allow me to champion radical institutional change for the sake of increasing diversity of representation, building inclusive cultures, and equitably re-distributed opportunities and resources. My current role is the direct result of that fervor – manifesting the opportunity to bring DEI work back to its radical origins.
Unlike my distant in-office days, I’ve been fortunate to join a team that has created space for my ideas, ways of thinking and communicating. They’ve been patient in my learning and unlearning, offered space for my off-camera days, low energy days, bad hair days, all of it. Under that care and support, I’ve expanded. This virtual workspace has been luxurious and equalizing in more ways than one. I can get more work done in the ways that work best for me. I engage with folks who are just as passionate and curious, inclusive, and equitable work dynamics. And thankfully the zoom has reduced the frequency of interruptions when I’m speaking and given me more than one way to engage in discussion. I’ve been able to nurture and grow a sense of self that has propelled me even further beyond what I’d imagined I could do as an introverted, lonely Black professional trying to find an opportunity to use imagination to build futures that include more than one narrow archetype.
Now we’re finally at the point where some of that may change as the priority for safety and flexibility falls away for the new priority to return to the office. My company sent us back to the office this month: starting with two days in office, with the promise of more days dodging COVID and all of the other things that have caused us to question the need to be in office like we were before the pandemic. I’ve been in my head thinking about all of the variables and risks and unknowns that will come into play with many of us shifting from fully virtual to partially hybrid work, most of which I did not have to consider while working from the comfort and safety of my home.
“Because if one thing is certain, it’s this: We cannot go back to the world we inhabited before the pandemic. Not only because the threat the virus poses may never end, but because this time itself has changed us. We cannot return to the same point on the circle of our lives, only to the same point on the spiral.”
Susan DeFreitas, on the Lessons of Le Guin During a Pandemic (Source)
I share the sentiments of many Black women, women of color, and gender expansive folks who have been vocalizing their anxiety around the return to dealing with live microaggressions, pressures to conform to white standards of professionalism, higher emotional burdens in homogenous offices, and greater potential for stress and burnout (Source: New York Times).
I keep asking myself why are we being asked to return? Is it the increased productivity, record profits, employee satisfaction, or accelerated innovation that we want to disrupt from this remote period? (Source: Forbes). There are so many leaders declaring the end of the pandemic along with the request to have employees return to offices (Source: UrbanNews). Perhaps not all of us have had the same proximity to trauma and loss not just with the pandemic but the unending assault on all forms of freedom and humanity. Recently I heard of a leader openly dismissing the angst expressed and amplified by employees about the uptick in reported violence in many metropolitan cities like New York, San Francisco, and Seattle (Source: New York Times). It’s imperative that rather than seeking to solve or silence experiences from employees– especially when they don’t align with ours and even more when those experiences come from those who belong to demographic groups that are underrepresented in the company and historically marginalized in the societies in which we operate. Believe them when they share their angst and concerns; acknowledge the courage that it takes to be vulnerable in an environment where you are in the minority; and be empathetic and thoughtful about how you provide support.
“Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them…”
– James Baldwin, Nothing Personal, 1964
So together we plunge into creating a new normal, one that hopefully celebrates the nuance of a community of diverse and equitably valued employees.
Cultural Pressures in the Office
There is a lot more flexibility in the tech work culture in terms of standards of dress, accepted behaviors, and at least in my company, a more genuine curiosity about doing things the right way. In my past life, I’ve had to modify how I dress–down to the type of jewelry, style of shoes, and the types of colors I wear. I even felt obligated to wear makeup because of hyperpigmentation in my skin, common in my community, but often polished away in a more homogenous setting for fear of anti-Black questions about ‘why you look so tired’. And it’s been something that I’ve had to unlearn or be active in not accepting cultural and beauty standards that are not authentic to me (Source: Refinery29).
Two years ago, I left a toxic, hellish, exclusionary in-person work environment for the safety and comfort of my home. I’ve onboarded remotely (twice), most recently onto the sanctity of a team and manager who saw me and made room for the whole me; there was no chitter, code-switching, or shrinking involved. I could unfold into a space that was welcoming to me. I started to conquer my fear of public speaking, and since then I have hosted numerous company-wide programs, panels and training. I’ve been able to design my own content series (Women of Color in Tech), based on my passion and belief in storytelling and its ability to drive change through affirmation and understanding. I was hopeful that the power and energy I’d cultivated in the virtual space would launch me into in-person dynamics. I was hopeful that my confidence and boldness would carry over into a predominantly uninterrupted white and male-dominated space.
Being under the gaze of others (especially whiteness) can be crippling, and at the least a heavy additional burden of reacting or engaging with compulsory standards of conduct and professionalism developed to actively exclude your background, upbringing, or context when they were being created (Source: Cornell). As a Black femme, and that being a huge part of who I am, and having that be immediately and consistently visible, I will always stand out. Another woman of color Colleague and friend recently articulated, “I never truly feel belonging.”
In that state of not-belonging, I see two options. One option is to shift and shape and shrink away from the most authentic version of myself into something more palatable to the majority-white environments I’ve worked in. Watering down who I am, crafting the language and tone I use to maintain the stasis. Using a level of mental processing that detracts from the energy and effort I have left for myself and my work. The alternative is to fight almost daily to have the space to share my experiences and to have them acknowledged and validated. In the remote setting, I’ve chosen the latter path. I’ve been super intentional about how I show up, down to the earrings I wear for new hire onboarding, the graphic t-shirts and colorful clothes I wear at all company meetings, the slack emojis I use to communicate, and even the art hanging on the walls in my background. It’s 100% me.
I heard from another colleague who is a woman of color that with the return to the office looming, she splurged on an expensive salon visit to straighten her hair to eliminate the work it would take to purvey her natural curls into something that fit neatly back into the constraints of a mostly white tech office, saving time for the ritual of preparing our curls and dark skin for fluorescent lights. I remember a similar decision back in 2017 when I decided to cut out the years of damage that straightening had done to my hair. And even then, the decision to show up in a white law office in the south of the U.S. with a freshly cut head – proud to have a little less of me watered down – was met with the entitled curiosity that crossed physical boundaries. During one encounter, a colleague that I’d become close with reached out to rub the back of my head. I ‘that so Raven’ed’ at that moment, disassociating from my body, nearly stopping time to process what it meant to have that boundary of personal space and agency violated by a well-liked white woman in a predominantly white office based in the former capital of the confederacy. I knew that my reaction would need to be measured (this is a part of code-switching). I felt myself squeezing every cell in my body into a mammified version of me, knowing that the risk of my natural reaction to recoil in disgust and call in the behavior could be met with all types of dangers not limited to just losing my social capital or even my job.
I know that many others now may be dealing with a similar pressure – choosing between the you that is authentic and the you that is palatable to the homogeneous spaces we’re being asked to re-enter. I can’t offer advice about which path you choose but I can affirm how terrifying and difficult it is to choose a path that is not well lit. Even as I’ve chosen to fight and be intentional about not shrinking and shifting any part of myself, I still often question how my authenticity comes at a cost. How my choice to not dial down could be turned against me later. All I can offer is that the choice is yours about to whom and where you show your authenticity and that when I’ve felt uncomfortable being authentic it’s been followed up by the choice to leave and find a new space where I can be.
Illustrated by Markus Effin Prime
Workplace Identity Performances
Another aspect of this discussion with regard to taking up space is not just the physical space we take up, through rejecting the identity performances, adapting to homogenous standards, etc., but it’s also about the power dynamics and space we take up when it comes to the work we do.
For example, in office settings, Black women, women of color, and gender expansive folks are more likely to have to take on administrative tasks, more likely to lead ERG work, coordinate social gatherings, and more (Source: FairyGodBoss). And for some, it’s tied directly to our job requirements and expectations, but for most being relegated to take on this work has a layer of socialization and unspoken expectation to take on the burden of scheduling the calendar invite, taking notes during a brainstorm or wrangling the team to gather after hours. It’s left to us to set boundaries and to ensure that we are compensated and acknowledged for the work we do. I share this as a reminder not only to set boundaries and to speak up about the tasks that are assigned to Black women, women of color, gender expansive folks but also for managers and decision-makers to be conscious and thoughtful about how work tasks and projects are distributed on your teams.
In addition to these very tangible identity-based work expectations, Black women, women of color, and gender expansive folks also bear an incredible emotional weight that often goes unacknowledged. As we are making decisions about how we show up and how we’re being perceived, it’s important that that is acknowledged as work just as much as the looming client presentation or the opportunity that we need to route in the next 30 minutes. As we move through spaces that aren’t intentional about including us, we receive little signals to align to an expectation and performance based on our identity (Source: Forbes). If we’re not careful, we begin to internalize the biased feedback of not being polished enough, being too aggressive or threatening, being unfriendly or not being a team player, being too visible, or asking too many questions.
Oftentimes the messages and signals that get internalized aren’t overt, they’re subtle and subliminal: when a colleague touches your person without asking; when you are misgendered actively and repeatedly; when you’re forced to hide some aspect of your experience and/or being to “just get through”. Whether you call out these moments or not, it doesn’t take away from having to manage the impact or unlearning of the signals you get through those experiences whether true to the current environment or not (Source: Conversation). It’s vital that we acknowledge this as work by factoring its weight into our workload and care routines.
The idea for the discussion on taking up space came from an experience that I had last year during one of my first times in the office since the start of the pandemic. We’d been hearing rumblings about returning to the office in September 2021 and I wanted to be proactive in getting myself ready to re-enter an environment outside of the cocoon of safety that remote work has provided. I dressed up (because pandemic shopping). I remember being so excited to debut a cute pair of mules that I’d been dying for an occasion to wear. They made the sound I loved as a girl, of hearing my mom’s heels click in the office halls after school.
As I stepped foot into the voluntarily open office, I started the counter (of Black and Brown folks, of Black and Brown women – the community of affirmation and warmth). After walking around the office a few times, I was able to capture our numbers on one hand and my attention began to shift. That feeling of not belonging returned as I accepted that that day I would be one of very few. I noted that I was making that sound I always loved to hear, echoing the pride I would feel when I hear a powerful person in heels walking. But suddenly that feeling began to sour, as more and more blank, unwelcoming faces would look up to meet my gaze. I felt like I was disrupting the stasis by simply just being. Later, as I would take bio breaks or run to conference rooms, I began to edit my behavior to jump to carpets rather than let my heels take up any more space than my brown skin already was. To be clear, no one ever made a comment about my shoes or the sounds or my place in this office, but the impact of being the only or one of the few is isolating, maddening, and burdensome.
I’m affirmed by the Black and Brown folks in my network and community that every single inch that I take up is earned, not by my dedication, work ethic, and contributions but just by being. I deserve a seat at the table and space to be my full authentic self.
Developing Self-Confidence & Self-Care
“I had to examine, in my dreams as well as in my immune-function tests, the devastating effects of overextension. Overextending myself is not stretching myself. I had to accept how difficult it is to monitor the difference. Necessary for me as cutting down on sugar. Crucial. Physically. Psychically. Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light (1988)
Authenticity takes cultivation. After the past two years of cultivating a safe space to work from home during the pandemic, I’d made the decision that I was going to show up fully and make the space I deserved at work. I wear my oversized hoops, my Nina Simone and Gil Scott Heron t-shirts and I don’t white-wash my Southern accent. I was determined to carry this in person into the office.
I prepared for this moment. Taking time before the day to recharge and lay the ground before me: spiritually, physically, and emotionally. I painted my face for war, dressed my body in protection, and filled my mind with affirmation and prayer. Allowing hope to bud in my chest. I create a sense of confidence despite my catastrophizing and anxious planning for every possible risk. I had my escape route planned and blocked on my calendar.
Affirmation Cards from Hanahana Beauty’s Take Care Collection.
When I came into the office on the first day of the formal return, I was surprised that all of the things I’d expected to feel were not there. There was no visible calamity. The office was quiet, filled with unfamiliar faces and the type of air that creates a semi-accountable community of strangers. Immediately I fell into unexpectedly quiet chaos. Not filled with swarming bodies but a decaying recap of the office I fled from at my last in-person job. Hauntingly, the same cold, questioning faces that had pushed me to my edge before seemed to resurrect from long-buried memories of tears and former selves I’d left behind. Damningly lonely, entering into the sunken place, feeling paralyzed and unable to articulate the knot forming in the pit of my stomach. I feel each small talk conversation, each curious (what is she doing here) glance, each nervous smile stripping away at my skin. My authenticity, my agency, turning into a double-edged sword, beginning the slow emptying of the protection I’d built up around me. I frantically try to find the pieces of the mask I used to wear in spaces like this to protect the delicate layer I’d so boldly thought I could wear.
The office culture I walked into was not the one I’d cultivated for myself since I started on this journey. I imagine this office culture, it’s what I avoided during company days and kick-offs and team offsites. It is a culture that exists in a reality so far removed from my own that I couldn’t reconcile its truth. It’s the one that says anxieties around targeted attacks will “disappear” if you just push through. It’s the one that says asking questions that reveal the lack of intention to non-dominant experiences, is just piling on negativity. Just the simple act of being perceived by those who are unfamiliar is a painful reminder that there is still so much more work that has to be done to bring others into the work I lead. The choice to be authentic as an introverted, Black femme in a white tech company is still an active fight to expand the curiosity and empathy I receive as an individual to include more folks who are marginalized in their uniqueness. It’s asking decision-makers and leaders to apply an additional lens of self-awareness and intersectionality to the policies and initiatives that they create. It’s a fight that asks us to imagine beyond those western, capitalist, white supremacist norms that have brought us to this place of collaboration under a company mission.
I question almost daily, whether I have what’s needed to continue in this fight. I’ve leaned on the power of affirmation through introspective practice, storytelling, and community to remind me: first, that just because I am unique, I am not alone; and second, that I am more than capable and valuable – especially because I know that women like me are still living in a world isn’t always gracious about letting us know that. I’ve leaned into safe spaces with loved ones, trusted colleagues, and employee-led communities to help restore my sense of hopeful imagination and remind me that I can take up as much space as I need.
