Zacch Estrada-Petersen, Founder, My Brother's Keeper Scholarship Endowment Fund, UNCC
Several weeks ago - and just days before I embarked on a self-imposed two-week social media fast - I read a Facebook post from a high school classmate that annoyed me. I didn’t realize exactly how bothered I was by it until two days into my hiatus, and by that time, even if I was being active online, it probably wouldn’t have been worth going back and searching for the post, and then responding several days later.
Nonetheless, my classmate had posted a picture of a well-known politician who is often accused of discrimination and racism towards African-Americans. In the photo, the politician is shown being embraced by an African-American woman on stage during what appears to be a speech or rally of some sort. My classmate captioned it in support of the politician with something to the effect of “How can y’all say this man is a racist? This is a picture the media won’t show you.”
The comments overwhelmingly in support of my classmate’s post led to my conclusion that what I assumed was common knowledge isn’t really so, thus prompting me to spell it out. A man can be sexist and still be married, love his mother, have female friends, and have daughters. A person can be anti-Mexican, anti-immigration, “Build-That-Wall” quoting, and still hire a Mexican maid or gardener to clean their house and till their soil for a fraction of the market rate. And yes, a person can have Black friends, live in a diverse city, go to lunch with their Black co-workers, be hugged on stage by a Black woman, and still harbor racist views, whether they know it or not.
This isn’t your grandmother’s out-and-out, dyed-in-the-wool brand of racism, with its N-words, Jim Crow laws and its segregated fountains and lunch counters. It’s the millennial version, with its innuendos and micro aggressions that the aggrieved must then show and prove were committed.
Well I can’t speak for everybody, but I can speak to what I’ve seen, heard, witnessed and read. It’s not about the politician or his photo…
It’s about the Black receptionist working at a law firm in my office building who wore her natural hair to work one day. Her boss told her if she wanted to keep her job, she need never wear her hair like that again. She went back to wearing wigs the next day.
It’s about Shantia Coley - the Charlotte-based attorney who recently posted her experience on LinkedIn with a prospective employer in the early days of her career. “Years ago, I was encouraged by a former employer to go by ‘Tia,’” she recounted. “Mid-interview she asked me to revamp my resume and return it without the “Shan” before the offer could be made.”
It’s about the white female classmate in our third grade class at our Catholic upstate New York private school who told my brother he couldn’t be her boyfriend because her father wouldn’t let her date Black guys. In third grade.
It’s about me considering whether or not I need to cut my hair prior to going to new job interviews. And weighing the options of whether or not I would if they told me I had to.
It’s about my sophomore year of college when a Black West Virginia woman was shopping in Forever 21 at Concord Mills and asked my Black friend who was working there if she could speak to the manager. When my friend told the woman that she was herself a manager, it’s about the woman’s response: “They give colored people high positions here?” The year was 2003, and for a Black woman living in America, barely two states away, a 19-year-old hourly assistant manager at a clothing store was a high position for a Black person in her eyes.
It’s about the bars and lounges who turn away Black males for not meeting their dress code, but who let White males in wearing similar attire.
It’s about Michael Bloomberg’s stop-and-frisk policy, which operated primarily in minority neighborhoods
It’s about my Black doctor friend having to validate every aspect of her medical advice to her patients, when those same patients take the advice of her white counterparts at face value
It’s about my Black friend a few weeks ago who almost moved her family to the wealthy (and predominantly white) Charlotte enclave of Ballantyne, but whose husband feared their three Black sons would have the police called on them by someone who might feel like they didn’t belong there. They picked a different neighborhood instead.
It’s about my white co-worker at the time whose husband attended his first police protest following the local death of Keith Lamont Scott in 2016. She texted me at midnight that night: “There were two guys out there pissing in the street, one black, one white,” she said. “They arrested the black man.”
It’s about my former white restaurant co-worker, who I consider a friend, who told me that even if a woman had every quality he could ever want in a partner, he still wouldn’t date her if she were Black.
It’s about when, in the months leading up to the historical 2008 election, my white friend told me that many of his friends and family members believed in what Obama stood for, but they weren’t sure they were ready to vote for a Black president.
It’s about the bar I worked at where I was the only Black employee…and me having to explain to both of my managers following a national racial incident that Black Lives Matter DID NOT mean that black lives mattered MORE than theirs.
It’s about my Black male friend who came over this week to fix my bike, then prepared to take it for a spin around the block a couple of times to make sure it worked. He took his t-shirt off so it wouldn’t get sweaty, and was wearing an A-shirt underneath. It’s about me telling a grown, 33-year-old man that it was in his best interest to NOT ride around my neighborhood in just an A-shirt, despite the 90-degree weather. He came back drenched.
It’s about the 40-something-year-old white worker at my job in high school telling a group of us that all of her friends think she’s really Black because she sits on the floor and walks around with no shoes. It’s about how confused she was when she found out we were offended, because she meant it as a show of solidarity.
It’s about the local publications who will ignore every press release update I’ve sent them about My Brother’s Keeper but who will write about the same brewery a dozen times in a given month.
It’s about the 137,000 missing Black children in America you’ve never heard of because Blacks account for only 20% of news coverage for missing persons.
It’s about my friend who sent two identical resumes to the same job - one with her real name, Kisha, and the other with a pseudonym. The pseudonym got hired.
It’s about the Black high school seniors who are told they have to cut their braids and locs or forfeit their graduation ceremonies.
It’s about the two white guys I once covered in a local newspaper article about the work they were doing in Charlotte. I interviewed them both on the phone, set up a public location to meet them for photos, described exactly where I would be and what I would be wearing, and watched them both come to the location and walk in circles trying to find me. It’s about the surprise on their face when I finally identified myself, and their multiple verification questions to make sure I was really the person they had spoken to.
It’s about the fact I have to write this in the first place. Years ago I co-founded My Brother’s Keeper to support Black males in STEM fields at my alma mater UNC Charlotte, because I believe that representation not only matters, but is gravely important. In 2019, Twitter posted a photo of founder Jack Dorsey with fellow staff members at the company’s Detroit office. They were all white. In Detroit. In a city where 77% of the population was Black that year. Our work is far from over. In many ways, it’s just beginning.
The My Brother's Keeper Scholarship at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte is an endowment fund targeted to Black males majoring in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields at UNCC. Learn more at www.unccmybrotherskeeper.org.