Teachers' Pet

In the background, shuffled to be the representative, token Black hire, running around doing mundane tasks. You’d love to pitch your revolutionary ideas, but fear that either they’ll be ‘Columbused’ to death, defected, or you’ll just be told to shut up! These are my encounters anyhow. Anytime real-life situations are taking place on the news or in the world rather, I can’t help but relay that experience to my personal exhibitions.

Take my teens for example. Last year of high school, going into my starter years of college was filled with nothing short of internships and wide awakening experiences. Experiences that are supposed to lead to spaces, and places with the right opportunities and allow networking to meet the right person in order to accelerate your career, instead I became a scapegoat to larger issues. Institutional racism and systemic oppression were two sideshows that I got a front-row view at a very young age.

Corporate was a far cry from babysitting, or helping my mom by handing out lunches to her summer school classes. Initially, I enjoyed dressing up for my summer internship; getting on the NY metropolitan system in my freshly pressed blouses and the pencil skirts that I found in my moms’ attic made me feel like a cold-killer boss, only to make boring cold-call solicitations to potential donors and furthermore, getting actually cold treatment within the offices’ passive colleague behavior.

Weekly meetings were fun, my note- taking skills were exemplary, and attentive to detail has always been my middle name. Mainly because I was always sticking my nose inside somebody’s business, yet this new role gave me the eerie suggestion that this trait may not be warranted. In this business, it paid to not know things actually. From who took a personal when the boss left her corner office early, to who’s been married since the Mitzvahs and how many times they’ve screwed the same brother. The tea they were spilling wasn’t exactly the hottest. Yet this newfound secrecy, has earned me nothing but being demoted to mailroom duty!! I was appalled that other namely-white- interns got the thrilling opportunities to do research and write newsweekly worthy pieces while I only weighed postcards. Especially that this was the very position I’ve applied for, Media Communications Intern, to serve my under served community not the Paper Put-awayer. For christ’s sake, I was a walking talking, demographic, who better to represent the company newsletter than me! Not some cheery, myopic, house in the Hamptons having, rich board members son/daughter.

First came the oh so famous repercussion of a new hairstyle- which for me, was every week since Sunday was a national hair wash day in my Caribean household. Lest the holidays came, here comes the curiosity of all the new world dishes from my old-world ancestral recipes on my table during a Christian holiday that I’m pretty sure Jewish faith does not celebrate, yet they still want ham. Feeling irate and not very much in the holiday cheer, as I get that 5 ½ month burnout- with all jobs I truly do not enjoy. As you can possibly imagine, I’ve had enough. Sarah V., the one constantly pouring her lukewarm tea all over the cubicle, curiously reaches out and fingers one of my perfect plaits, she asks me what the difference was between a weave and ‘this’. Now I don’t have time to give her a history lesson or break down the geometrical references to my scalp calling all my ancestors to hold me back from whopping her twig ass, so I just muster a weak smile and say, “Idk, Sarah they never taught me that in Comm1 or AP Canonical Studies”.