How The Other Black Girl Portrays Racism in the Workplace

“The Other Black Girl,” Hulu’s new sequence based mostly on the best-selling novel by Zakiya Dalila Harris, is a crucial addition to the streamer’s arsenal as a present that facilities on the hostile environments that Black ladies can face in the office. It’s a near-universal expertise for a lot of Black ladies and is lastly being represented on display.

But when the present takes a flip and divulges the important villain to be one other Black girl perpetuating violence towards her personal neighborhood, the present falls brief, making a world the place Black ladies are pitted towards one another. As a Black girl who has usually been the “only” in office settings, the experiences that Nella (performed by Sinclair Daniel) goes by means of at Wagner Publishing resonated. But, not like Nella, I at all times had Black colleagues to raise me up, not preserve me down.

In “TOBG,” Nella experiences a office that feels acquainted to many Black ladies: fixed microaggressions alongside the basic refrains of “I hear you and I’m listening” and “diversity matters” from well-meaning white colleagues. Add in having to work with a racist creator (who in episode two says, “I don’t see color, I see characters”) and the proven fact that Nella stays working at Wagner is a testomony to her resilience and her supportive finest buddy, Malaika (Brittany Adebumola).

Nella is the solely Black individual in the workplace, till Hazel (Ashleigh Murray), the “other” Black lady, reveals up, and Nella has a buddy. Hazel instantly turns into a confidant; she will be able to roll her eyes alongside Nella when she has to cease carrying her most well-liked lotion as a result of her boss “doesn’t like the smell” in episode one. But when Hazel begins to undermine Nella — and Nella turns into surrounded by Hazel’s suspicious pals with straight hair and peculiar conduct — one thing does not add up. What Nella finds as she peels away the layers is a conspiracy years in the making.

On the one hand, “TOBG”‘s portrayal of Black ladies’s experiences in the office is extraordinarily real looking. As a younger Black individual working in nonprofit organizations — overworked, underpaid, and at the whim of racism and capitalism — there have been occasions I felt like I used to be dropping my thoughts. I’d overthink each snide remark, each missed alternative, and each side-long look. When I noticed that proximity to whiteness and assimilation could be the solely option to attain success, I felt the strain to climb up that ladder, at any value; to push down these round me till I rose up, the remaining survivor in the gauntlet of a racist office tradition. But after I began my very own journey into understanding racism and systemic and institutional oppression, I noticed that I could not achieve success alone. I wanted a neighborhood of different Black ladies making an attempt simply as exhausting to succeed, combating simply as exhausting to problem racism in the office.

The present had a possibility to point out how Black ladies, so usually, truly work collectively towards this racism. But as a substitute, it appears virtually obsessive about portraying what it means to cater to whiteness. In episode 9, Diana, the cult chief aiming to show Black ladies into senseless however profitable puppets by means of hair grease, says that “it took the right people to get me to where I am today.” And when she says “right people,” we all know she truly means white folks, not the of us in her personal neighborhood. And that is what “TOBG” will get mistaken: though Black ladies are certainly usually pitted towards one another by others, the story right here turns into an excessive amount of about whiteness and proximity to whiteness. Take, for instance, when Hazel undermines Nella when she voices complaints about Colin Franklin’s stereotypical and racist portrayal of a Black secondary character in his guide. Hazel is in the end catering to the emotions of a white man as a substitute of being in a collective neighborhood together with her fellow Black colleague, who’s bravely talking her thoughts.

It was extraordinarily unsettling as a Black girl to observe all this play out. Although the final villain is capitalism and racism, the people who find themselves main the cost to silence and quell Black ladies are different Black ladies. And that may result in dangerous and detrimental stereotypes about Black ladies and their interactions in the office. In my experiences, particularly in nonprofits, I’ve at all times discovered that the Black ladies I labored with had my again — whether or not it was a delicate nod in the hallway, eye contact in a gathering when one thing dangerous was stated, or a fast “you there?” in a Teams message when issues have been tough. The work relationships I’ve had with different Black ladies have been extra like Nella and Malaika’s friendship: supportive, trip or die, displaying what occurs when Black ladies belief one another and stick collectively towards the horrors of racism.

The present annoyed me for a lot of causes, however I do assume the overarching message is a crucial one: it is a story about the actual horrors that Black ladies face in the office and acknowledges that we’re typically the ones conserving our personal communities down. But the actual villain, in the finish, should not be Black of us. The actual villain ought to be the notion that proximity to whiteness is required in order to succeed. When the tales being made about us concentrate on the horror inside our neighborhood as a substitute of the methods the Black neighborhood can rise collectively towards the horrors perpetuated towards us, all of us miss out.