Diversity and inclusion in the workplace: Having people of color represented in your org is important, but once they arrive, if the implicit or explicit message is conformity, then you never really diversified and you’re asking people to check their “other” identity at the door.

My Blackness is not a coat I can just take off when I arrive because the temperature of a room makes it too uncomfortable to wear. No, I would just sweat in silence and likely unnoticed as long as I don’t make waves that the majority notices. (Loving this metaphor I just made up)

Throw the melting pot away. How can we center diversity in thought and experience, not just appearance? How can we embrace the perspectives of POC in our orgs as equally valid even if they’re different from “the way we do things”? How can we let people be their full selves?

An MA in my resident clinic showed up on day 1 w a booming voice & a laugh heard down the hall. He demonstrated what it means to show up with your full self at work. But the ease of being fully you is determined by the space an org creates for individuality and self-expression

It takes a year before I find a niche in a new work setting. I always thought it was me being shy and adjusting. I see now that it was my way of coping with the unspoken limitations people create and identifying where my confident vulnerability and undeniable Blackness fits in

Still processing Brené Brown on @TNQshow talking about WOC feeling so affirmed by her work on vulnerability & simultaneously recognizing that its unsafe to embrace it because of society/culture/any space that can’t embrace my identity’s nuance. MUST WATCH: https://vimeo.com/371303441 

I often have a happy ending in my tweet threads, I don’t think that exists here. Recognize that if you’ve never had these thoughts in a space, then that’s privilege. How can you make space for those who do? And if you have, you’re not complicated, you’re normal, and not alone.