Challenging ‘Micro-aggressions’ has cost me so much in this life. Jobs & professional relationships. I will NEVER regret standing up against it but it is definitely a costly move. I often hear ‘but XYZ is black and hasn’t complained’. We NEED to speak up!!

Also I should add, before someone tries to discredit me, yes I acknowledge I am fortunate in many ways but that doesn’t take translate to anything here. I still have to work like everyone else and shouldn’t feel suffocated in such an environment.

My whole life I’ve heard things like ‘you are rather articulate aren’t you Moyin’ meaning what? or ‘why do you feel we should be paying you so much?’ a salary I’d already been being paid but one new manager complained I had ‘just bought a house/we must be paying her too much’

Or is it the time I was mistaken for a cleaner in One Canada Square. An office I’d worked in for 18 months. If you know Canary Wharf you KNOW I wasn’t dressed casually enough to be mistaken for such lol. But many will see this as ‘not a big deal’. It is! It really is

For all of these ‘micro-aggressions’ the response is always along the lines of ‘I don’t see colour’, ‘as a woman..’, ‘you could be green, purple, turquoise..’

I know it’s not easy.

White people. Please. We need you to speak up & out when these things happen too.

White people, it’s all well and good being outraged with us rn but you need to be just as outraged when your black female colleague is called aggressive for voicing her concern in a meeting. The same meeting Keith is swearing and banging the table in.

White people, if you see that your black colleague is being silenced unjustly with ‘micro-aggressions’, please speak up for them. Please defend them. Please stand by them. You’re less likely to lose your job over it/managed out of the business

I’ve been told by a 65 year old white man that I was employed to meet a ‘race quota’. Qualified me. It took me a couple of weeks to report it. The 4 white ppl that witnessed said they ‘couldn’t recollect’ and I’m ‘sensitive’ because IF he did say it, it would have been a joke.

I cried so much. My mental health was affected. I felt and looked stupid. If ONE of these 4 had defended me I would have had a leg to stand on. Needless to say I had to leave that job. How do you face such people ever again?

In conclusion, WHITE PEOPLE DO BETTER. SPEAK UP FOR US IN THE OFFICE. SPEAK UP FOR US IN THE STREETS. SPEAK UP FOR US EVERYWHERE. Be outraged about the ‘subtle’ racisms too. They are all pieces to the bigger picture.