How do you think the industry’s history influences your experience as a Black professional?
When I came into accounting eight years ago, I realized that not only was the firm mostly white, but so were most of my clients. I committed to being the hardest working person at the firm so no one could deny me on merit.
I did a lot of things I probably wouldn’t have otherwise done, such as mimicking the speech and interests of those around me, so I could succeed. We call that codeswitching. I learned early to codeswitch as a Black man so I would be perceived as less threatening in white spaces.
Can you elaborate on the early life experiences that informed your behavior in the industry?
Nothing could have prepared me for college. I went to a small, private, predominantly white institution in South Carolina where I played football. I made friends with my teammates, and seven of us—all Black—became good friends. We’d go to parties, we’d meet people, and it would be a lot of fun. The next day in the cafeteria, those people clutched their bags or avoided us.
One of my friends asked a white classmate why that happened, and she told him we scared people because the seven of us were tall, Black, and always together. “It’s intimidating,” she said. For a while, we stopped going places together to be “less threatening,” but we couldn’t control the fear our presence brought to our classmates. In class, I tried to avoid being seen or heard. When I was doing that, I still didn’t get picked for group projects. I didn’t get invited to study groups. Everything I experienced reinforced that I was different, and I felt I didn’t belong when I was left out.
At the same time, I was caught between two worlds. I grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood, but now I was codeswitching to make myself smaller and survive college. When I went back home, I was called out for acting different. I started to feel out of place at school and with my family. I lost my sense of self trying to figure out who I needed to be in each space—W.E.B. Du Bois defines this as double-consciousness.
That’s a lot to juggle. Did things change once you entered the industry?
In 2014, I graduated and joined a regional firm in South Carolina, and there was only one other Black professional working there. I had to navigate the space, and I didn’t want to intimidate anyone, so I continued to codeswitch at work. I felt like I was acting 100% of the time, and that took its toll.
Then, in 2016, everything caught up to me. The night my nephew was born was the same night Alton Sterling was killed, and it was all over the hospital televisions. There had been so many unarmed Black people dying from police brutality at that time, and it was scary to think of that happening to my nephew one day. I couldn’t hold up the act anymore. I wrote a post on social media talking about my feelings of hopelessness. I knew my colleagues would see it.
After, I felt like my colleagues were being cold to me for calling out racial injustices. I was left out, just like in college. Later, a colleague who was a huge 49ers fan told me he wanted Colin Kaepernick fired because of his protest. Colin’s protest meant a lot. My colleague didn’t consider that he was kneeling for me and all who look like me. I still think about how I didn’t say anything to him. I calculated what I’d be risking in my career. I was so uncomfortable that I chose to be invisible instead.