My baby fears police. She doesn’t know profiling happens at work, too.

Black people know all too well the duality and dichotomy of being placed under the highest-powered microscopes available by people who can’t and oftentimes don’t want to see us.

For a second, my instinct said to blame my red eyes, runny nose and swollen face on allergies. But I was sure Amina, my brilliant rising second grader, would know better.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?” she asked me yesterday.

I couldn’t lie. Not to those big, beautiful and ever-inquisitive eyes.

“I’m just feeling a bit sad that there are people in the world who don’t like us and other people just because of our skin color,” I explained.

She thought for a moment before her face lit up. “I know!” she said, wagging her index finger in the air. “You can plan a meeting, make everyone come and they can talk and learn to be friends! You can do that, right, Mommy?”

Her sweet, simple action plan nearly brought the tears back. Tears that I’d unexpectedly let flow minutes before, while on a video call for work. Tears that still flow today for my baby and for so many mothers’ babies such as Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland and a host of others.

Like many women - and particularly as a black woman - I have worked to rein in my emotions my entire career. As a woman, it is about being perceived as professional. But as a black woman, it is about being non-threatening. It became clear to me very early on in my career that my human emotions - and even my tears - are frequently lost in translation and perceived as menacing in the workplace.

When I expressed my pain and confusion after my ideas were hijacked by a former boss and I was left out of the implementation? He feigned shock and innocence in the moment. Two months later, during a mid-year review, he labeled me “combative” and cited my “accusatory tone". In another situation, when I finally became frustrated and tearful after a former boss spent multiple 1:1’s discounting months of extremely hard work and downplaying my efforts when speaking to other leaders? I was met with a thinly-veiled threat of termination. “We can have a different kind of conversation if you want!” flew at me with a disproportionate and venomous heat that left me stunned. That person was unable to see or hear the hurt that I felt even after sharing that I felt unsupported and marginalized. And in yet another case, a former boss would ask my other team members where I was, if I’d come in that day, what time, etc... Not because I’d missed meetings. (I hadn’t.) Not because I had an attendance issue. (I didn’t.) When I asked her about it and explained how it was impacting me, my experience and the trust I was building with the team, she stammered for a bit before she hit me with the classic deflection statement: “Nicci,... I am your BOSS!” My feelings didn’t matter. My deliverables, collaboration skills and desire to help us win as a team didn’t matter. But the policing of my body did. How dare I question that?

“There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.” - Maya Angelou

Black people know all too well the duality and dichotomy of being placed under the highest-powered microscopes available by people who can’t and oftentimes don’t want to see us.

We learn that we are required to shrink, straighten, smooth over, code switch, tone down, cover up and generally say and do what it takes if we want to know when and where the meeting is, let alone have a seat at the table. (Another favorite tactic from the ex-boss who always asked others where I was ... Leaving me off the invitation list and pinging me to see where I was when the meeting started. It was #AmyCooper-level workplace gaslighting, intended to create the optics that I was unreliable or late for meetings I was never invited to attend.)

My daughter doesn’t know anyone who has been brutalized by police or arrested or incarcerated. But she has seen and heard enough of my conversations and news snippets and in her mind, she pieced together the idea that she is afraid of the police. She doesn’t know the policing of her brown, slight frame has already begun. A white woman who worked at a childcare facility Amina attended accused my daughter of trying to hurt another child while they were holding hands and dancing in a large circle of children. This “safety concern” was only raised after I asked her why she yelled at Amina and disciplined her harshly enough to make her cry (she, unlike her mother, is not quick to tears). No report was filed and the woman nor anyone else expressed any concerns before or after that alleged incident. Yet, when called out, she painted my daughter (the only black child in that group of children, who couldn’t be aggressive if you paid her in candy and who I’ve had to tell more times than I can count to stand up for herself) as a “risk” and a “threat”. Someone has already attempted to assign these loaded words to her.

She is six.

“You may not control all the things that happen to you, but you can decide to not be reduced by them.” Maya Angelou

While technology provides video evidence of racist behavior such as what we’ve witnessed with Christian Cooper and far too many other mothers’ babies, when will I and other black people capture video of leaders making fun of kinky hair? When will we have video of them tossing out resumes because the names sound too ethnic? When will we have videos of succession planning meetings where leaders damn near have to turn themselves inside out to not include black employees who are more than qualified? When will we have video of black employees getting unfair performance ratings? How do we capture video of the conversations held on phone calls and in Zoom rooms where no people of color are invited yet policies that impact them are made?

I am grateful that we have undeniable proof of what has been happening to people in my community for far too long. We will not stand for it anymore in the streets and we can no longer tolerate it at work either. And while I can’t call a meeting for everyone and make us all friends, I will do everything in my power to help create an environment where Amina does not have to shrink or fear that anyone will attempt to snuff out her life or her livelihood just to keep themselves comfortable.