A Tale of Two Mental Spaces

I consider myself fortunate to work for a company that recognizes that just about every person under the sun is currently under a tremendous amount of stress and encourages each employee to take paid time off, as necessary to manage their own mental space. I scheduled May 6th to break up the monotony of working from home and help with managing my mental space during the unrelenting barrage of negative news updates.

As planned, I started my day off with coffee, a morning walk, a great morning stretch, and mindless Netflix streaming. I was keeping an eye out for any work emails and instant messages to ensure I was updated when I returned to work the next day.

Like countless of other Black professionals, I manage two categories of instant messages throughout my day. In one category I have my "Work Community" chats where my most immediate colleagues and I share information related to work, joke about internal matters, and generally collaborate. In the other category, I have my "Black Community” chats which serve as my lifeline to other Black professionals at work. It is the sometimes-fleeting space where I can bridge my professional skills with my identity as a Black man in America. On any given day, the topics and information shared between the two categories can either be complementary or diametrically different – which is to be expected given the different purposes they serve.

At some point in the early afternoon, I comically remembered that I forgot to turn on my away message, and I did not want anyone to think I was ignoring them all day if there was an urgent matter. After taking a scan of my emails, I opened my internal messaging system. I first glanced through my “Work Community” chats to find it business as usual - information being shared about work related activities and nothing requiring my immediate attention. Eventually I transitioned over to my “Black Community” chats where it was dishearteningly business as usual – people were opening up and sharing a range of emotions related to the growing news story of another Black man being a casualty of systemic hate in the United States of America.

In the moment, I could almost see and feel the tears running down my Black colleague’s faces as I read their reactions to Ahmaud Arbery being hunted down and used as live target practice. It is just happenstance that I follow a prominent civil rights activist on Instagram and had already gone through my own range of reactions to the situation a week beforehand. So out of selfish mental and emotional preservation I decided to close my instant messaging system and locked my phone screen.

As many times before, I tried to quickly find a distraction and forget about the moment in a hallowed attempt to “preserve my mental space”. Regrettably, it has been part of the routine for myself – see or learn of another heinous and evil attack on a Black American citizen, recognize my range of emotions for a moment, and try to move on. Rinse and repeat.

After a few failed attempts to find something else to stream and a handful of aimless visits to the refrigerator, the wide range of emotions began to foment:

·      Despair: another family and community lost a beloved member and contributor.

·      Fury: the slim chance of justice being served required the critical mass of public outcry to barbaric video imagery – two months after the murder occurred.

·      Demoralized: justice still may never be served in the face of unambiguous video evidence.

·      Resentment: recreational jogging was a new addition to the never-ending list of “be careful [insert verb] while being black”, right behind other ordinary activities like eating ice cream in your own living room.

·      Irritation: I must be maddeningly vigilant of my physical surroundings.

·      Hopelessness: this was not the first, nor last time I will be in a discussion with other Black professionals about systemic racism.

Ultimately I was frustrated that as a Black professional I routinely manage a completely different mental space that most of my colleagues will never have to endure.

I was not upset with my most immediate colleagues not addressing the viral act of White Supremacy. Nor is it an indictment of a lack of awareness on their behalf. I believe many of my colleagues to be broadly aware and compassionate people. Whether they already knew about the event or came to learn about it at a later point in time – I am confident that they felt some sort of reaction.

However, the incident was a stirring reminder that my most immediate colleagues and I have the same 9 to 5 workday, have relatively the same opportunities to achieve our goals – but we bring categorically different mental spaces to work on a daily basis. It demonstrated the very real chasm that exists between the mental space for Black professionals and the otherwise prevailing mental space managed by the majority. In one space I witnessed people that can focus (as best as they can amid a global pandemic) on doing their job and achieving their respective goals. Juxtaposed to another space where work responsibilities could not be any further from thought or motivation. Highlighting the reality that given equitable levels of education, work experience, and achievement – there is still a considerable inequity to the access of a productive mental space while at work.

At any given time, any professional can be challenged with managing their mental space while at work. Whether derived from worry about personal finances or the health and wellbeing of family members, there is an understandable baseline of mental baggage that can have an adverse impact on performance and focus while on the job. But when layered onto the backdrop of a global pandemic, for many Black professionals’ such incidences of brutal racism is at the very least sapping if not completely debilitating.  

As many times before, I began to contemplate why there is such a stark difference in my mental space and that of my most immediate colleagues. How is it that I can share the same workspace (whether physical or virtual) with a given group of professionals, and undoubtedly be on a different wavelength? As many times before, I had to view things with a much broader lens and acknowledge there is a predominant system of racism and oppression that impacts me 24/7 outside of my 9 to 5. At times it feels like I am tasked with the nearly illogical proposition of achieving success by finding a balance of focus and determination, while blocking out the broader societal issues that impact the Black community. All while working in professional environments that do not reflect Black people. A proposition that in prior roles felt both vexing and overwhelming.

In a recent discussion with a good friend, I was reminded of W.E.B Du Bois articulation of the Black American experience in his 1903 book “The Souls of Black Folk”. Du Bois captured the essence of my experience on my day off as “double consciousness”. Du Bois describes the reality of double consciousness as, “One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” Well over one hundred years later, Black people in America are still tasked to persevere in the face of a prevailing system of subjugation and are obligated to manage two states of consciousness or similarly phrased, “two mental spaces”.

I lament having to acknowledge the vicious system of racism will undoubtedly persist during the current pandemic and exacerbate pre-existing inequities in our society. However, as I reflect on my experience and appreciate the end of Mental Health Awareness Month, I would like to offer a few questions that I hope will generate direct engagement and result in focused actions:

·      How do other Black professionals find balance in their double consciousness and manage their mental spaces? What are the risks of being a conscious Black professional? How do we mitigate the associated risks of being a conscious Black professional?  

·      What is the quantifiable impact to productivity of dealing with double consciousness? If privileged with equitable access to the same productive mental space as the majority, what would be different for Black professionals? How do professionals from other marginalized groups cope?

·      What is the value of allyship and diversity/inclusion if it only addresses surface level topics like imposter syndrome, code switching, and developing a broader network? What is the motivation of the majority to use money, power, and influence to address systemic racism beyond the workplace?

·      Are we all really in “it” together?