Sometimes it’s just little comments or stupid jokes where everyone else laughs and looks at you, you know? Like, I was telling my team that it is really tough for me to work the night shift because I don’t have anyone to stay with my baby girl and someone said—ah come on, we hear your people are used to working nights. Maybe we need to change the light over the back door to a red one.
Everybody laughed but I didn’t get it. I started to laugh too, because that’s what you do, right?
Later someone told me that Black women used to have a red light over their doors to show they were open for business as prostitutes. You know, all Black women are whores or something. Sometimes it feels like a warzone and I have to be so careful and then I end up doing stupid stuff and it only makes me feel worse.