DAY 3 : To Pimp A BIPOC Leader, or White American Theater’s Problem with Tokenism (released 12/15/2020)

Dear BIPOC village,

You ever been used?

You know what we’re talking about. You take that risk and work with a White American Theater. They welcome you. They celebrate you. Maybe this time, you say, it’ll be different.

Then it happens.

After the job offer and negotiation, after the splashy press release with your beautiful, melinated face, you settle in and take a look around. That fantastic idea you offered? It’s co-opted and appropriated by your white boss. That fundraiser you were invited to? They parade you around in the name of ‘staff diversity.’ Your calls for anti-racism work at the institution? They fall on deaf ears. Meanwhile, the microaggressions and daily indignities continue to mount up.

Some might call it being tokenized. Some might call it being exploited. We call it being pimped.

Let me take you back to a recent example. It was a Thursday. I was attending my first board meeting since becoming one of the only Black employees at the theatre. I had a long history with this company, first as a fellow years prior and now as a full-time staff member. As the board meeting begins, I was asked to come up to the front to introduce myself. My boss, a white man, proceeds to talk about me as if I wasn’t in the room. “We’re so proud that his whole career started here and we can take credit for it.” He talked about me like he owned me. He took credit for everything I had achieved in my professional career, even though I had been working professionally for over a decade and even ran my own company. I had to stand there as he spoke about me like an affirmative action case in front of our all-white board. To them, I was a poster child.

It has to stop. Stop letting them pimp you to their board at the board meetings! Stop letting them pimp you to audiences/donors when they need to look “inclusive” or “woke!” Stop letting them put your face (or the faces of your community partners) on their fundraising appeals! You are not a prop. You are not their savior. And if these institutions are just gonna roll over and leave the money on the dresser when they’re done then we need them to review the prices because they’re short some dollars.

Now if you’ve experienced any of this and you think, “Am I crazy?” Nah. You ain’t crazy. What you see is happening. But here’s a gentle reminder: You don’t owe white people shit.

You don’t need to be grateful. You don’t have anything to prove. You are overqualified. You have more experience and education than most of your co-workers. You had to be twice as good. All of those tropes. Blah blah blah. But just you remember. You don’t owe white people shit.

The arrogance of white mediocrity has decided in this moment to surround itself with as many Black and Brown staff members as it possibly can. They released their weak ass statements in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder. Then they released new statements that actually said, “Black Lives Matter” because they were too afraid to say it the first time until a few staff members called them out. This is why you don’t owe them shit. Because they’re trying to pimp you and your community to make themselves look good, or to save face. Not in service of you or your wellbeing.

Now listen — real talk: If you’re navigating these systems and trying to make a living, we see you. Sometimes you gotta take that gig, apply for that job, or maintain that relationship in order to get to your own personal promised land. We get it.

But never forget that pimping is real. And if you’re not careful, that exploitation can come at the cost of your physical, mental, and emotional health.

So please. Please. Apply for that new job. Start your own theatre. Make that project with a friend. Protect your joy. Protect your peace. You have power — individual power, collective power — but only if you name it and stand in that truth.

We’re only saying all of this to share the feeling of fuckery, beloved. Or, to warn you if you haven’t yet experienced it. We see you because we are you, and we all go through the same bs. So peep the game. And make sure you know who’s playing who.