Think Like a White Man. Dr Boulé Whytelaw III
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Название: Think Like a White Man
Автор: Dr Boulé Whytelaw III
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Юмористические стихи
isbn: 9781786894397
isbn:
6. Do – *deep black sigh* – relax your hair or maintain an unkempt level-one cut with no partings, waves or fade. Your naptural Angela Davis afro will induce rampant perspiration, fear and spontaneous urination. Gents, embrace your Uncle Phil-style baldness; a Tupac-like clean scalp may remind white folk of Tupac.
7. Do resist the urge to quote rappers during job interviews.
8. Do be inspired by the business moves and drive of rappers. They are some of the foremost entrepreneurs and successful risk-takers of our time. Well, the ones who read their contracts before they sign them are.
9. Do keep your ethnic festivals firmly to yourself when in the office. Kwanzaa, the independence days of certain African and Caribbean nations, Jay-Z or Beyoncé’s album release day, the fall of Apartheid celebrations and so on are all events which should be celebrated privately and firmly away from the eyes, ears and fears of white folk.
10. Don’t wear Evisu, FUBU, Rocawear or Karl Kani on dress-down day. Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren (but certainly not US Polo Association) should be worn conservatively.
11. Do take full advantage of the coloured people time ‘stereotype’. Showing up on time in black skin is occasionally enough to exceed expectations. And then get the door politely slammed in your face.
12. Don’t put a picture of any of your legitimate black heroes on your desk, or on your professional or even mobile phone screensaver. No Malcolm X, no Angela Davis, no Fela Kuti, no Harriet Tubman, no Bernie Grant, no Mr Marcus, nothing. A doctored picture of you cuddling Winston Churchill or Margaret Thatcher would be wise.
13. Don’t ever stray from MLK when asked who your black heroes are. Do force yourself to tear up when his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech is evoked for the billionth time in a blatant attempt to pacify you.
14. Don’t smile or tear up when any of MLK’s non-cuddly thoughts are brought up, especially things like his ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’.
15. Don’t profess love or admiration for Malcolm X. In fact, condemn Malcolm for being ‘too extreme for me, too negative, too divisive’. Don’t forget to wash your mouth out with hot bleach afterwards.
16. Do ‘perfect’ your diction, i.e. sound as white and polished as possible. This is critical. Sounding remotely like a 21st-century Stepin Fetchit will damage your career irreparably. ‘Speaking well’, i.e. speaking like very well-to-do white people, will help your pocket swell.
17. Don’t discuss politics, especially not international politics. But if you’re forced to, then see to it that you are extremely anti-abortion, anti-immigration (with the exception of people from places like Sweden, Norway and, of course, Australia), anti-diversity, anti-women’s rights, pro-for-profit jails, proprison-linked slavery, pro law ‘enforcement’, anti-skin beyond a certain shade of brown, PRO LEAVE (and then possibly bomb) THE EU, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN … !
1 Osama Bin Laden didn’t really utter these words. Rodney King did. Both had significant squabbles with white men in uniform.
CHAPTER 3
Performance + Politics = Power
‘If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best coloured man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.’
— President Lyndon B. Johnson
Let’s Talk About You
It’s time to get down to specifics. What is it you want to achieve? What are your objectives in life? And by that I don’t mean the bullshit SMART1 stuff some white man probably has you begrudgingly doing once or twice a year. What do you really want to get out of your career or your role?
Answering that question should be easier than you think.
Regardless of how you wish to frame your motivations, the overwhelming majority of us take on professional roles for the same reason: to accrue power and its trappings.
Don’t get me wrong, a few people take up professional roles for the same silly reasons people join gangs or religious sects: to look cool, be part of something special and get some degree of protection from the harsher elements of society. But sane, serious and ambitious people don’t.
Whether you wish to ‘help your family’, ‘smash the glass ceiling’, ‘bring hope and change to the masses’, ‘make a shed load of money’, ‘become the first black person to achieve such and such thing that white people have the opportunity to do daily’, accruing power is likely to be your ultimate or underlying objective.
As a professional, you need to acquire power for yourself: no one is ever going to give it to you, and it is only through having power that you are likely to get to where you need to be to manifest your wildest and blackest dreams.
The Path to Power
So, if power is the prize, how do you go about attaining it? There are two ways to gain power in a professional setting. The first and most obvious of these is performance.
You have to be competent, especially if you are a black professional. If you’re not competent, this fact will most certainly be used against you. In fact, as I’m certain you have heard, read and probably experienced, as a black professional you must be multiple times more competent than anyone else for even base recognition.2 This is not a myth or the cries of a person with a ‘chip on their shoulder’. Or the moans of some uppity black radical. It is 100% true.
Emphasis was purposefully placed on the need to be competent as a black professional because, in reality, competence is not a universally required quality. Some people can get away with being flagrantly incompetent just by being very good at the other way of acquiring power: politics. Some people are able to be rubbish at both and get away with it all the way to the top.
The Infinite Potential of the Talent-free White Male
In order to attain a clear grasp of politics in action, let’s go back to the ‘post-racial’ fantasy days of 2011 … April 2011, to be precise.
The Story of Barack and Donald
Expertise is never total, therefore every expert has their weak spot. And, as we know, Barack Obama is a master in the dark arts of understanding white people – second only to me – but he, too, had his weak spots.
Perhaps Barack wasn’t familiar with the adage, ‘hell hath no fury like a White Man dissed in public by a black person’, or perhaps he just forgot the Ninth White Man Commandment (‘A White Man must be respected, feared or, at least, loved’).
In April 2011, he publicly roasted Ultra White Man Donald Trump – to his face – by obliterating the Trump-led Birther Movement,3 simply by revealing his birth certificate. By November 2016, as the results of the election rolled in, Barack was firmly reminded: a publicly humbled White Man is a White Man СКАЧАТЬ