The Litmus Test Wasn’t for Me. It Was for Them.

They tried to connect through caricature. I left with clarity—and fire.

The Setup: A Misguided Attempt at Connection

She opened the conversation with a claim of proximity.
Told me she grew up in a poor, predominantly Black neighborhood.
Said it like it was a password to my trust.
Like proximity to struggle meant she understood me.

But I didn’t grow up poor.
And I don’t need someone else’s idea of trauma to make me legible.

This wasn’t connection—it was performance.
A misguided attempt to earn access through a flattened idea of what it means to be Black.
It was classist, reductive, and steeped in the tired belief that all Blackness must be “gritty,” “hard,” or “urban” to be real.
It was her version of “I see you”—but what she saw was a stereotype she was comfortable with, not me.

This is the aesthetic of inclusion without the actual relational work.
It’s the desire to be seen as culturally competent without doing the labor of real understanding.
And it’s violence in soft clothing: cultural gaslighting. Symbolic violence.
A way of saying: “I already know your story. I’ve decided who you are.”

The Real Rupture: When Quiet Became Complicity

It came during an introduction meeting.
Her title: Assistant to the CEO.
Her comment:

“I basically run the Underground Railroad... for cats.”

She said it casually.
With a laugh.
With comfort.
With pride.
And the room—didn’t flinch.

Not a single pause.
No furrowed brows.
No side-eyes.
No breath held in reverence for what she had just desecrated.

The Body Never Lies

A tightness behind my eyes.
Heat rising in my chest.
The kind of heat that isn’t just irritation—
It’s ancestral indignance.
The body remembering.
The fire swelling.

My nervous system surged. Signaling that safety had been compromised.

A boundary crossed. 
The gut-punch of hearing sacred history casually turned into a quirky icebreaker.
And still—no one said anything.

Instead, I was met with corporate quiet—the kind that hums like a hymn of complicity.

The Silence Was a Second Violence

Not even the other Black person in the room said anything.

Not then, and not afterwards.
And that silence?
That was a lesson too.

A modeling.
A quiet, weary swallowing of yet another thing.
A reminder that survival in these rooms often means suppression. Even of sacred rage.

The Aftermath: What It Cost Me

The whisper from my ancestors told me:

“Make her say it again. Out loud. Slowly.”
But I didn’t.
I held it.
Because we’re taught to hold it.
To tuck in our fire.
To assess, in every moment, whether telling the truth is worth the consequence of their perception.

And I paid for that silence.
With righteous anger.
That stayed. That boiled.
That still simmers, a year later.

Because what she did wasn’t just awkward.
It was desecration.

Desecration Disguised as Small Talk

She compared herself—her pet project—to people who risked everything.
People who moved through shadow and night, chased by dogs and bullets, carrying the weight of a people’s survival on their backs.

She co-opted Black resistance as a casual metaphor for her love of cats.
And the room let her.

The Litmus Test They Failed

These moments were litmus tests.
Not for me.
For them.

To see who flinches.
Who breathes different.
Who will speak up.
Who will stay comfortable.

And they failed.

Because this isn’t about cats.
Or neighborhoods.

It’s about how whiteness trains itself to appropriate Black pain for cleverness, and then demands we swallow it so the meeting can stay on schedule.

The Sacred Cost of Swallowing

That silence?
That tightness in the chest?
That heat behind the eyes?

That’s not overreaction.
That’s the body saying:

“You are not safe here.”

It’s your nervous system remembering the hundreds of times you had to perform professionalism instead of just being a person.
It’s the sacred exhaustion of trying to be soft but not weak, strong but not threatening, and visible but not too much.

It’s the battle to protect your sacred energy in systems that confuse your power with aggression, your softness with servitude, your silence with consent.

This is the cost of being expected to be palatable instead of whole.

So Tell Me...

Where have you been asked to flatten yourself for someone else’s comfort?
What sacred truth have you had to swallow to stay “professional”?

Affirmation:

 I do not exist to be a mirror for your ego.

 I do not shrink to fit your assumptions.

I carry the weight of legacy and it is not yours mock.

I bloom, even in rooms built to erase me.

Tap In.

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