I try very hard to act brown but sometimes they make me act BLACK!

by today’s Urban Chameleon contributor

My mother always said, “You are different, you don't play by the same rules.” These are words I live by, especially since I work in corporate America.

Last week I had my semi-annual review. Things were going really well until my boss went over his hand written notes about my "Opportunities for Improvement." His list included arriving to meetings early and not just on time, and to stop bringing reading materials to meetings (regardless if it’s related to my profession and even if everyone else brings other work to the same meetings). His issues were so reflective of corporate America, never mind that I’m excellent at my job, a top seller who always comes to meetings prepared, it always comes down to what makes everyone else “comfortable.”

Just as I was preparing to leave his office, assuming the meeting was over, my boss says, “Just one more thing.” Apparently, someone told him my behavior was “unpolished and unprofessional” in a question and answer session that we recently had with the CEO, CFO and Chairman of the board. In that moment it took every fiber of my being not to show him what unpolished and unprofessional looked like.

Frankly, I was shocked. The Chairman of the Board actually approached me after the session, asked how long I had been with the company and said it was nice to meet me. I later sent an email to the CEO, CFO, and Chairman of the Board thanking them for the Q&A session and invited them to lunch to show my appreciation. The CEO followed up, and we have a lunch scheduled for next month. My co-workers thought I was crazy, but I saw it as an expression of appreciation…and like I said, I'm damn good at my job.

My boss said he wasn’t concerned about the “unpolished and unprofessional” behavior, but it did have to be addressed. After the conclusion of my review, I approached our Director of Diversity, my corporate barometer, which helps me balance being a professional Black woman and navigating the tumultuous waterways of "white corporate America". She was in the in the room during the Q&A session. I recounted the details of my review, including the "unpolished and unprofessional" behavior, and she asked what I thought? For a second it crossed my mind that maybe I am unpolished and unprofessional if she had to ask. She told me it’s not the content of what I say but that my delivery sometimes comes across as overly familiar when addressing executives. I tend to address them in the same manner as my other colleagues. This is what I was being reprimanded for? With a smile on my face, I told her this is something I am very proud of. I treat executives the same way I treat housekeeping. I believe that everyone should be treated equal.

It is true that I didn't speak in the same subservient tone as my Caucasian counterparts. It is true that I didn't look up at the corporate ladder with wide eyes like a puppy dog waiting to be patted on the head and given a begging strip from the treat bowl. I'm sorry that your millions do not impress me. I'm sorry that I will never allow myself to treat you in a manner that would suggest that you are better than me. I will look at any CEO, CFO and Chairman of the board straight in the eye and talk to them as an equal. While my mother used to stress that I am different and have to play the game by different rules, including work twice as hard, it was always tempered with respecting myself, being myself, and realizing that everyone is equal in the eyes of GOD.

I try my hardest to act brown but today they almost made me act black. Ultimately, I accepted the company’s offer to pay for me to have “professional” coaching. I embrace conscientious improvement but in no uncertain terms will I allow my personality, my essence, and my “Je ne sais quoi” to be coached away.

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HR Complains About My Muslim Smell

by today's Urban Chameleon contributor

A couple of months ago, a Black female colleague of mine was pulled into HR in the middle of the day. When she returned she told me that someone had complained about her scent being too strong. She’s from the Bronx and is always stopping along her commute to the city buying the Muslim oils up on Fordham Rd. I know this because I've seen her collection. HR claimed that her scent was activating people’s allergies. I bet that it was a partner that complained. I will admit that her scent was a little strong but only in the morning when everyone is FRESH.

What’s crazy is that in our copy and file room, the white guys down there drown themselves in cologne and nothing was said to them. Their scents are so strong you can almost taste it. A month ago my colleague left for a better a job and a new Black girl started work. She sat next to me and I never smelled her but sure enough a couple of hours into her first day they sent out a company e-mail about not wearing “strong” scents. Maybe they just don’t like how Black girls’ smell.

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What to Say to the Haitian in the Office?

by today Urban Chameleon contributor

Don'tlettheJCrewFoolYa

I know that white people in corporate America can be passive-aggressive and non-confrontational but I didn't realize what lengths they will go to avoid showing compassion for another human being.

I am a first generation American of Haitian decent. So, as you might imagine, the past month and a half has been sureal for me. In the blink of an eye, I watched my beloved Haiti reduced to rubble. Like every Haitian on the planet, I could not sleep the first week. I came into work everyday, only to keep the CNN livestream gonig and continue emailing back and forth with firends and family. At times, I just broke down and cried right there in the office.

The day after the earthquake, I took some time to send an email out to the entire firm letting them know that my family members had been spared and direct my colleagues to websites where they could donate and/or help. I figured, I would keep a step ahead of inquiries by sending out a firm-wide email. Little did I know, there would be NO inquires.

Other than the black folks at my firm, to my surprise, NOT ONE WHITE PERSON responded to my email. And as if the electronic silence was not enough, the face-to-face was mum as well. Day in and Day out, I walked into the office past a couple of dozen white traders on the trading desk and not a word. My manager? Nothing, I could not believe it.

So, finally I was inspired by my cousins and just started rocking a bandana of the Haitian flag straight across my forehead with my corporate suit to work.

Do you know that these white folks still didn't get it!~!!!!!??? Just last week in the conference room, the first thing one of the traders asked me was if I was on my way to the gym for a run. Are you serious?

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Successful, black and lonely: Bitch is the New Black

Urban Chameleon news

from the Washington Post
D.C. author's tale of young black women's loneliness catches Hollywood's ear
By DeNeen L. Brown Washington Post Staff Writer


Helena Andrews is 29, single, living in D.C., and might be the star of a black "Sex and the City" -- stylish, beautiful and a writer desperately in search of love in the city. Andrews's life appears charmed: The film rights for her memoir, "Bitch Is the New Black," a satirical look at successful young black women living in Washington, were purchased before the book was finished. Shonda Rhimes, the executive producer of "Grey's Anatomy," is set to produce the film and Andrews will write the screenplay. When Andrews pitched the book, she described it as part "Bridget Jones's Diary," part "Sex and the City." The book is to be published in June by Harper Collins. "What I am trying to say about single black women in any urban environment is, you don't know them as well as you think you do. They may not know themselves as well as they think they do," Andrews says, seated at a table with a white tablecloth in a restaurant on U Street. Her appearance is flawless: She is wearing an ivory blazer and skinny jeans, her movie-star eyes glisten with shadow and her hair is cut in a fresh bob. Perfect. Image is everything. And it means nothing. "The book was a time for me to step back and reflect," to capture the internal dialogue and the dialogue with girlfriends who are "caught in a quarter-life crisis." She is not talking about all young black women, but some. Revealing a story not oft told. A lot of black women put up an exterior that says: "Everything is together. 'I'm fine. Perfect. Don't worry about me. Keep it moving.' That is the trend," Andrews says. "Put on new stilettos. Put on a mask of bitchiness." But that image -- prevalent in both the media and the workplace, Andrews believes -- is one-dimensional. "When people think about black women, they have only one adjective for us, which is 'strong,' " Andrews says. "The girl you see walking down the street looks like she has it all together," but she may not. A journalist who has written for Politico and The Root, Andrews says her book attempts to reveal what's behind the veneer. In a series of essays, Andrews documents the lives of so many young black women who appear to have everything: looks, charm, Ivy League degrees, great jobs. Closets packed full of fabulous clothes; fabulous condos in fabulous gentrified neighborhoods; fabulous vacations, fabulous friends. And yet they are lonely: Their lives are repetitive, desperate and empty. They are post-racial feminists who have come of age reaping the benefits of both the civil rights movement and the women's movement, then asking quietly: What next? "Gone are the [college] days when friends are an elevator ride away, dinner plans are made on the way to somebody's hall, and Thursday is Friday or Friday is Thursday (who cares, you'll figure it out in Philosophy C203)," Andrews writes. "Soon enough, the little old lady living in a shoe is you -- and the rent is effin' unbelievable, and nobody comes to visit because you're too far from the Metro. Adulthood comes in little jigsaw pieces. Once the painstaking work of fitting them all together is done, the picture doesn't look nearly as cool as it did on the box." Andrews writes about what it is like for a young, black woman dating in D.C., trying to find a mate who seems ever elusive. The futile rituals are familiar: the dressing up, the eager cab ride over to the party, the hold-your-breath as you walk in, scanning the room quickly for any looks returned. The mantra sounding in the back of your head: "So-and-so found a man last year at a party like this. Maybe tonight is my night." Then one by one, the men prove to be disappointments and disappointing: married, uninteresting or uninterested. The disappointment as you end up at the bar once again, committing straw violence in your drink (stirring the drink frantically and unconsciously). Andrews writes the truth of those nights. The truth is for too many, they never work out. Not for Andrews and not for her friend, Gina, who is a prominent character in her life and in the book. "For a lot of black women, especially young successful black women, we have a lot of boxes on our master plan list checked off," Andrews says. "We think happiness should come immediately after that. But that is not always the case." Love is much too hard to find and when these women do, it may go all wrong because of issues that are too complicated for statistics, Andrews says. She is quick to say, "There are tons of black families who are healthy and good." Even so, black women are more likely than white women to grow up poor or otherwise struggling financially; to be fatherless and to experience a myriad of other societal and/or familial dysfunctions. Ironically, the "issues" can also include being a "strong" woman: the can-do, opinionated type many black women become after growing up in a matriarchal household, the type with whom some men still just can't deal. "I have tons of friends who are extremely successful lawyers and lobbyists, staffers on the Hill. They are great at what they do. They are in their late 20s and early 30s," Andrews says, sipping Ethiopian coffee. Her dog, Miles, is sitting beneath the restaurant table, whining softly. "But there is loneliness at their jobs, because most likely they are the only black person there and people treat them like they are the only black person there. They dress a certain way. They go out on the weekend. . . . And still they end up going home, and it's you and your damned dog."
read full article on washingtonpost.com

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Damn, Security

by today's Urban Chameleon contributor SoBlackit'sComplicated

Please note that the security guard in this photo is not the one involved in this incident

Most people of color have experienced being followed in a store so much so that I know I’ve actually broke on a white sales woman for doing so,

“How dare you follow me around this store as if I’m some hoodlum trying to steal. This Von Furstenberg dress I’m wearing cost more than what you make in a week! Black leaders fought and died for equal rights and here you are trying to shackle me right back into slavery well let me tell you something lady it’s YOUR mentality that is shackled in hate, ignorance and negativity and you need a serious reality check!’

And no she did not in return ask, "Who gonna check me boo?" She instead apologized profusely that I felt that way and tried to explain that she only wanted to make sure that I was being helped since I seemed to be struggling to hold onto all the items in my hands... and so I thought maybe I might have over reacted.

But when I was recently shopping for Uggs in preparation for the cold moths ahead (I know I know they’re such the white girl boots but damn they’re comfortable!) I was reconnected to my justified insecurities. There in the Ugg’s story was a Black security guard (no less) following me around watching me closely… and no he was not trying to come on to me. It’s as if Uggs corporate had a meeting earlier that day and ordered for all the blackees to be watched.

I decided to ignore him for I wasn’t about to give another profound speech and play myself. At the same time I noticed a white girl watching the security guard, watching me. I then felt like I was in the middle of some kind of sting operation that was about to go down so I quickly paid for my Uggs and went to leave. It wasn’t until I noticed that the white girl was leaving before me never having visited the cash register. She walked past the security guard who was now watching some Latino man, straight through the front door with the Uggs on her feet. This chick just saved $200.00 just by being white and cashing in on my Black ass being followed. Damn was I jealous! When will I be able to do that? It's sad when that's an aspiration.

In the meantime I should probably write a letter to Uggs corporate:

Dear Uggs,

Yall some racist a-holes.

P.S. Love the new Ugg's designs, comfy as hell.

[sign]
SoBlackit'sComplicated

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Readjusting My Swag For Corporate BLACKAmerica

by today’s Urban Chameleon contributor

So, when I joined Corporate America, I knew that I would have to adjust my swag, put my head down and learn the ropes— having participated in too many all white environments I knew the process all to well. So, the first couple of weeks you make sure you're ass is up in there on time (15 mins early), you look good, you're responsive and on point. You are friendly to everyone but you are really just scoping out which secretary is the one with the know how. And then you make sure you become friends with her. As an Urban Chameleon Black woman, you find common ground with all the white boys on the trading floor so you make sure you catch those ESPN high lights, you fill in your brackets, you join the office pool ... hell, you might even go out to a game with them and look interested as you sip on that warm beer and watch the ballgame in the hot ass sun. The point is that you get it--you get the game. And since you made a conscious decision to play in the big leagues you show up on time and in uniform and you play.

But the minute you hit it out of the park ... once, twice ... and then a third time. Basically once you've proven to yourself and to others that this J-O-B is nothing but that, a job, that you know and you can do well. Well, once you get to that point, it's a whole 'nother kinda game. You just as quickly flip it right back. That's right, you ladies all remember the first time, things were slow in the office, you got everything on your plate signed, sealed and delivered and you just swung around to that one secretary "friend's" desk and said: "hey girl, imma go get my nails done real quick. If Bob is looking for me, holla at me on my cell." That's right. Once we know we got this, then we make corporate America fit into our lives, not the other way around. And sure, we push the envelope and hell we might even rustle some feathers but the white boys know our value by then so they can't really say nothing.

So that's the place I was at when I left the big Wall Street firm to join a Black-owned Wall street firm. And can I just tell you that despite my "I got this, don't come for me" attitude with the ol' boys club this sista was absolutely not flexing it the way she needed to be. The thing is that I didn't realize it till I got to Black corporate America. My first business trip basically says it all.

I was attending a conference with a senior banker and the CEO and we made plans to meet in the hotel lobby at 5pm. So, knowing that I have a CPT issue, I was so on top of making sure that I was there on time (5mins early). So, I headed down right on time and sat down. And I waited, and waited. And at 5:15pm I called up to the senior manager's room. Don't you know that homeboy was all as nonchalant as ever like: "Oh, I'll be down soon." Same deal with the CEO. So already I was like, wait a minute. Why was I even trippin'. I'm acting like I had an appointment with Drew and Bob! Dammit, I am acting like a damn house negro ... all trained and ish! I was a little upset that I had apparently lost the CP swag. Anyhow but that wasn't even it. Just the next day we are headed back from a conference event and my senior banker is like: "Do you remember that Spa we passed on the way to dinner yesterday? Well, I plan to head up in there real quick and catch a 1 hour massage. Go on 'head to the next session if you'd like (wow not even stressing me and my game) put I gotta work out these knots."

WHAT!!! Now yall I am use to hustling my way into the same situation. I mean I have definitely been "out to lunch" meaning I was at the little express Thai massage spot working out that shoulder that I then soaked in a Jacuzzi for 20min before actually picking up lunch. But, DAMN! All bold, all out there all working the clients but still finding time to workout the knots. And honestly, that's why you gotta love Urban Chameleon Black people. Because we will close a $500,000,000 deal and head to acupuncture before that closing dinner! And the thing is that at all levels, the true Urban Chameleon is always trying to flex that inner chameleon--doing it in style then flippin' it. The great thing is when you come across another UC when you least expect it and they flip it on you before you are even prepared for the flip. And that’s the point when you just have to chuckle because you are totally feelin' their game. So could image what alternative I was left with when the senior banker flipped his Urban Chameleoness on me? Shoot, don't even play, I walked right up in that spa too and got my massage on. When in Rome ...., right?

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How the Urban Chameleon Came to Be...

by creator and editor-in-chief HaJ

One day, a group of friends and I were sitting around trying to think of a term that best describes people like us who approach the world from parallel perspectives, having mastered the skill of seamlessly transitioning into corporate America—from its private grade school classrooms, ivy league universities, corporate board rooms and social climbing ladders—back out into our bilingual/patois/urban slang speaking, hip winding, kinky hair handling and curry spice eating America.

We are the approaching 30ty sumptin', urban professionals of color born into the hip hop generation and raised by parents who were in search of a better life having migrated from the Caribbean, South America and Africa or those born here who lived to see Jim Crow Laws become the Civil Rights Movement— They shared an ambition of carving out their road towards the Great American Dream. Our families made homes for us in the largely immigrant communities nestled in the metro-city 'hoods of Brooklyn, Queens, Harlem and the Bronx where a walk down our street could still served up bangin’ plates of rice and peas, curry goat, plantanos, and collard greens and the rhythm of the streets were a flavorful mix of Afro-Caribbean-Latino-Hip Hop that would easily seduce us into gyrating our hips. We reveled in the pulse and comfort of our urban/Latino/Caribbean ‘hood, but when it came to our education our world stopped. It was as if the batteries in the boom box died and the sensuous aromas of all that good food was locked in the freezer. Having to wake up an extra two hours earlier every day to get ready for our commute, we witnessed, through sleepy eyes, regentrification at its finest as we were sent across town where we were only one of two kids of color in the best private schools. Our parents would drop us off, tell us just how much they loved us and off we were to learn another kind of world. A world that we would have to know if we were going to one day run a company or maybe even...a country.

We did what kids do and tried to fit in, realizing that rules in school were different, simply defined by someone else’s culture. Even the way they played “red light green light” was different from how we played it around the way. But after a while, having learned the new rules, we no longer fit in around-the-way. Soon, names like "Oreo" were whispered in our direction condemning us for the verbs we were now conjugating. Our families set aside our tears and feelings of isolation that came along with struggling to define ourselves in opposing worlds and instead took comfort in knowing that we were being prepared for a fiercely competitive world.

We continued to thug our way between the two worlds keeping up with Yo MTV Raps and -refining our best versions of the whop, Kid ‘n Play and the boggle for those around-the-way dance offs and our families continued to endure laborious work and financial strain as they often handed over their last dollar for our classical music lessons and summer travels around the world.

So, who did we end up becoming?

Today we are the cross-sector, world traveling, social switching consumers that can be found pumping down Fifth Ave in our Louboutin’s with a Bergdorf shopping bag trying to catch transportation back to the ‘hood for those two dollar codfish fritters before going to see the Dominicans to get our hair done.

We are the over achiever who works through the night prepping PowerPoint presentations to an iPod shuffle playlist of Lil’ Weezy, Jay Z and Buju Banton – and then maybe flip it to Jamiroquai and then brings it down with some Yo-Yo Ma

We’re the ones who identify the Caribbean/Latino/African customer representative, switch into the dialect of their homeland and score ourselves a free bump to first class then sit back with a glass of Kir Royal and chuckle at the person next to us who tries to figure us out peeping our selected reading material of The New Yorker, Financial Times and Vibe Magazine (with T-Pain in platinum and diamond fronts on the cover)

But that’s okay, we’re accustomed to the confused looks, inquisitive stares and the ignorant questions from those who can’t seem to figure us out— Not quite Cosby kids and not quite Bebe’s kids. We inherited our family’s hustle mentality with a cosmopolitan twist where we go from skiing in the Alps of Switzerland to being upside down gyrating on a float at a West Indian Day Parade.

We are Urban Chameleons.

One thing is for sure: no matter what your cultural background, the ticket to the American Dream is still embedded in White America. So, we know there must be all kinds of chameleons here hustlin' towards their American dream as they juggle more than one kind of world. These are just our tales as we know them and we find humor and comfort in sharing them…this is the journey of the Urban Chameleon.

Please enjoy and contribute to the journey.