5 Uncomfortable Truths Black Colleagues Need You To Know | Forbes

While no one has a precise prescription for how to eradicate racial injustice in the workplace, I firmly believe that a critical first step is embracing the difficult conversations and uncomfortable truths that we’ve become too accustomed to avoiding. The baseline uncomfortable truth is that people in corporate America often maintain their own subcultures – including very different informal conversations in the workplace - with surprisingly little overlap at times. In this moment everyone is looking for opportunities to either teach, learn or grow, it’s instructive if not necessary to break down the traditional siloes and speak the unspeakable.

In this new Black Lives Matter environment with heightened racial sensitivities, many white people may approach their workplace with some hesitancy and anxiety about not knowing exactly what to say, but it should be similarly acknowledged that for many Black people, they may want to speak boldly but feel constrained or just completely exhausted and therefore choose to instead simply fume on the inside. In this historical moment though, this natural hesitancy and pull towards political correctness (on both sides) may collectively cost us desperately needed collective progress, so it’s worth the risk to stop whispering and start sharing.

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