Why It Takes Me Forever To Draft Emails To My White Colleagues?

Hint: You can find the explanation in Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle’s dispute over the bridesmaids’ dresses

No joke, a Black woman cannot say the same things or behave the same way as a white person anywhere and most certainly never in the workplace. How is this linked to the argument between two members of the British Royal Family Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle? Indulge me and read further.

As I leafed through Prince Harry's memoir, I stumbled upon the page where he discusses the rift between Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton prior to his wedding.

At one point the two discuss the bridesmaids’ dresses. According to Harry, their dialogue went like this:

“Charlotte’s dress is too big, too long, too baggy, she cried when she tried it on a home.” Kate texts Meghan.

“Right, and I told you the tailor has been standing by since 8 am. Here at KP, Can you take Charlotte to have it altered, as the other mums are doing?” Meghan responded.

Do you notice that Meghan is firm in her message? She’s not disrespectful or impolite in any way, she is just direct and as a Black woman, you will immediately be labeled “difficult, rude, and abrasive”, when you’re just a tad assertive.

I should know, it happens to me all the time, and that is why it takes me forever to draft a message to a white colleague. I spend a lot of time making it look nice so that that dreaded narrative of the “rude” and “aggressive” Black woman doesn’t come for me.

So I’ll use sentences like “Can I please” or “I am grateful, or I appreciate it”. I am forced to draft nice messages because I know that people treat me differently and also judge me differently because I am Black. One slip-up, one word considered too harsh can become career-limiting. I can’t afford to take any chances.

Now Kate and Meghan had already not been getting along well at this point but if Meghan had responded something like this:

“Dear Kate, I understand and appreciate your concern. Charlotte's dress is a priority for me too and I will go over and above to get these dresses fixed, I promise.”

If she had sucked up to Kate and put her needs above hers, chances are this situation would not have escalated further.

Meghan was brief in her message because she was dealing with so much at the time, her father whom she had had to disinvite from her wedding, and the nosy and unforgiving tabloid media. She didn’t have time to put her needs aside to manage the fragile ego of her white future sister-in-law. If she was a white man or woman, chances are her text would have had no further consequences, but as a brown woman, how dare she have the audacity to respond the way she did?

And so every day thousands if not millions of brown and Black women who work in a predominantly white environment, bite their tongue, re-draft their emails, and add in small talk, and nice words so as not to offend the fragile egos of their white colleagues.

It’s tedious and it’s tiring, but again, it is the way the world is, and it is another one of the endless lists of prices to pay for being Black in a sometimes very white world.

Thank you for reading my perspective.