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The Widening Office Divide
The heightened awareness of racism and impact of Covid-19 reveal a bigger workplace division between Black and White employees
A few days after my company moved to work from home due to the Covid-19 pandemic, my boss decided to implement a daily team call via Zoom. Beyond the inherent annoyance associated with a daily hour-long call, I started noticing that I would be in an extreme funk for hours after the meeting. It took a few weeks to realize that I, the sole Black member of my team, was having a much different quarantine experience than my co-workers. For them, it seemed to be a minor inconvenience. Some people talked about the upside of having more time to spend with family due to the elimination of their commute. Another person shared a special hack for finding Instacart delivery windows. I was somehow added to both a recipe and a poetry chain letter.
In contrast, I was counseling friends who were dealing with infected relatives or losing loved ones to Covid-19. At the end of March, a good friend lost a fraternity brother who visited three different emergency rooms before being given a test. I woke up on my birthday, in late April, to discover that someone I had followed and interacted with for years on Twitter had also died from the virus. I also worried about my relatives in the…
