Woman of Color

A new Vice President has recently been hired in my workplace. This muckety-muck now oversees my department. Looking at the organizational chart, one might be under the impression that I would have some major interaction with this new honcho as I report directly to the person who reports directly to him. But the actual Byzantine bureaucratic hierarchy faced daily belies that belief. Other than greeting him with a friendly (read: ass-kissing) “Good Morning” in the corridor I have hardly met him. When the head of HR first introduced me to him, he was told which department I was in. His immediate response was “So you work for me.” My thought upon hearing this was “What an odd thing to say.” But I soon found out that he has much odder things to say.

Let me preface by saying rest of what I am writing is hearsay, coming to me second or third hand. This doesn’t make it any less true, reliable, or interesting. It just makes it gossip. If gossip was a commodity to be produced, sold or traded, then my company would be a world leader in it. The gossip mill is outstanding in its efficiency and egalitarianism based upon the alacrity in which it moves and with whom it moves through. Union workers gossip with upper management who gossip with middle managers who gossip with support staff. And everyone gossips with vendors and contractors. The gossip occurs by whispers or blurted out in a meeting, in corridors or on the subway. And everyone has his or her own personal gossip hub, who with an almost imperceptible expression verifies or debunks what you have been hearing.

This piece of gossip began innocently enough. A co-worker has a cubicle in a location where people tend to congregate. During these congregations, people seem to forget that a cubicle wall is not only 6 feet high but made out of cheap fabric. I imagine that there is a location like this in every office. Here is a place where talk becomes free and morphs into gossip. Think about that. A cubicle, which normally sucks the life out of an employee, is now a cocoon, allowing an errant sentence to be nurtured and then make its way in the world as a gossip butterfly for evermore. Ah, the wonders of nature.

This particular overheard conversation was between the new VP and another member of upper management. The VP was asked how he found New York City as he had moved here from the South and had grown up in the Midwest. The VP responded that he, as a Midwest bred white boy, found it all easy to take because he was married to a “woman of color”. This first allusion to a “woman of color” went by uncommented upon. But the new VP kept at it, talking about how different cultures don’t bother him and how color blind he really is because he is married to a “woman of color”. Finally, the question of what he means by “woman of color” was nervously broached.

By the way, his wife is Filipino.

At this point my biggest gripe is why continue to use “woman of color” to describe your wife? If you must describe your wife in such terms, just say she is Filipino. Everyone knows what a Filipino is. It’s not like he will have to explain, “The Philippine islands, named after St. Phillip during Spanish colonization, are an archipelago located in the South China Sea that through years of coexistence between indigenous peoples and French and Spanish colonists has produced an attractive caramel-skinned populace, to which I am married to one.” Just say she’s Filipino for fuck’s sake! You end up saying it eventually when everyone looks at you quizzically and attempts to politely decipher what on earth you mean when you say you are married to a “woman of color”.

Now using this term isn’t a one-time deal either. No, no no. This “woman of color” shtick has been getting plenty of play by him. Another overheard conversation has him telling someone how “he doesn’t see color in people because he wakes up every morning to a ‘woman of color’.” He also took out a family photo and showed it to his assistant and announced, in a giddy, look-at-this sort of way, that he was married to a “woman of color”. The assistant is black (colored woman vs. “woman of color”?) so my first impression was that this was a I’m-down-with-the-peeps gambit. That he was just trying to gain some street cred. But apparently he really likes talking about this “woman of color” he is married to. This all makes me wonder how he describes his kids. The assistant should have shown him her family photo with her black husband and black kids and trumped him on the color card.

At least now I know what to do when I have my first conversation with him and he mentions he’s married to a “woman of color”. I’ll respond, “Oh, she must be Filipino.”