A flash fiction.

There is a deafening silence in the conference room, filled with white people. Wearing pantsuits and high heels and carrying your laptop, you’ve entered this room and stood on the stage with a straight shoulder a moment ago. When your audience gawks at you, the hairs on the back of your neck stand erect.  

Here we go again, you think. Another white audience obsessed with the color of your skin. You can hear them thinking, who is this woman with dark skin, who walks with confidence, standing in front of us? An hour earlier, on the same stage, when a white woman spoke, the audience was not shocked.

Each eerie stare voices their thoughts in their brains, doubt that someone with your skin color can give a speech in a room full of white people. Each eerie stare makes you feel like a bug everyone inspects under a microscope.

A white guy, probably in his early 40s, sitting in the front row, stands up and asks you, “The keynote speaker is you!?”

Giving public speeches in front of a large audience is your passion, but you’re sick and tired of people like this white guy who reduces you to a stereotype based on their preconceived notion, whose attitude subtly puts you down, by throwing thousands of arrows at the color of your skin, by poking at your dark skin from your head to your toe, by doubting your credentials, by probing, You!? A keynote speaker?

“I am.” You say.

His voice incredulous, his eyes on your dark face, as if there is something wrong with the color of your skin, as if the world has turned upside down because a Black woman is going to deliver a public speech to a white audience, his eyes then darting to the door of the conference room, as if he is expecting someone, someone who is not Black, to barge in and take your place on the stage any minute, the white guy continues, “I’m sorry, but I’m not used to a Black woman keynote speaker.”

Your shoulder hunches, but you quickly straighten it. Your audience must not witness this guy getting on your nerves.

Their eyes not on your slides, but on your Afro hair, on your dark eyes, on your East African features, on your curvaceous figure, no one hears a word of your passionate speech. Frustration crawls under your skin like an army of spiders.

After your one-hour speech, the white guy, who asked you if you’re the keynote speaker, comes on the stage, shakes your hand, and says, “Wow! You’re so articulate! I really admired your speech,” He stares at your face as if he can decipher how you have skin that differs from him. How you, like a white man or a white woman, stood on the stage and delivered a good speech. “Forgive me for what I’m about to ask. But yo… you’re Black?”

You want to smack his face. And yell at him, what is wrong with you? Why do you look at me like someone who has seen a copra? Why the hell are you obsessed with the color of my skin?

This guy, with his white skin, in all his glory and prowess, wants you to walk with your shoulder high up to your ears to cover part of your dark face, to apologize for the color of your skin, to say you’re anything but Black. But he doesn’t know you.

“No. I don’t forgive you,” you say.

“Huh?” he asks.

“I don’t forgive you for asking me if I’m Black, even though you can see that I’m Black.”

His brows knit together. Before he can say anything, you look him in the eye and ask, “Why are you surprised a Black woman can speak in front of a large white audience?”

You can see his brain thinking. And you walk away. Maybe the guy will start questioning his preconceived notion of who a Black woman is. Maybe he won’t. Maybe, next time, when he talks to another Black woman, he will be willing to face his unconscious bias toward Black women. Maybe he won’t. But you’ve put a mirror in front of his face so he could look at his reflection, so he could take a deep look at his attitude and assumptions, so he could address this part of himself honestly.