Can Black Culture be Contributing to Workplace Bullying? Part One

I have been working on a series of articles about bullying in the workplace, and it has been aimed at Black people. I set out to do this series, because it has been my experience that bullying in majority-Black work spaces is not always taken seriously.

Dear Reader, I took a little time off from writing this summer in order to read. I realized that, as an English professor and a world literature enthusiast, I haven’t been keeping up. But I am back and continuing my series on workplace bullying: Black folk edition. In so many ways, Black culture itself may be contributing to instances of daily micro-aggressions and workplace bullying.

Before moving on, I forgot to define workplace bullying and that is the most important thing! We already know that bullying in the workplace knows no race, gender, sexual orientation, religion (or lack of religion), food preferences (vegans and vegetarians bully people as much as meat-eaters do), ethnicity, age, or class level (poor folk can bully the same as rich people can bully and middle class folk bully as well). But, when I say “bully,” what do I mean? Workplace bullying, as defined by Bennett Tepper, who researches and writes about workplace bullying (please see the February 26, 2019 New York Times article, “When the Bully Is the Boss” by Tepper. It may change your life). Tepper defines bullying as “the sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviour, excluding physical contact,” (Tepper quoted in Sutton 8).