Let’s suppose for a second that offices, microcosms of the real world, have always been less-than-neutral spaces for people of color. Spaces that, over the course of time, could sometimes feel like living too close to radiation. Which is to say, sooner or later it was going to exact a toll.
But in 2019 we started to see some interesting movement. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 6% of employed people before the COVID-19 pandemic worked primarily from home: 26% of those were white people, 18% were African Americans and 13% were Latinos. By May 2020, 48.7 million people, about 35% of the employed workforce, reported that they had worked from home in the prior four weeks because of COVID-19.
I was one of the new remote workers, and the experience revealed an unexpected and until now unvoiced joy: Working, free from daily office interactions, let the focus stay on work. Absent any other interpersonal weirdness.
