The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

I have a memory of an incident that happened to one of my co-workers few years ago.  My co-worker was African-American, and we were working in a white predominant neighborhood.  I remember she used to tell me that she was scared to go out of the office alone.  She felt people around the area did not like to see black people around.  She never wanted to be in the office by herself, and when she was by herself; she would lock the doors.  I always thought she was exaggerating a little bit.  One day they opened a hair/nail salon in the same plaza that our office was located.  She enjoyed getting her nails done, so she went to the salon to give it a try.  Surprisingly 5 minutes passed, and she returned to the office. We asked her what happened. She told us that they did not want to do her nails and told her that the spa chairs were not working. We thought that it was  weird that all chairs were broken so me, and another white co-worker decided to visit the place and asked to get nails done.  To our surprise they did not tell us that the chairs were broken and welcome us into their salon.  My white co-worker told them that she would never use their services because they just refused to offer services to her black co-worker.  They got into a big argument, and rude words were exchanged.  From that moment,  we apologized to our African-American co-worker and started validating her concerns around the neighborhood we were working.

This incident diminished equity because this salon was not willing to offer their services equally to all people.

I remember that I felt angry, embarrassed and powerless because there was nothing I could do to fix that situation.

Unfortunately, for an opportunity of greater equity in this case the salon owners needed to change and stop believing that they are superior to other ethnic groups.