Cooperate Thugging

"My niggas love it when I talk like this, my cooperate people start bugging cuz I talk like this, them cooperate thugs be like naw B talk that shit"

Just one of those days were I'm sitting at work and I put on my upscale bougie front. You know the front I'm referring to? The one where you're the new token black guy and you just can't quite reveal the fact that you're "ghetto."

When you're new on the scene you get those "what high school did you attend, do you go to college," and my favorite the "what music do you listen to?" You can't let them know you listen to some gun toting, crack cooking, brick flipping, pimping hoes type music, at least not until you been there a few months, received a couple of raises, and got some sort of seniority. So instead you just tell them Michael Jackson because he's widely accepted among everyone. At the end of the day most minorities when they are actually the minority in a professional environment tend to feel like at all times they are given the social responsibility of representing their culture.

The pressure of not exhibiting that you're different, but changing the perception to others that your culture is different can be quite challenging. Your white co-working counterparts can act lewd,
infantile, and bounderish because at the end of the day they are not judge by their color, but merely as an individual. Being a designated representation of race in the workplace can be a gift & a curse.

Sometimes people gets to comfortable and the say offensive things that touches that nerve. You know of those people who are afraid to go the "hood" because they don't want to get shot. These are instances, were even though you might have the 360 waves or have your hair laid to perfection that you have to remind these co-workers that you put a bougie front on that you still wear a du-rag or a head scarf at night, and that you do have some lil Jon & and the eastside boyz on you iPod. So at any given moment "you could be about that life."

No matter what you can always keep a certain level of professionalism, but never throw the durag away!