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Wise-Rojas | Why Professionalism Has Racist Roots, and How to Cope With It at Cornell
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Essentially, everything we know about being “professional” involves being more white. Speak perfect English. Have straight hair (forget about colored hair and tattoos, that’s just horrendous, even if your tattoo is connected to your Native American heritage). Be a specific body shape and size (when the metrics of BMI were already connected to white bodies without consideration for groups like Latina women, who sometimes have naturally curvy bodies). Don’t take breaks. Grind and grind. Eating on the job could get you fired, even though eating is a natural part of being a human.