Pros
IF YOU ARE A BLACK WOMAN, DO NOT SUPPORT THIS COMPANY AND DONT EVEN TRY TO JOIN THEIR TEAM. ALL THEY NEED TO SEE IS YOUR SKIN COLOR TO DECIDE THAT YOU DONT BELONG WITH THEIR COMPANY.
Cons
Back in Fall 2019, I was completing my Bachelors’ degree at the Fashion Institute of Technology and was interning at Chinamine USA, a company that does production for Cami NYC. One day I was sent to Cami NYC show room to pick up some samples. As I walked into the showroom there were other people walking in with me, this white lady in front of me and this white guy behind me. They were there for a casting call. As I’m standing there this girl comes over to me, the only African American woman in the room, to inform me that they were “wrapping up the casting call for the day” so I smiled at her nicely and told her that’s not why I was here but Lord knows I was fuming inside. Meanwhile there’s another guy there, greeting the white girl asking her if she’s there for the casting call and asking for her portfolio . Granted I’m not the model type , I barely stand 5’4 and looking at their website they clearly don’t target black women because none of their models look like me and at first glance they had no black employees. I was so embarrassed, it literally felt like someone took a shot at my self esteem, I almost burst into tears and I’m mad that I let someone make feel like that because I know other professional black women experience this everyday in the workplace but that doesn’t stop them. And honestly I don’t even think the girl realized the gravity of her actions that day and I’m really mad at myself for not telling her that it wasn’t okay for her to try to kick me out because I was a woman of color because I know this behavior is going to repeat itself and that employee and the company will continue to keep making other professional men and women who look like me self conscious about working in predominantly white environment like that’s not hard enough already.