“What are you? Are you Black or White?”
“Are you Black or are you White?” “What are you?”
The year was 1969. A handful of my fourth-grade classmates had swarmed around Elizabeth L. and me as we stood chatting in a corner of St. Nicholas of Tolentine’s Elementary School’s schoolyard in Jamaica, Queens. New York. The kids jostled each other as they vied for Elizabeth’s attention asking “What are you?” “Are you Black, or are you, White?”
Elizabeth was not a new student. We had all been together since the first grade. We had taken school trips, performed in holiday concerts, and made our First Holy Communion together.
Why were my classmates suddenly asking these questions during recess?
Elizabeth was my best friend. When I looked at Elizabeth, I saw a pretty girl with light coffee-colored skin with a beautiful, long jet-black braid that formed a perfect, straight line down her back. Elizabeth was always impeccably neat and managed to make our ugly blue, black, and grey uniforms look attractive. I never caught her slouching or scuffing her shoes when she walked to Mass.
Elizabeth and I had become fast friends in the first grade when we discovered that her family was as strict as mine. Academic excellence and “perfect behavior” were the standards we lived by. We even shared an important secret. We were studying classical piano at the same music school during the Age of Woodstock’s rock and roll. Elizabeth was the one person I knew that I could be myself with at school.
Now my classmates were treating her as if she did not belong with us. When the circle moved in a little closer Elizabeth looked directly at the group and said, “I’m Haitian-American and this is what many Haitians look like.” Elizabeth held her ground and she looked at each student and held their gaze. Suddenly, Elizabeth appeared older and more mature than the rest of us.
The group moved away and walked to another part of the schoolyard. Elizabeth and I looked at each other and then back at the departing group. In less than five minutes, Elizabeth had gone from being our classmate to becoming “The Other.”
Additional information
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Julienne B. Ryan began her professional career at age five when she did TV commercials and learned important things like “the teamsters always eat first,” her social security number and how to endorse checks for bank deposit.
Ryan studied psychology in college because she wanted to understand humans. She conducted her “field work” in a variety of roles, hearing the phrases “merger synergies, reorganizations, downsizing and rightsizing for change” more times than she cares to mention.
Later she enrolled in an Ivy League graduate school where she paid oodles of money to validate her prior on-the-job learning experiences. However, she did learn to name drop up-to-date theories and trendy psychologists with alarming ease.
Ryan evolved into working in “Talent Management,” a fancy way of saying “try to find people and keep them moderately happy.” With inadequate budgets and staff allocations, she had to find creative ways to encourage her staff to work effectively. These ranged from begging and borrowing resources, improvising childcare, telling stories and even giving snacks as rewards. She tried to convince herself that working a bazillion hours and “multi-tasking” equaled achievement.
Her work took place in cubicles, conference rooms or, with luck, in offices with a door. Occasionally she would make the time to emerge from her allotted real estate to really talk to people. Ryan learned something transformative in the process:
Yes, she was effective. But not because she used fancy theories – or gave great snacks. Ryan’s success, her staff believed, was a result of her uncanny knack for weaving storytelling with humor to motivate and encourage them. Crucially, they encouraged Ryan to de-emphasize “that normal HR stuff” and focus on bringing her unique storytelling skills to a broader stage.
Thanks to them, Ryan continues to collect, connect and tell stories in her work helping people find their “true selves in the world of work.
She is the author of the humorous, all true "The Learned It In Queens Communications Playbook - Winning Against Distraction!".that now includes a workbook and is available at booksellers across the globe..
She is a guest contributor to The Procurement Foundry, LifeBlood, and the global storytelling community.
Certifications include
Accumatch (BI) Behavior Intelligence
Narativ Applied Storytelling Methodologies
Collective Brains – Mentorship Methodologies
