BY BRITTANYANA PIERRO
For our last issue I sat down with Latoya Johnson, Administrative Assistant to the Director of Police Services and former Assistant to Vice President of Equity and Inclusion, to talk about her time here at Evergreen and her understanding of equity on campus. This is the continuation of that interview.
Latoya Johnson grew up and lived in New Orleans most of her life. She attended University of New Orleans for her BA in History, and later Southern Louisiana University for her MA in History. Currently, Johnson is enrolled in Southern New Hampshire University working on her second MA in the Science of Operations and Project Management.
After obtaining her first Master’s degree in 2011, Johnson struggled to find jobs, only landing supportive and administrative assistant roles in her hometown of New Orleans. “Opportunity for people of color is not in abundance,” Johnson said. Moving out to Washington was a big change for her family, but it presented the opportunity for Johnson and her husband to have better jobs and a better education for her three kids.
“My first job here was, again, being someone’s assistant,” Johnson said. She went on to a variety of support jobs, until landing at one that was more on track with her focus of interest. Unfortunately, due to budget cuts and overall miscommunication, Johnson was not able to advance in her career path in this job. At this particular time time she had just recently moved to Olympia, and was unexpectedly jobless, trying to support her family of five.
During this period, Johnson landed the job of Assistant to the Equity Panel at Evergreen. Currently Johnson is is another temporary support role as Administrative Assistant to Police Services on campus. Originally, johnson would’ve been let go from her job at Evergreen in total, if it wasn’t for John Carmichael, VP of Finance and Operations. Johnson said Carmichael was “Instrumental in me having continued employment at Evergreen.”
When asked if the move was worth it, Johnson said, “It’s not a waste, because my husband’s thriving in culinary school, he goes to culinary school at SPSCC [South Puget Sound Community College], my kids are in school, they’re getting a better education than they did in the South. I just feel like I’m stuck. I felt like I punished myself when I just became complacent, and I was nodding my head like, ‘Oh sure I’ll take this.’”
“A lot of time people of color, especially black women, we become comfortable. And we get scared of change, and you may watch people not like you. You may watch white people making all these moves and you’re sitting there and you’re like, ‘Well what am I not doing?…And we’re talking about having this equity mindset and were talking about uplifting people, and uplifting people of color,”Johnson said. “I’m grateful I have a job, but I’m still thinking to myself, as a woman of color, surrounded by other people of color in positions that can make decisions: ‘I don’t feel so uplifted right now’.”
Johnson went on to speak of her mother, a nurse, who didn’t get a promotion at her job for almost 30 years. The bulk of her mom’s struggle was because she “never sacrificed her authentic self,” as Johnson said. The occurrence of this ‘sacrifice’, commonly referred to as code-switching, is a behavior used by marginalized groups in both professional and personal environments. Code-switching is known in communities of black and brown people as switching between one or more languages, or vernaculars, often to fit in with whomever is surrounding you.
“Women of color are always expected to be a certain way, to have a level of strength and all these certain things. It’s even harder on me ‘cause I know that expectation is there. And it’s even harder when our own people are holding even a higher candle,” said Johnson. “We’re telling white people to uplift us, and be allies, but our own people are not stepping in.”
She further discussed the intricacies of working in diverse spaces and dealing with a privilege disconnect based on wealth and status. “I think back to something a professor told me a long time ago,” said Johnson. ‘We can all be one color, but we’re not all one people…Privilege doesn’t always mean color. I think sometimes people of color forget that you can be privileged within your own race.”
