Graham's Fury

If Senator Lindsey Graham thinks the job interview through which Judge Kavanaugh is going through is rough and the worst thing he has witnessed all his life, he ought to talk to a black person in corporate America. One has to jump through hoops and some. It is humiliating.

The only time I saw this level of humiliation, I was a boy in my maternal grandmother's compound. A man dressed in rugs, a sack thrown over his shoulder and dangling on his back, came into the compound to pitifully beg for zviyo. My grandmother went into her granary where she retrieved a sizable amount of the small-grain finger millet. After pouring into the strange man's bag, she picked up a cooking stick and started to chase the man away from her compound while calling the fleeing man all sorts of terrible names. The whole scene left me greatly amazed and puzzled. Later on, I learnt he was doing the kutanda botso ritual, the running of the penitence gauntlet as a sign that one is truly accepting he sinned and was asking for forgiveness for his trespasses.

In my years in the corporate world, I have come to learn that such humiliation is disturbingly too common. Whereas kutanda botso serves a dual purpose of appeasing the offended and God, on one hand, and making sure that the young ones never ever commit similar sins lest they suffer this awful humiliation, what happens in the corporate world is quite sinister. It is a seemingly deliberate psychological warfare whose purpose eludes me. To go through it is harrowing. Perhaps those not bearing its sharp brunt find the process pleasing to administer and a joy to watch as the victim literally folds over in humiliation.

When I see Senator Graham visibly furious, I understand and feel his pain. Luckily for him, he only get to see this only once in his lifetime. For others, this is like daily bread.

Plight of being black in the corporate world.