The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2020

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2020 23 SPEAKING OUT Changing Mindsets on Race at State BY P. M I CHAE L M C K I NL EY E ven at a moment like this, when multiracial crowds demonstrate across the nation for an end to police brutality against Black Americans, daily new incidents underscore how pervasive racism is in America, and how much further we have to travel on the path to self-awareness. Mindsets need to change; and we need to change how we speak about race. We can start with the places where we work, including the State Department. The testimonies that are now appearing of the experiences of Black Americans at State indicate how insidious the envi- ronment can be, even in a building that prides itself on diversity. It is insidious. I have never wanted to discuss my personal experience in public, and it is difficult to do so now. I am a white male, but I have dealt with prejudice all my life through the experi- ences of my loved ones and the people I have worked with during a 37-year career with the State Department. The exposure began early. My mother was an accomplished woman from Puerto Rico who spoke English with an accent and faced prejudice because of where she was from. It marked me. As I grew older, and even though I deeply admired my mother, I tended not to mention her origins simply to avoid the silence that would follow when people realized the WASP they thought they saw was someone else. I have long regretted what I did. Difficulties at State Things actually became more difficult inside the State Department. My wife, Fatima, is of multiracial back- ground, and our marriage has been peppered from the start with incidents of prejudice and insensitivity from both liberal and conservative colleagues. Most were not obvious or even inten- tional; some were. I remember vividly, as we stood in receiving lines at events we hosted for embassy communities, how some white officers or their spouses would walk by Fatima’s outstretched hand without acknowledging her greet- ing or her existence. Not everyone was like that, but over the years we found more in common with those who sought to live across racial boundaries, or simply relied on socializing outside the missions where we worked. Fatima worked outside the embassies for more than two decades on behalf of women and minorities. Few ever asked what she did. We did not entirely “escape” the race question, however. One of our children, now a grown woman, has faced racial insults from childhood, at school and at university, including the proverbial “go back to the jungle” and racially motivated physical attacks. In a defining moment for us, Fatima was “detained” at her workstation in an embassy where I served as ambassador. It was during a security drill after hours. She had permission to work; notwith- standing, three white American guards, with guns pointed at her, yelled at Fatima to get on the ground, put a knee in her back, tied her wrists with zip ties, pulled her up by her underarms and shoved her against a wall. She was humiliated and physically bruised. She did not want to identify herself as the spouse of the ambassador, and she did not. The only other person treated similarly that night was a Black American. P. Michael McKinley served as a Foreign Service officer for 37 years until his resignation in October 2019. His last position was as senior adviser to the Secretary of State. He served as the U.S. ambassador to Brazil, Afghani- stan, Colombia and Peru, and as deputy chief of mission in Mozambique, Uganda and Belgium (Embassy Brussels and USEU). At the State Depart- ment, he was deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migra- tion. He is now with The Cohen Group in Washington, D.C. Legislation and workplace regulations are one thing; coming to terms with how deep the waters of inadvertent bias run is another.