Racist coworkers frame harassment as affection and disclaim intent

Evidence

But the traders at the exchange used to harass Sade constantly. “They’re very racist there,” he told me repeatedly. They would crumple paper into balls (as if they were stones) and throw them at him. “Go back to Palestine!” they’d yell, and laugh. When he wouldn’t laugh back, they’d retort with, “Hey, we do it because we love you.” But Sade didn’t buy it. On other occasions they would scream, “Don’t blow yourself up!” to him. On quiet days someone would run right up to him and bang chests, yelling, “Ba-BOOM!” Then the other traders would fall over in hysterics. Sade soaked it all up and pushed it aside, focusing instead on his own desire to become a trader. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 703

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘we do it because we love you’ rationalization for workplace racial harassment is a sharp lens for an essay on how power frames dominance as affection.
• XREF: Connects to the broader theme of the book and patterns of workplace racism normalized through banter; echoes the moral panic literature on how perpetrators deny intent.