I’ll start by saying you can never know what is truly in someone’s mind or heart, so do I know select employees of One East Harlem are racist? No. However, I absolutely 1,000% (there aren’t enough zeros in the world) feel discriminated against by this group. You’re probably saying but how can you be discriminated against? You’re a white (albeit gay) male. To be frank, I haven’t felt this racial discrimination in my life before but I know I feel it now. The staff are all people of color, which I barely noticed until the treatment started to stick out to me. I am one of very few white residents.

First, people of other races in the building have told me they find the staff helpful. However, I would not describe the staff - particularly maintenance (though others too) - as helpful. In fact, I feel as though they purposefully mislead and ignore me. Take my work order from 3/18/25 which asked them to fix a busted wall that was next to my apartment to control roach spread (and so nobody got hurt). It was marked completed on 3/25/25. Great! Right? No. They left the wall busted for weeks after that, it was falsely “completed”. When I asked the worker, a person of color, why it had not been fixed, he remarked, “why does someone like you care?” Please explain to me how someone should take the phrase “someone like you”…I’ll wait.

Tell me why when I have tried to schedule a convenient time for my work order filed 4/28/25 to be completed in my apartment, I was told they would be there the 28th, then the 29th, then the 30th and this post is being written on 5/1/25 yet it remains open? You might say, but the super is busy! Then why do I see him downstairs looking not so busy (at all)? Perhaps he is but I’d venture to guess from all the scrolling on his phone, and the fact management quoted me one day for completion, he or his apprentices have had a moment to come and take a look. Especially when I’ve offered to schedule a time. And especially when I’ve seen him doing work for people of other races around the building.

The building’s residents are very diverse, which I love. Some cultures tend to be louder, some quieter, some more vocal, some less so. And there are variations within each culture, of course. When it comes to me though? I feel consistently silenced. Even shamed for being emphatic that roaches needed to be treated in my apartment when reporting it to staff. Yet when other races yell in the lobby, whether it for excitement or joy or otherwise, I have never seen it reprimanded. But I see it over and over with me, there is one gentleman who works weekends that barely makes eye contact when we speak.

Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot and a white person marked work orders complete when they weren’t for people of color, shushed them as others were allowed to express themselves and didn’t look up at them when they as they walked by? We would be appalled at such behavior, as we should be.