When “Neutrality” Is a Threat
If your values disappear the moment someone is uncomfortable, they were never values. They were branding.
Yesterday at work, I was pulled into a “quick chat.” It was framed as simple. Professional. Reasonable. The kind of request that’s supposed to sound like common sense so you don’t challenge it. I was asked to remove something visible from my workspace background. Keep things “neutral.” Avoid “statements.” And the moment I heard those words, my body understood what my brain hadn’t caught up to yet: this wasn’t about a background. This was about control.
Because “neutrality” inside a corporation is rarely neutral. It’s a moving target. A vague standard that can be applied selectively, depending on who is uncomfortable and whose discomfort is treated as urgent.
They didn’t have to raise their voice to make the message clear. The power imbalance did the work for them.
I felt a lot of things yesterday. Anger. Humiliation. Disbelief. That cold, familiar sensation of being reminded that belonging is conditional. That you can do your job well, lead, deliver, collaborate… and still be asked to make yourself smaller because your visible humanity is seen as “too much.”
People love to act like these moments are minor. A quick ask. A small adjustment. No big deal. But the impact isn’t small.
When a company tells you to erase something cultural, political, or identity-adjacent “for professionalism,” what they are really doing is testing compliance. They are teaching you to self-censor. They are seeing how quickly you’ll adjust yourself to fit a standard that isn’t clearly defined, isn’t consistently applied, and can shift whenever someone with authority decides it should.
Last night, I couldn’t stop thinking about two Muslim women I work with.
Are they next?
If a policy can be invoked to pressure one person into disappearing, it can be invoked again. That’s the part people miss. These requests don’t stay contained. They create a precedent. A pattern. A quiet permission structure.
And once the pattern exists, it spreads.
I called a friend, a fellow Latina, and told her what happened. She stood behind me immediately, the way we do when we recognize the old scripts at play. She also said something that hit me in the gut:
If someone will weaponize HR, they’ll weaponize anything. Including things far bigger and more dangerous than a workplace. Oye, that person will not hesitate to call ICE on you amiga…
That’s what this kind of pressure does. It doesn’t just change your Zoom background. It changes your nervous system. It makes you scan your own life for what might be used against you. It teaches you to pre-edit yourself before anyone asks.
And I FUCKING hate that. I hate that the world is set up this way. I hate that the structures people call “professional” can be used to intimidate, to isolate, and to remind you who has leverage. Corporate environments like to market values—belonging, inclusion, psychological safety. But when discomfort shows up, those values often collapse into risk management. Image protection. Quiet compliance.
I am not writing this to be reckless.
I’m writing this because I’m done pretending these moments are harmless.
Here is what I know:
forced compliance is not safety. It’s submission dressed up as policy.
So today, yes, I blurred my background. Not because I agreed. Not because I was convinced.I did it because I’m strategic, and because I refuse to let anyone bait me into a reaction that can be used to discredit the truth of what happened.
But I’m not silent.
There is a rage in me that feels ancient, cultural, and extremely precise. The kind of rage that shows up when you recognize the shape of colonization in modern clothing: soft language, corporate process, “neutrality,” “professionalism,” “brand.”
And I know exactly what that rage is for.
In my bones, I think of Guabancex—the storm. Not chaos for chaos’ sake. But force with purpose. A reminder that pressure systems can be changed. That the weather can shift. That her destruction comes when the land, the people and their ways no longer serve to thrive — she brings balance back to the system.
So I’ll channel her in the way I know how: with clarity, receipts, and refusal. Because I will not confuse compliance with peace. And I will not let a corporation teach me that being employable requires being invisible.
