Black diplomats describe harassment at US bordersExBulletin

Tianna Spears joined the State Department in 2018, awaiting the promise of a fulfilling career. She left after less than two years and is one of more and more people to speak out recently about the particular challenges facing minority foreign service officers. Kennedi Carter for NPR Hide Legend

rock legend Kennedi Carter for NPR

Tianna Spears joined the State Department in 2018, awaiting the promise of a fulfilling career. She left after less than two years and is one of more and more people to speak out recently about the particular challenges facing minority foreign service officers.

Kennedi Carter for NPR

In April 2018, Tianna Spears joined the State Department, eager for the promise of a fulfilling career. At 26, she had spent three years learning Spanish in the Dominican Republic and Spain to help land a foreign service job.

“I was very excited to start,” she says. “I dreamed of being a diplomat and living in several places in Latin America.”

Spears’ first posting, in October of that year, was at the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, Texas. Everything started out well, she says, and she quickly settled into her new life and job. Spears would often return to the United States to shop or meet friends for coffee.

But she quickly noticed a trend: When she crossed those borders, she was routinely stopped by United States Customs and Border Protection officials for a secondary inspection.

Spears is black. She is one of a growing number of current and former minority foreign service officers who have recently spoken about the particular challenges they face as diplomats.

Spears’ first posting was at the United States Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. In the six months she worked there, Spears says she has been sidelined more than 20 times while in the United States. Each time, she says, the harassment escalated. U.S. Customs and Border Protection deny Spears ‘claims and say they found no evidence of the officers’ misconduct. Kennedi Carter for NPR Hide Legend

rock legend Kennedi Carter for NPR

Spears’ first posting was at the United States Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. In the six months she worked there, Spears says she has been sidelined more than 20 times while in the United States. Each time, she says, the harassment escalated. U.S. Customs and Border Protection deny Spears ‘claims and say they found no evidence of the officers’ misconduct.

Kennedi Carter for NPR

It comes as the State Department is under pressure to diversify its ranks. The foreign service is predominantly white. Only 6% of foreign service officers are African-American, according to the American Foreign Service Association.

Spears said that while crossing the border, she showed CBP officers her diplomatic passport and other official identification and was surprised by the line of questioning she subsequently suffered.

“I was asked if I had stolen my car,” she said. “Once I was even accused of having forged documents, like in my diplomatic passport … I was regularly asked if I really worked at the consulate in Ciudad Juarez.”

In the six months she worked at the consulate, Spears says she has been sidelined more than 20 times. Each time, she says, the harassment escalated.

“I was once told not to look the officer in the eye when I spoke to him,” she said. “I was told I should look at the ground.”

Spears says she got the feeling that they “wanted me to feel small.”

CBP denies Spears’ claims, saying her own video footage contradicts some of her claims, including an incident in which Spears alleged that an officer was standing in front of her with her hand on her gun, her finger on the trigger.

In a press release, the agency qualifies this allegation as “completely unfounded”. He tells NPR that Spears has been shot more than a dozen times because inconsistencies with her address triggered a second automatic check. CBP says it found no evidence of officer misconduct in Spears’ case and so there was no disciplinary action.

Spears still maintains that she was harassed and intimidated by CBP agents because she is black. She says repeatedly that she complained to CBP supervisors at the border. A supervisor handed her a flyer with a hotline number to call, she said, and told her officers would not be penalized.

Spears also raised his concerns with his superiors at the US Consulate.

There, she said, “I just encountered pure denial and enlightenment that it wasn’t racism, it wasn’t discrimination. Basically, you know, it was downplayed and passed under. the carpet.”

Spears was transferred to the United States Embassy in Mexico City, but the experience stuck with her. She was diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. She left the State Department last October, less than two years after arriving.

In May, shortly after George Floyd’s death, Spears recounted his experiences on his blog. Charles Ray, a retired U.S. diplomat who served as ambassador to Cambodia and Zimbabwe, and as first U.S. consul general in Ho Chi Minh City, said he was stunned upon reading Spears’ account.

“I was beside myself for a few hours, thinking I couldn’t believe shit like this is happening again,” he says.

Ray, who is also black, says he was also a victim of harassment at the US borders during his 30-year career, which ended in 2012. He says he learned to put up with it because no one cared. particularly then or now.

“No one is going to put their head above their desk and care if they value their work, if they think senior management doesn’t care,” he says. “And frankly, my personal opinion is that senior management really doesn’t care.”

A State Department spokesperson who declined to be named told NPR that the department takes Spears’ allegations seriously and is in talks with CBP to “improve the experience” for diplomats at the US borders.

Alonzo Fulgham, a former senior official at the US Agency for International Development, says progress is slow. He mentors young black foreign service officers, many of whom do not want to create waves and jeopardize their futures by complaining of harassment at the border.

But Fulgham says he hopes Spears’ debriefing will help force change in the way minority US diplomats are treated at US border crossings.

“I think there is hope with these young people because they are much more informed … they blog and they talk to each other,” he says. “And I think it’s going to be helpful in getting more people to speak up.”

Spears, who is currently completing her Masters degree in International Relations and hopes to work “to promote change in black and brown communities by focusing on economic issues and promoting activism,” said writing about her experiences was cathartic.

“You have to understand how hard I worked to get there,” she said. “And I didn’t want that taken away from me. And that’s what ultimately happened in the end.”

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