First and Only: What Black Women Say About Thriving at Work and in Life

What Black Women Say About Thriving at Work and in Life

Jennifer R. Farmer

• Publisher: Broadleaf Books
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781506485164
• eBook ISBN: 9781506485553
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Frauen in Unternehmen

"Essential reading." --Marie Claire

First and Only is a guide for every Black woman who has found herself closing the cover on other business leadership books, convinced that something is missing. We are looking for roadmaps to on-the-job success while also acknowledging the unique barriers that Black women face in the workplace: hostile work environments, being perceived as the Angry Black Woman, being asked to do more for less than our white colleagues. But we can heal, fight for our liberation, and succeed in business and in our lives. In these pages, you will find a love letter to Black women that connects our personal growth and inner healing and the fight for liberation.

Trainer and activist Jennifer R. Farmer offers practical strategies for how to thrive in workplaces that can be ambivalent about Black women's success, as well as tips and stories from psychologists, activists, and organizational experts that equip us to lead others and heal past wounds. Learn to shed fear and embrace courage and vulnerability. Our path to success includes a commitment to self-care, spiritual growth, and a willingness to push for progress even as we fight for our own liberation. First and Only is not just about how to lean in, or how to discover the irrefutable laws of leadership. It's also about healing so that we can sustain work for justice and equity. It's about finding personal and social redemption--and leading other Black women to it, too.

The paperback edition includes an added preface, a discussion guide, and a Q&A with the author.

V

Paths to Liberation

19

Understand Which Force You Are Fighting

Racism, sexism, economic uncertainty, homophobia, childhood trauma, familial stress: Black women must contend with a variety of forces. It is imperative we know on which plane we are fighting. We cannot precisely direct our prayers, marshal the correct resources, or understand our role in a situation if we do not understand what battle we are fighting at any given time. This is not to say that we will not face simultaneous challenges. We can, and often do. But if we can name them, it is easier to name the corresponding help we may need to overcome those challenges. We cannot give ourselves the love we require if we do not appreciate the extent of the challenges before us. If we do not understand on which plane we are fighting or appreciate the difficulty of the terrain we are encountering, we will burden ourselves with the responsibility to solve something that we didn’t create and that we may not have the power to solve on our own.

When we think about what it takes to thrive as the first and only, we must be clear about what is ours to carry and what belongs to others. In addition to knowing how to do our jobs, we must also appreciate the difficulty—and ­necessity—of performing while contending with racism, sexism, sexual harassment, personal trauma, or familial troubles.

Isn’t It Enough to Simply Work Hard?

When I was younger, I thought the key to professional success was working hard and doing a good job. I vowed to keep my head down and outwork everyone around me. It took years for me to learn that my assumption—that hard work is the only prerequisite for on-the-job success—was sophomoric and naive. Of course, hard work is important, but for Black women, that is just the first step. Hard work won’t prepare us for the toll of racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, and other barriers. These things are always present, and they affect our ability to perform well. Further, even when we check all the boxes and do everything right, there is still work that must be done externally to ensure we get the opportunities that we deserve.

We must start with an understanding that Black women battle on multiple terrains, and we often do so simultaneously. For instance, we are navigating what it means to be the first and only in many work and professional settings. We are navigating how to work and thrive in non-Black spaces and, sometimes, in anti-Black spaces. We are negotiating how to balance our feminine and masculine energy: part of this is thinking through and practicing how to assert our value and boldly advocate for our self-interests. We are navigating how to work hard yet still show up consistently and presently for our families. If we are the heads or breadwinners of our households, we understand that being present while saddled with responsibility for how our families will thrive financially is an especially unique and draining task. Those of us who are trauma survivors may judge our experiences through the lens of our previous traumas while still trying to show up and perform as expected and required. This says nothing of the struggles that accompany mere existence: health and mental health challenges, familial strain, financial issues, and domestic violence.

In addition to what I have outlined above, Black women must also push back against judgments on our appearance, hairstyles, skin hue and tone, communication style, background, and professional presentation. Since whiteness is the standard for beauty in this nation, Black women are constantly evaluated based on our proximity to it.

With this as the backdrop, Black women are often expected to be exceptional at work yet are penalized when we are. The reason I say we are expected to be exceptional is because throughout our careers, we hear so much negative feedback, often colored by gender and race—about everything from our person to our work style to our interpersonal relationships—that we begin to chase perfection. We chase perfection to silence the critics. Of course, perfection is not possible, but we are tired of being criticized or told that, if we change this one little thing, we’ll find success.

Yet the flip side of perfection or excellence is white resentment. A Black woman can go from being beloved to being threatening in a space of weeks, if not days. Attorney Erika Stallings writes that this phenomenon “happens when women, typically Black women, are embraced and groomed by organizations until they start demonstrating high levels of confidence and excel in their role, a transition that may be perceived as threatening by employers.”

If you are reading this book as a non-Black woman, and this is beginning to feel impossible or tiring, I hope you will think carefully about the hurdles you force Black women to clear and change your behavior. If you are not actively a part of the solution, you are contributing to the problem. If you are reading this as a Black woman, I hope you will see that it is not you, it is them. Be affirmed in knowing that countless other Black women are experiencing what you are experiencing.

My main point is this: it is imperative that Black women understand that we are contending with a lot of forces. When we succeed, it is often against the odds. This is cause for celebration and a relaxing of the rules in terms of what counts as success. In some cases, simply surviving in anti-Black spaces is victory. Recognizing one’s inability to manage the emotional labor of surviving in such spaces is also cause for affirmation and applause. But when we cannot survive, it is definitely okay to plan our escape and walk away. We must measure ourselves using our own rubric, not the one passed down by colonialism, racism, and sexism.

As I have said elsewhere in this book, technical mastery is not a panacea for professional success. There is the spiritual, emotional, and physical cost of showing up as the first and only. To the extent we can recognize this, grieve this, and then adapt strategies to support us, we will be much happier.

When it seems like you are confronted with multiple challenges at once, what have you done to support yourself?

20

Resist the Good-Bad Binary

Black women are often given two options. If you want to be accepted, you must be “good,” which means putting the comfort and pleasure of others above your own. If you decide that autonomy and freedom of thought are principles that all people, including Black women, should embrace, you could be labeled “bad.” When Black women accept cues to be good, we choose to remain quiet even when our survival necessitates we speak. Being good means self-denial. If you have a vision for your life that centers your wants and desires, you could be labeled bad. If you ruffle the feathers of the people around you, arousing their fear, scorn, or skepticism, you will be labeled bad. If you have the temerity to display anger or discuss your experience with anger, you may again be labeled bad.

The labels show up when leaders prop up one person, the agreeable one, and put down another. These labels show up when companies and leaders create categories of “good” and “bad” (or “problem”) employees. These labels can even show up in our psyches without intentionality, awareness, or work.

Yet Black women must be aware that this dynamic exists, even as we work to embrace all aspects of ourselves. The people who manage us and interact with us must also be aware of this dynamic.

In a February 2019 TED Talk, Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger, notes that “When we say what is important to us, which is what anger is conveying, people are more likely to get angry at us for being angry.” When Black women communicate that a boundary has been crossed or that a need is not being met, many people focus too much on how they express this feedback versus the message they are intending to convey. In these situations, it is all too easy for us to be labeled “bad” or even scary.

“Anger confirms masculinity and it confounds femininity,” Chemaly adds, noting that “men are rewarded for displaying it and women penalized for doing the same.” I wholeheartedly agree and would add that, in addition to anger being gendered, the “angry Black woman” stereotype means that finding space to express anger can be tricky. Even with thought leadership such as Chemaly’s book, people still struggle with seeing Black women in the fullness of our humanity. Part of being human is having emotions; and anger, just like other emotions that healthy humans display, is a valid and necessary one.

But the pressure for Black women to opt to be “good” in order to be accepted is enormous. Again, being good looks like shunning anger, accepting anything and everything that comes our way, tolerating abuse and harmful relationships, refusing to demand appropriate compensation, and refusing to voice dissent or an opposing viewpoint. In this posture, we do what we’re asked without complaining and without an expectation of reciprocity, justice, or fairness. When we’re paid less than our white or male counterparts, for instance, a “good” Black woman is just grateful to have a job. A “good” Black woman is a superwoman, shouldering more than her fair share of responsibility and yet lacking the resources to truly do a good job. Further, “good” Black women are benevolent supporters of others, decentering themselves in the process.

As writer Najma Sharif points out, “Black women are offered crumbs and are expected to be grateful for it all while being in service of everyone but ourselves. And we have to do it with a smile. How cruel. I don’t have it in me to rant about this so it’s time to go cry.”

On the other side of the coin is “bad.” The Black woman who is labeled this way has an opinion and isn’t afraid to share it. When her boundaries are crossed, she may display anger, which is an internal warning that her needs are not being met. Yet this reaction can simultaneously provoke labels of crazy, angry, and unreasonable.

If she believes that justice and equality apply regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation, her reasonable belief in her right to equity annoys others. If she is vocal in her pursuit of getting what she feels she deserves, she may rankle the people around her in the process. She is known as “not nice,” “bad,” “mouthy,” and perhaps “an angry Black woman.” Sure, some colleagues will tell her in private that they appreciate her voice, but it rare for them to stand with her in public.

What Black Girls Face

This conditioning starts when girls are young. Not only are girls not permitted to be angry; they are punished for it. In 2019 in Orlando, Florida, officer Dennis Turner arrested a six-year-old Black girl for doing what many six-year-olds do: throwing a temper tantrum. She was placed in handcuffs and given a juvenile case number. Sadly, she was not the first young Black girl arrested in school. In 2005, St. Petersburg, Florida, police arrested five-year-old Ja’eisha Scott at her Pinellas County school. I can’t think of a louder way to tell a little girl to be good than placing her in handcuffs.

Clearly, messages about acceptable behavior are sent from childhood into the teen years and eventually into adulthood. Jasmine Tucker, director of research at the National Women’s Law Center, summarized the unique challenges Black girls face for The Independent, noting that “black girls face assumptions about ‘who they are and what they are like’ built on stereotypes.”

Sadly, respectability politics and the pressure to be “good” doesn’t go away as we age. In everyday life and in most interactions, we must calculate when we speak up, how we speak up, whether we are nice when we do, and a host of other factors that are just tiring. What’s more, even suppressing anger doesn’t keep us safe. Think about the Duchess of Sussex. From the time of her engagement through to her marriage and the birth of her son, Archie, life has been anything but problem-free for Meghan Markle. She has been subjected to the verbal taunts of an estranged father and a mean-­spirited stepsister who has seemed intent on ruining her life. In reference to her treatment by British tabloids, many outlets, including The Guardian, noted that “Meghan appeared close to tears as she spoke of coping with the pressure, particularly after the birth of their first child, Archie. ‘It’s a very real thing to be going through behind the scenes,’ she said. ‘The biggest thing that I know is that I never thought it would be easy, but I thought it would be fair. And that’s the part that’s really hard to reconcile.’”

Meghan may be royalty, but she is still a Black woman. I, like many other Black women, claims her as sister. We understand that by sheer virtue of her race, gender, and culture, she will always navigate several intersecting identities. She has a privilege that many of us will never know, and yet that privilege will not shield her from racism, sexism, or xenophobia. I mention xenophobia because I am not clear what portion of the harassment she receives is based on her identity as an American and which is based on her identity a biracial Black woman. Regardless of the root of scorn, the fruit is painful.

Further, our professional spaces often push Black women to the edge and then colleagues or supervisors feign surprise when we snap. Melissa Harris-Perry’s very public exit in 2016 from MSNBC is case in point. Harris-Perry had a phenomenal show on the network. Movement leaders, people who led grassroots groups and campaigns, felt her show was the place to shine a light on injustice. They found in Harris-Perry not just an ally but a coconspirator in the fight for justice. Naturally, when she stopped hosting her show and then wrote an impassioned letter to her staff where she said she would not be a token, fans and viewers wondered what had happened. Whatever went down at MSNBC, Harris-Perry was having none of it. She wrote a sharply worded letter to her colleagues and publicly announced that she was not a token and would not be used. As a PR person, I have been trained to protect the brand at all costs, so Harris-Perry’s exit was surprising. I knew that she must have been profoundly hurt to release such a candid and unscripted letter.

Sexuality

Up to this point, I’ve focused on the workplace, but the good-bad dynamic shows up in how we embrace and display our sexuality as well. Black women who embrace their sexuality and sexual energy are sometimes held out as objects of derision. Should a Black woman have sexual agency and express an interest in sex outside of reproduction, she is oversexualized or chastised by the respectability police and various religions. In Passionate and Pious, author Monique Moultrie examines the impact of the Black Chris...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for First and Only
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• What Black Women Face
• Myths to Resist
• Truths to Embrace
• Strategies for Healing
• Paths to Liberation
• Author Q&A
• Discussion Guide
• Acknowledgments
• Notes