NOT That I’m Excellent At My Job

At Beshale hotel, in Addis Ababa, I met a Friend of a friend for Ethiopian Coffee. This Friend of a friend was a white man in his late 30s. In our conversation, what position I am at the institute I work for came up. When I said I’m sitting in a senior room in charge of four black and two white teachers, his jaw hit the floor. He asked, “Oh, companies still do that?”

“Still do what?”

“Give preference to black women.”

His words, the raw heart of their meanings exposed only to me, shoved my education, my experiences, and my skills as a teacher into his laptop bag on his way to another topic of conversation. My body, from the top of my head to my toes, shivered with a familiar rage.

It didn’t occur to him that I’m sitting in a senior room because I’m excellent at my job.

There he was, a smart man, with white skin, with a degree and master’s, assuming a black woman sitting in front of him is sitting in a senior room among her white peers ONLY because of the color of her skin. There he was, assuming HR people opened the door for me to a senior room because I am Black, because HR people wanted to display my name and my position on their institute’s website to show their solidarity with diversity initiatives, NOT because I am excellent at my job.

Jessica Valenti in The Absurd Outrage Over Biden’s All-Female Press Team, wrote, “If a person’s first thought when seeing a group of accomplished women is that their gender got them there (as opposed to the truth that it likely hindered their rise), what they’re really saying is that they cannot imagine so many women are truly that smart and capable.”

I’m exhausted by people thinking the reason I’m sitting in a senior room is that I’m Black, NOT that I’m excellent at my job, that HR people are doing me a favor, NOT that I’m as smart as my white peers, that one white man or several white men in senior rooms have allowed me to sit in a senior room because I’m a woman and Black, NOT that I’m an asset to the Institute I work for.

This Friend of a friend is married to an Ethiopian woman, who owns several shops that sell traditional Ethiopian dresses, who lives in Addis Ababa, Dubai, Hong Kong, and Atlanta a few months a year because her shop has branches in these cities. I wonder what this Friend of a friend thinks of his wife’s successful business. Does he think his wife’s several shops in different countries are competing in a white market and succeeding because white customers walk into one of her shops and buy dresses because they think they are doing a favor to a black woman, NOT that his wife is excellent at running her business?

NOT That I Deserve To Be Sitting In a Senior Room

Once, in a senior meeting, a Nigerian friend of mine and I asked to lead the writing department at the institute we worked for. In addition to our teaching jobs, my Nigerian friend and I were also writers. We wrote emails. We wrote memos. We wrote PowerPoint presentations. We wrote weekly reports. We wrote client negotiation deals. We researched and wrote our research in a structure and form clients and students found interesting.

And yet.

When my Nigerian friend and I asked to sit in a senior room among white writers, writers the institute paid well for writing, this vibe that we were asking to be sitting in a senior room among white writers because we were Black, NOT that we deserved to sit in that room, heaved its painful presence in the senior room, while my Nigerian friend and I grinded our teeth and dreamt of punching the wall in the senior room, but we didn’t punch the wall because we didn’t want to get fired, because we didn’t want our white bosses to stab their fingers in the air. “You’re an angry black woman!”

Imagine honing your skills for years. Imagine working hard for years and years. Imagine arriving at your workplace before anyone else arrives and leaving your workplace after everyone leaves. Imagine sacrificing your weekends and time away from loved ones. Imagine standing in an HR room or sitting in your white boss’s office and the person in front of you sees ONLY the color of your skin, NOT your experiences, NOT your qualifications, NOT your credentials. Everything you’ve accomplished to deserve a seat in a senior room sits at the bottom of your feet, dismissed.

NOT That Being a Black Woman Hinders Us From Progressing Ahead In Our Careers

A few years ago, after reading a sentence in the middle of an article I picked up on the internet, a sentence that wore a privilege hat and assumed everyone was on the same boat, a boat where if you were good at your job, your career progressed, where you were not left behind, I almost hurled my laptop across the room. I remember that sentence as if I read it yesterday. “Our lack of confidence is why we don’t see many women (especially black women) in senior rooms.”

To assume everybody gets equal opportunities to pursue something they’re good at, to ignore race-based stereotypes, questioning of your capability or your competence or your worth, which are leaving Black women behind in most white workspaces, to assume we don’t see many women or Black women in senior rooms because they lack confidence is privilege gaslighting. Building my confidence took years. But when I walked into HR offices with my shoulder straight and my head high and demanded for a pay rise, I can’t tell you how many times a white supervisor or boss told me “you’re full of yourself.” Or that I was demanding for asking for the same career progression opportunities as my white peers.

So when I hear from a white person that I’m sitting in a senior room because I’m Black, I explain that being a Black woman hinders us from progressing in our careers.