A fragmented essay.

“Did the law firms you applied to in Dubai call you?” I asked Zema.

Teaching Black girls how to build their confidence is part of my job. Zema is a 21-year-old Black girl who lives in Tiya, a small town in the southern part of Ethiopia. Every day, after graduating from Wolkite University on July 2022, with honors, in a law degree, Zema applied to job vacancies in Addis Ababa and Dubai. A month ago, she filled out online vacancy forms for three law firms, hiring recent law graduates, in Dubai.

Zema’s parents, who are farmers, are so poor that every evening they chew Kollo, a traditional Ethiopian snack made of roasted barley, for dinner, and sleep with a hungry stomach. Sometimes, when there is no gomen—cooked greens—with kocho—bread-like fermented food prepared from false banana tree’s root—they chew kollo for lunch.

Becoming a good lawyer so she could get paid, so she could send money to her parents, so her parents could afford to buy teff flour from the local mill house, so injera will be available on her parents’ table, so her parents could sleep with a full stomach every night, is Zema’s dream.

“One law firm called me. But…” Zema said.

The worry in her eyes and the tension constricting the muscles in her jaw, I could see.

I have an interview a week later, Zema said. Among ten white applicants shortlisted for the vacant position in the hiring firm, she was the only Black woman.

Her eyes looking down on the grass, we walked. “To tell you the truth, Banchi. I don’t think I can compete with white applicants. What if I am not good enough? What if I could not speak a word in front of white employers?”

When internal damaging monuments engrave in your heart, you question yourself, what you think you’re doing by competing with white people. You question whether you can do the job, even though you’re qualified. Even if you do your job, you can’t do a better job than a white person does, internal damaging monuments engraved in your heart whisper.

In a creepy movie, “When a Stranger Calls,” a woman keeps getting increasingly concerning calls. A man on the line asks, “Have you checked your children?” When the woman finally calls the police and has the call traced, the policeman says, “The calls are coming from inside your house.”

When a thought that Black people can’t compete with white applicants, that Black people are less than white people, that Black people are not good enough, charge into our mind, and we march alongside these thoughts and believe the lies they make us believe about ourselves, the harm is coming from us, from inside our mind and heart.

When I was about to give a presentation on a nutritional supplement to foreign clients for the first time, I hovered at the door of the training hall for a long time. The thought that I could not do my job, a job I had done for five years, almost made me fly back to Ethiopia.

Despite my education and training, despite being good at teaching and giving presentations in front of a large audience, despite giving the same presentation to Ethiopians and Americans who lived in different cities in Ethiopia, this slight sense that I was a little bit less hit my chest.

I was the only Black woman presenter from Ethiopia.

I remember the luxurious room in Mercure Grand Jebel Hafeet hotel in Al Ain closing in on me. I remember the reflection of my face in the bathroom mirror asking me, “What are you doing here? Are you sure you can stand in front of foreign clients and give a presentation?” The night before my presentation, I remember my fingers twitching the whole night, my mind picturing a vivid image: the white audience cracking smiles, then looking away, and pretending not to be embarrassed for me. I remember dragging myself from the luxurious bed and stumbling on the Arabian rug, my body folding fetal position. The enormous wash of blood in my ears, so loud I couldn’t hear my own breathing, couldn’t hear the traffic outside, couldn’t hear anything.

The morning of my presentation, I remember praying the earth beneath me would open up and swallow me. I remember my legs trembling beneath my Habesha kemis—a traditional Ethiopian skirt—I wore. I remember the full training hall, around 100 people, mostly Arabs, a few Americans, and Europeans. I remember this thought screaming in my ears, run away from this room, return to your country, to your home. I remember the man who strapped the mic on my back who said, “You’re shaking.”

Part of me, the part that asked can you do your job?, wanted to turn my back on the training hall, walk away, tell myself standing in front of a white audience was not my career dream. But the other part of me, the part that hated the part of me that questioned my worth, was a little bit stronger.

So I hobbled into the training hall.

Early in the anti-apartheid movement, as he was boarding an Ethiopian Airways flight to Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, peering at a Black pilot for the first time, Nelson Mandela questioned how a Black man can fly an airplane. In his memoir Long Walk to Freedom Mandela called his experience “a strange sensation.”

Never seeing a Black pilot flying an airplane before, when he noticed the pilot was Black, he wrote that he had to suppress the panic that arose within him.

“How could a black man fly an airplane?” he asked himself.

A moment later, though, he caught himself. “I had fallen into the apartheid mindset, thinking Africans were inferior and that flying was a white man’s job. I sat back and chided myself for such thoughts.”

In 11th grade, my mathematics teacher, whose name I don’t remember, was an American—the only white teacher in my school.

I remember my mathematics teacher was a brilliant teacher. I remember his dark and soft hair, which contrasted with my unruly and coarse Afro hair. When he sauntered through my school’s front gate, all students in my school gaped at him. Even though our Amharic, biology, and geography teachers were also brilliant teachers, I remember my friends and I swooning over our white teacher. I don’t know why we thought our mathematics teacher was a better teacher than our Ethiopian teachers. I don’t remember my friends and I ever saying a white teacher does a better job than a Black teacher. But I remember my friends and I marching alongside our mathematics teacher to his office after his classes, asking him questions we already knew, paying more attention to every word he spoke in class and in his office.

One time, a white woman I worked with said to me, “I can take the class if you want.”

The class she was talking about was full of white clients. Considering my mom worked 24/7, every year, to put me in a private, all-female high school and a good university, I was insulted. This woman didn’t outright said so, but, my narrative written in her head, she believed she could do a better job than me.

I said, “It’s my class. I will teach it.”

Sometimes you surge into a room full of white students to obliterate a white person’s narrative of you.

In 13 Things Mentally Strong Women Do, Amy Morin writes about mentally strong women who quash self-doubt. But when you’re a Black woman, quashing self-doubt is not the whole story.

When you’re a Black woman, even if you lean in with confidence, like one of my friends—who has worked in a white firm as a lawyer for fifteen years—leaned in with confidence and asked for a seat at the partnership table, the most frustrating, the most heartbreaking professional barrier for Black women working in predominantly white workspaces is it doesn’t mean we will achieve what we deserve. Even in a global pandemic, my lawyer friend, confident and competent, worked twice as hard as her white peers, only to end up with Steve, who joined the law firm after she did, sitting on the partnership seat.

People who tell Black women to have more confidence have never walked into HR offices and then been told to wait outside or that a white boss has dropped the promotion you’ve been working hard for on Steve’s lap. Or that a white colleague or supervisor or boss perceives them as less capable and less worthy because of the color of their skin.

In Failure and Freedom, Suleika Jaouad writes about one experience where she bolted out of a restaurant and raced to her hotel. Sitting among highly esteemed scientists, she questioned herself. What could I possibly contribute here? At the end of her article, Suleika asks us to imagine our life without the fear of failure. What would we create in the absence of fear?

I’ve tried to imagine my life with an absence of fear.

And failed.

For example, every time I send a draft to a white editor, self-doubting questions pop into my mind: What makes you think a white publisher will publish your words? My body itches to hunker down, to hide.

Elizabeth Gilbert, in Big Magic, writes, “Instead of asking fear to disappear from your heart, allow it to enter your creativity room and be a little more curious. Curious to see what you will create. Curious to find out who you will be after your creation.”

I hate getting into a war with fear. When I fight fear, fear always wins. Always.

I like Gilbert’s insight on conquering the fear of creativity. Not getting into a war with fear and instead being a little bit curious works not just to conquer the fear of creativity but works every time fear barges into your room.

A few weeks ago, I read one of my short fiction in front of a white audience. When the modulator called my name, I almost sneaked out of the room. But taking a deep breath I followed Gilbert’s advice. I allowed myself to be a little bit curious. Curious to find out my white audience’s reaction to my story. Curious to find out who I will be after I read my short fiction to a white audience for the first time.

My grandfather once told me a story. A teacher in Kenya had a hard time convincing his high-school students, who scored high grades in almost all their classes but believed they could not compete with white students, to apply to America for better education.

His students’ internal beliefs pushed the teacher to do a radical act. In front of the school he taught, a monument Britain built in 1934 stood tall. The monument had engravings on it. The teacher advanced to the monument and chiseled it out.

With his radical act, the teacher taught his students to not only chisel external monuments but also internal ones, the ones engraved in your heart keeping you from achieving your goals, the ones standing in your own way.

Sister Peace, in Wisdom, writes, “One of the lasting legacies of both colonization and racial oppression is how they truly made the colonized and the oppressed believe that they were inferior.”

When we believe we are inferior. When we doubt who we are. When invisible damaging beliefs guide our actions. When we stand in our own way of succeeding in life. When we tell ourselves we’re not worthy and we’re not capable. We rob ourselves of freedom. Freedom to carve our own thoughts.

Sister Peace asks us to ask ourselves. “What invisible monuments do we carry that rob us of the life we want? Does our heart carry any harmful beliefs or damaging legacies? What would it take to dismantle these damaging beliefs? What would we put in their place that is loving, kind, joyful, and true?”