(BALTIMORE – May 17, 2024) – For Black women, it’s time. It’s time we stood up and acknowledged the truth that happens to us at work, in our business and in our daily lives. It is not a pleasant truth but often truth isn’t pleasant especially to say it out loud when we have only whispered about it.
Yet saying & facing the truth is critical for our own mental health & our liberation along with the liberation of those who fall into this category. We need not call them names. We need not express “hate” about them or to them. But we do need to acknowledge the truth about them for our own well being & the well being of other Black women.
The truth we must acknowledge is the toxic behavior of “some” Black women to other Black women. The toxic behavior that includes name-calling. Or the toxic behavior that includes supporting “others” while putting down women who are the mirror image of themselves. The toxic behavior that includes jealousy and sometimes malicious intent – malicious intent that can show up in your “evaluation” or malicious intent which can show up in the whispers about you to others.
We need to acknowledge & call out this behavior. However, I believe we need to call it out, stay away from it/not allow this trauma into our souls but also understand how & if we can help her/them who practice this behavior.
Many years ago I read the “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”. Years after I had read the book, I had the opportunity of a lifetime to sit in a room on the African continent with Black women from across the globe talk about the Pedagogy of the Oppressed and how it played out in their countries.
I watched it play out in front of me in several different roles I have had in my career.
My sister describes her experience in entering an organization as a leadership/management trainer (Training By Design} where the leadership is a Black woman & the environment is full of toxicity. Sometimes, Black women in the organization will pull her aside to describe the bias & feelings of repeated attacks from the woman in leadership who looks just like them.
Sometimes these Black women in leadership have risen to this role by succumbing to the behavior of their superiors who are often white men. To maintain their “power” and ignore their fears – they take on the behavior of their “oppressors”. They may be filled with their own “self-loathing” and fearful of being exposed as a fraud (imposter syndrome).
Some of these Black women became adults with trauma and pain leftover from childhood and still unaddressed. Then their living in America which is filled with the systemic and afterbirth of our country’s “original sin” – slavery.
Why do some Black women succumb to this self-loathing that manifests their negative behavior toward any mirror image of themselves?
Whatever the reason – we need to call it out and identify solutions to embrace her without hurting ourselves. To talk about it, out loud and not let it destroy her and us.
