Big Words for Someone Like Me

As a black woman in America, in the year of our lord 2025, why must we continue to be bullied, demeaned, and treated less than while simultaneously keeping departments, units, and programs within organizations that are led by individuals empowered with brazen unquestioned mediocrity afloat? These individuals, hold an inveterate hatred for us. They seem to be yoked to the ancestral belief that the black woman must be subservient, actively participating in the preservation of a servitude endowed by slavery. We live in country where four generations removed from the end of slavery the master/slave dynamic remains oppressive. We still ain’t free. In our pursuit of financial freedom, freedom of choice, sound mind & healthy body, time for active and intentional self care, glowing hydrated moisturized melanated skin, and to be left the hell alone so we can be great, we are still tasked to carry the weight of wearing the mask of servitude that our foremothers donned. Oh, Black Woman.

We receive strong suggestions of complicity for the rushed rollout of the new and improved programmatic and/or systematic changes. Explicit accountability is inferred with authoritative intonations during weekly one on ones and through email communications. It is the understanding of unrealistic expectations as both team leader and player. We participate in moving the organization forward only to be become patsy when that rushed forward movement is met with backlash, inundated with the need for many system tweaks, and end user confusion. Now, meetings convene about you in rooms where you have no seat at the table. Accountability for the failed execution of the (rushed)rollout is the only agenda item. It might as well be you, Black Woman, who, was of course executing the rollout as the SOP mandated. Even though you thought they missed your apprehension for the tasks set before you, and even though you always hit those benchmarks, on time, often working into the smaller hours-COB be damned- they managed to pick up on your weary, noticing that “things seem a little off” and assumed that it was an issue at home. Surely, bringing one’s  home life to work is the reason why the mandated systematic changes failed.  That blatant incompetence must be addressed. Immediately. Someone needs a lesson in accountability. And she bed not say anything about it. Because really, who is she going to tell? The Black Woman is unbelievable.

Showing up Mon – Fri covered with a demoralized spirit is an exercise in sticktoitiveness that many have the privilege of never experiencing. You walk into the office with the weight of knowing that someone on high is gunning for your job. Knowing that a meeting was held to discuss your recent work performance. Meetings that you did not receive a calendar invite to  prioritized developing a strategy to determine the best way possible to expedite both the patching up of the failing new programmatic roll out and to get rid of you. A problematic black woman who took the pay cut because she believed in the mission, who smiles when her white counterpart gleefully admonishes her existence within the organization. Black Woman, you take up too much space. You are menacing. When you step into the building you disturb the peaceful satisfaction of a pause in frantic intimidation, a byproduct of unchecked mediocrity that resides inside of the C-suite. This is not just unsustainable, but it sets a dangerous precedent. The forward facing goal is to give great customer service, support the community, & ensure end user satisfaction. The internal goal is to keep that black bitch in her place as we push this project forward. So what there are implemented problems and systematic failures. The image of an organization that is progressive and meeting the needs of the community/customer is what’s important here. It is how the organization stays solvent. The Board’s Finance Committee insists that staying financially solvent means that they must stay on the Black. She’s incompetent anyway. 

Do you know how educated a Black Woman has to be to be considered incompetent. Known as incompetents nationwide, we remain the most educated group of people in the country. Regardless of number of degrees, our schoolin’ transcends the strong sense of rightness in the person beholden to their unchecked mediocrity.

I make no qualms about what’s at the root of the intent to minimize our greatness. America’s action boob, Black women are constantly pigeonholed. A direct result of celebrated ineptitude that reinforces the lie that whites are superior to blacks who are in need of controllin’.  Black woman you ought stay in ya place gal. 

This control comes with the authority to shirk accountability for getting it wrong. The perception of an attempt to step out of the shadows that we have been relegated to,  accessing the American dream, staying hydrated , minding our business, supporting our sisters, and trying to feel some sort of free, if it’s not done in private, well below the radar, the target appears on our backs. There is a concerted unmelanated effort to stop us because our freedom to be sort of kind of maybe if you stretch it wide enough infringes upon the other’s right to exist. They say minding your business is free. It sucks ass that Black women existing in unexpected spaces cost other’s their peace.

Ourselves, worth far more than rubies, the specks of dust that we’ve cultured into pearls are not to be cast upon swine. I have no answers that satisfies, only insight that continues to anger and frustrate. 

I say this.

Fire refines gold, iron sharpens iron, pressure creates diamonds, and water seeks its own level. I suggest that we remain steadfast in the stacking of the bare minimum that will allow us blow that popsicle stand. Many times we have carried a nation on our backs, they are ungrateful. We deserve better. Let’s go get it. Sis, when we step out on faith and refuse to endure any longer we will be carried by a force that unchecked mediocrity could never touch. 

In love and peace. Ashe.