Upon George Floyd‘s murder and the global racial reckoning that ensued, many qualified Black people found themselves getting top jobs or being promoted.
There was an acceleration in the hiring of Black talent on a global scale.
Companies were hell-bent on showing that they were ethnically diverse. And truth be told, many Black people embraced these new employment opportunities. We’d never been in such a situation before, a heightened global demand for Black talent.
I think many, thought the world was heading for change. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t think racism would disappear off the face of the earth in an instant, but I truly thought people finally understood how it affected Black people, and wanted to do their utmost to change.
I was far from understanding how much racism was widely misunderstood.
Most people don’t realise that racism goes beyond using the n-word or being against their child playing with/ befriending a Black child. They don’t see that it’s also talking over a Black person consistently, always assigning negative stereotypes to Black people, underpaying Black talent, denying Black people opportunities, gaslighting them, intentionally undermining them, and the list goes on.
It is 3 years since Floyd died and many of those Black people that were hired have been let go.
A lot of publicity was made when they were hired, but as they are being increasingly let go, there is silence.
I would argue that these silent dismissals wreak a lot of havoc on one’s mental health. I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to not have any new job opportunities at all rather than have one for a few months and then be let go.
There is another category of Black people that were hired during that same time, and they are hanging on in jobs where they face racism every day. These individuals stay because they have mouths to feed and bills to pay.
They are going through hell at the moment, taking a lot of hassle from racist colleagues who either feel threatened by them or want to retaliate against a Black person for a host of reasons, i.e. a dislike of the Black Lives Matter movement for example.
These Black people find themselves excluded Let me explain: Their bosses don’t want to risk firing them because they fear that the company will have a reputation issue on their hands if they do.
As a result, these employees are just left there to linger. In some cases, they have quietly quit.
They are victims of quiet firing and face bullying daily. They are anxious and stressed out while their bosses simply wait for them to break.
This bullying can take several forms ranging from giving a senior employee menial tasks, icing them out of projects, humiliating them, gaslighting them, or undermining them.
The one objective is to get that employee to resign on their own.
That way, the employer believes they won’t have to deal with any reputation issues.
The problem with this is that Black employees are pushed to the brink.
They are not doing ok. It’s a toxic situation, one that carries its own particular type of trauma and accompanying PTSD and it is destroying Black employees. On top of this, Black people continue to get persecuted and murdered around the world for no other reason than the fact that they are Black.
We still have a way to go before we can dismantle the horrible scourge that is racism.
Even though some days I feel largely discouraged, others, I continue to put one foot in front of the other and keep going, keep fighting because I owe it to my grandchildren and to you to make this world racism-free.
Thank you for reading this perspective.