Recently, I’ve had to manage a situation in which a group of people conspired to keep my voice silent and erase my contributions. It is so interesting to communicate with people who believe that repeating lies multiple times will somehow make them true. Laundering lies works if people are kept siloed but fails to maintain legitimacy when people start comparing notes and connecting the dots. A very messy (and extremely obvious) paper trail exists for anyone willing to confront their own hubris and do their own research in this matter.
Unconscious bias runs deep, but so does the cognitive dissonance involved when confronted with a duplicitous acquaintance. This is where I have compassion, but not to the degree that I will swallow my own words. I may have been the latest victim but I will do all in my power to make certain that no victims come after me.
This is my community and I can’t stand by and watch as real harm is being done to people who I know and respect. People believe that the voice of Black people–women in particular– can be silenced and our presence disappeared in an effort to protect someone about whom Zora Neale Hurston must have written the words, all my skin folk ain’t kinfolk.
I thought logic alone would be enough for people to believe me: documents, emails, text messages, police reports, etcetera exist for the person willing to look even just a little. An Ivy League education taught me to never craft an argument (or even raise my voice) without first having proper credentialed citations to back up my assertions.
If I were to ask any of the people quick to label me a liar for merely stating truths if they thought they were racist and misogynistic by privileging one man’s voice over the glaringly obvious actual paper trail of information the man in question has left that they choose to ignore, they would say no. Is it that hard to fathom that a Black woman figured out some things within a couple weeks that people closer to the situation still choose not to accept or see? So much so that the words, you don’t know anything I don’t already know could be said to me when fraudulent acts have been performed and not brought to light? Doesn’t that implicate you in the fraudulent activity?
To have multiple people connected to the company respond to my concerns by parroting the man in question telling me, this is all just a misunderstanding, does a disservice to my entire community.
When I asked a friend (and former tax lawyer) who now works as a wealth manager for HNWI why people would choose to deny logic and research in favor of one person telling the same untrue story over and over, he reminded me that logic isn’t the default program that many people choose, especially in times of stress. Some people choose greed, or power, or any number of alternative ways (in my case empathy) to ease their own sense of suffering. That is why it is important to have systems in place so it becomes harder to be manipulated by outside forces/people.
One sentence in particular stood out to me a few months ago when I read James Clear’s Atomic Habits: “You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.” I know Clear’s book is primarily concerned with project management, but as a person of color the idea of a persistent System in which we all live came to my mind.
Unconscious bias exists in a racist system in which Black women are at the bottom of the heap. People may have individual goals of seeing themselves as honest and open but, when challenged, falling to the level of the System in which we are all mired leads to the default categorization of Black women as lying, scheming, uneducated, disruptive fools. No matter if evidence points to the contrary.
To know there exists a trove of written proof as well as other outside actors responding in real time to the same situation who are not in any way connected to me seems like an intentional cover-up that has left a company that once had enormous potential vulnerable and on the brink of collapse before it even gets its doors open.
To not even attempt to ask for similar written proof from the person they are protecting seems wildly risky but, I’ve learned that not everyone has goals; some people just have reactions. And some people want to win by any means necessary, even if it means an entire community loses in the process.
