THIS IS NOT ABOUT CLAUDINE GAY
It is about the scape-goating of ambitious Black women who dare to dream that we can take on the world
Yesterday right before the news of the resignation of Claudine Gay, the first Black Woman President of Harvard, was announced, I wrote these words in my journal “why are you so afraid of being seen... especially professionally?
The answer came soon after with the news of President Gays resignation.
To be clear, to be a visible Black woman doing excellent work in the world is to walk around with a target on your back.
While therapist, coaches, vulnerability researchers will say that Black women suffer from “imposter syndrome” when we refuse to position ourselves in seats of power in the very same hegemonic systems that seek to strip our people of human rights and human dignity, the diagnosis is not always that simple or accurate.
The media was quick to say that Claudine Gay resigned because of allegations of plagiarism. And yet when the Harvard Board investigated these allegations back in December, they came to the conclusion that “she did not violate their standards for research and merely needed some additional citations.”
The media also said she was being anti-Semitic because she allowed Pro-Palestine protests to happen on campus. What is interesting to me is how The Harvard community has been known to allegedly value “free speech” that is until a Black woman president of the university says that Palestine students on campus have the right to protest their homeland being destroyed.
What was most striking to me about her resignation was the line “It has become clear that it is in the best interests of Harvard for me to resign...” Who is Harvard in this context? The students? The Board? In whose best interest is it for the first Black president of Harvard to step down after a few month? All the Black women in the room know the answer to that question. At least those of us who have had professional experiences that have left us with the painful knowledge that the same people who sang our praises were never invested in protecting us from whitelash, their "codes," and their own internalized racism, bigotry, and misogynoir.
For those who are not familiar with the experience, I would encourage you to familiarize yourself with Dr. Kecia M. Thomas' work on the “Pet to Threat" phenomena that Black women experience in the work place.
This is not about Claudine Gay.
It is about the scape-goating of ambitious Black women who dare to dream that we can take on the world. A professional “stay in your lane” if you will. And this is nothing new. Dr. Gay is just the latest iteration of this.
Black Women in the Western context who continue to aspire to break glass ceilings already know how much we have stacked up against us.
What we maybe need to collectively have conversations about is how much longer we are willing to continue being the collateral damage in the name of our ambition. And maybe its time to re-negotiate our relationship to ambition so that we don't keep expending our life force in service to people and institutions who have no intention of caring for us in return.
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