When I one day wrote the thing about how difficult it is for people to accept black women's authority I will have a lot of case studies.
Take me for example:
People - especially white people - have a lot of stories they tell themselves about why I am successful. Most of them boil down to me being charismatic (as opposed to accomplished) and the affirmative action bonus.
In my profession any success breeds contempt. Those are the incenctive structures. And we are all surely envious when a man or a white person curries favor in a system that privileges them over us.
But when it is a white person or a man many people see that as natural if unforgiving. *Of course* the tall dude with blue eyes gets more leave or grants or pubs than we do. Of course. We may be envious but we don't think it is a judgment on our own worth.
When I am successful there is some sense that it is both unfair AND unnatural. My success becomes a judgment on people's self worth BECAUSE IT ISN'T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN
Popular black women is one thing. In this job popularity isn't the real currency so we will allow that to a degree. Expertise is the currency and that we guard zealously. To achieve any kind of authority that acknowledges that I am both expert and popular drives some people mad.
And so you get these implications that I stole something or did soemthing wrong or untoward to get here. It is the only explanation other than "a black woman is objectively better at something than I am" that people can articulate.
All of this is compounded by the empirical reality, which is that our systems of supposed meritocracy allows so few black women to have any actual authority that we start to believe it really is natural for there to be so few of us.
And I will write about this one day.
Let me add this to the thread because it is important. I don't even have the good grace to be attractive and thus have the excuse of sleeping my way to the top. It adds to the feeling of unnaturalness people have about my professional status
Anyway I spend a lot of my day on this kind of bullshit. I am productive despite being accomplished and not because of it. Because achievement simply does not confer the same rewards to me that it does men and white people.
