Black Lives [still] Matter

This morning I woke up and felt completely numb. Like many days this year, I am heartbroken and sitting in a place of sorrow and grief. 2020 has taken the lives of many of our personal heroes (Kobe Bryant, C.T. Vivian, John Lewis, Chadwick Boseman and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to name a few) and over 200,000 Americans due to COVID-19. The global pandemic is disproportionately affecting people of color and communities like the one I am from. In addition to what’s happening in the world around us, living and working in complete isolation for the past seven months has weighed heavily on my mental and emotional health. All the while, Black people who look like me are experiencing insurmountable stress, as they question if their lives will ever be valued in a nation that promises liberty and justice for all.

In 2015, I was 28 years old and just moved to Texas for a new job. I was so excited about where this opportunity would take the trajectory of my post-MBA career and personal life. Later that summer, another 28 year old Black woman also moved to Texas for a new job, but she isn’t alive today to tell her story. After a traffic stop and confrontation with a state trooper, Sandra Bland was arrested and found dead in her jail cell. Her death continues to haunt me, not because I’m still skeptical about the results of the investigation, but because Sandra was just like me - an ambitious Black woman with two degrees, a new job and her entire life in front of her. She knew her rights and spoke her mind. Nothing she said or did should have led to her death. She’s supposed to be here.

Now five years later, all of the heartache of Sandra’s death has returned tenfold, with another promising 20-something year old Black woman’s life taken too soon. Breonna Taylor was an EMT and later an emergency room technician that worked at two local hospitals in Louisville, Kentucky. She worked overtime during this pandemic doing what she loved. Breonna was excited about getting engaged to her boyfriend and starting a family. The community she worked hard to protect in the end did not protect her, and like Sandra, her grieving family has received zero justice. I look at photos of Breonna’s mother and sister, and I think of my own. How would they feel if that happened to me? Because it easily could have been me. Black people across this country, though not surprised with the end-result, are grieving another miscarriage of justice. Through our indignation, tears and pain, we continue to fight, just as our ancestors fought for centuries before us – to be valued as human beings in a country we were brought over to and built up, without ever being treated equally.

Why am I sharing this, especially on LinkedIn? Well, put yourself in a Black person’s shoes. One that’s suffering in silence through all of these emotions, but still working, meeting deadlines and smiling on Zoom anyhow. No matter how educated we are, how hard we work, or how far we’ve come, these moments continue to happen to us and break our hearts each time. The systemic racism, police brutality and instances of discrimination and injustice do not occur in a vacuum. They don’t just happen to the actual victims and their loved ones. They happen to everyone that look like them. They happen to everyone that is an American citizen, whether your privilege protects you from such instances or not. As Dr. King stated in a Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere…whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

A few months ago, our LinkedIn feeds were flooded with performative allyship and a new coined term, “slacktivism” from all the brands we know and love. Though the words shared and actions taken may have come from a good place, these moments are bigger than hashtags and viral black boxes on Instagram. And it shouldn’t take video footage of an unarmed Black person being murdered to stir one into outrage or action. After learning the names of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake, Rayshard Brooks, Daniel Prude and countless others this year, issuing blanket company statements, retweeting diversity, equity and inclusion professionals and liking a few posts is just not enough. As HBR shared this summer, is your company actually fighting racism or just talking about it? Ask yourself, what am I doing to support the Black and brown people around me? What can I do to make sure my company’s leadership and talent pool reflects the racial makeup of the customers they serve? How can I not only be not overtly or covertly racist, but proactively anti-racist, even when current events like this don’t affect me?

I don’t like politics on LinkedIn as much as the next person, but this is not a political issue. This is an American issue and most importantly, a human issue - one that we should each acknowledge, take ownership of, and be allies for. I ask that you take a moment to not only be human, but empathetic and supportive of Black people in the spaces you occupy, conference calls you join, offices you walk through and companies you proudly work for. The pain I and others that look like me feel is not going away, but with every intentional conversation, act of kindness and ounce of genuine support, we can all do our part to make this country and world a little better. It’s up to each of us to strengthen our communities and workplaces so that everyone feels like they matter and belong, can show up as their whole self, and truly feel safe. This is the America that we are all promised, and the America that we each deserve.

Black Lives [still] Matter. Today and always.

ACG