Black Women and Burnout In The Workplace
Designed by Samantha Healy
“Burnout looks different for Black women. It changes you. It changed me. ”
When a black woman experiences burnout in the workplace, the physical and mental drain intensifies from the culmination of factors not necessarily tied to the work itself. Most Black women are not lacking in skills or intelligence to perform well at work and handle a heavy workload. We are among the most educated in the United States and constitute over 65% of all Black people who earn a doctoral degree. Despite our competence and work ethic, we often end up in what feels like impossible roles in the workplace.
When you belong to an intersectional workplace minority, as a Black woman, you are in the crosshairs of multiple microaggressions and prejudiced expectations about your performance. Misogynoir, a term coined by Moya Bailey, describes the unique oppression that Black women face at the intersections of these specific two identities. Moving through the workplace and society at large as a Black woman means you are likely to encounter targeted racial and gender mistreatment, often at the same time. Racism and misogyny form an ugly marriage when it comes to the way we are treated, often taking the worst elements of both.
Misogynoir Drives Black Women to Burnout
The Angry Black Woman Stereotype
Of the most popular and damaging stereotypes about Black women is the “angry black woman” or the “Sapphire,” which traces back to the enslavement of Africans in America.
From the 1800s through the mid-1900s, the “Sapphire” caricature was used to describe very bold, overbearing, and brash Black women that took over the strenuous work and usurped the roles thought to be just for men (during slavery and post-slavery). Frequently depicted in offensive cartoons and sculptures, this propaganda was used to over-masculinize Black women. At this time in U.S. society, Black people and women of all races were not supposed to stray away from their fixed, conventional roles. And despite decades of Black women’s progress in the fight for equality, opportunities for education, and leadership, many of us still feel like we are trying to reckon with this preconceived notion of our being.
Today, the consequences of this stereotype are a primary reason black women are often excluded from opportunities for career growth and are on track for burnout from day one at many organizations. As a function of sexism, women are commonly told that they are “too emotional” for executive leadership roles. To be taken seriously, they must be more stoic, like their male counterparts.
Black women not only contend with this universal emotional policing but also have to worry that they don’t come across as too blunt or direct at work for fear of being seen as hostile. If you are too jovial or amicable, you're not serious about your career. But if you’re too serious about your work, you’re too much. Many of these biases against Black women at work are “unconscious” and the result of living in a world where anti-Blackness and sexism have, and still do, run rampant.
This balancing act that Black women experience on the job leaves no room for purely existing while getting our work done, which compounds the exhaustion from everyday workplace stresses. For many, we feel that the actual quality of our work is on the same level of importance as how “not threatened” we make the men and non-Black people around us feel. Due to this, Black women often do not communicate with their managers or leadership about these internal struggles or need for support out of fear of making the work environment more hostile. We suffer in silence, not seeing a pathway forward for our work environments to be more inclusive for us until we exhaust ourselves of patience and willingness to participate in a work culture that keeps us contained and limited. We burn out in the process of trying to stay afloat in a society that perhaps never wanted to create space for us to be empowered.
Exploitation
40% of black women have our judgment questioned in our area of expertise. As both a woman and a black person, your intellect and skills are scrutinized and denied based on several stereotypes, making it especially hard for Black women’s contributions to be acknowledged and supported. This perceived incompetence leads to Black women being mistreated at work and makes it difficult for Black women to receive leadership roles. For every 100 men promoted to a managerial position, only 60 black women are.
To reduce discriminatory practices and bias that perpetuate these challenges for employees from marginalized communities, many companies mandate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training that, while important, can create an environment where some believe the need for anti-racism work ends with the training. However, upon closer inspection, many organizations have not been able to deliver this reform without exploiting the labor of Black women.
My first job out of undergrad gave me a taste of how my identity as a Black woman in a “progressive” organization made me an easy target for workplace exploitation. As the only Black person (let alone a Black woman) on my team, I was primed to believe my perspective would be a necessary asset to round out the work of a team composed solely of White people. Instead of reading between the lines and realizing they hired me to be the token Black person, I felt like this was an honor.
Tasked with performing the duties befitting an entire team and with a laughable salary for the amount of work I was responsible for, I worked myself to the bone at this job. And it was psychologically destructive. While I felt enormous pressure being the only Black woman on this team, I was also aware that if I left, there would be no semblance of diversity in projects that desperately needed more.
There was no amount of fluffy “we are inclusive and anti-racist” language that could change the reality that this was not a space safe for a Black woman to work. I encountered racist microaggressions daily, listened to coworkers speak about the Black community like we were meaningless, and even sat in a meeting where executive leadership disparaged the Black and LGBTQIA+ communities. In my outrage, I wondered why I was hired by this company that claimed to be progressive but saw minorities as disposable pawns for financial gains. That’s when it hit me; my inclusion in their company was their symbol of progress. As long as there was one face like mine in the room, they did not need to be worried about how tone-deaf and ignorant the workplace culture was. I was simultaneously a victim and a part of the problem.
Black women know what it’s like to enter spaces as a minority and become enshrined in roles far beyond the scope of the position we contractually agreed to do. Defer to the Black woman to be a catch-all figure on matters of DEI, the “voice of the Black experience” (in the most monolithic sense), the go-to person to write about “the black issues'' and also be responsible for a large workload that we rarely receive credit for doing single-handedly.
Even writing this, I can feel the oncoming wave of exhaustion as I remember how all these dynamics ate away my spirit. I began to feel the drain of this toxic work environment long into my weekends. I started to experience difficulty sleeping and eating– really just being a functional version of myself, because of the mental turmoil I was warring with to just get through the workday. Feeling tokenized and exploited throughout most of my waking hours induced a depression in me that as a freshly turned 22-year-old, I didn’t even have the vocabulary for. I learned what the term burnout was from my therapist who helped me identify how the conditions of my workplace were causing severe psychological and even physical damage to my well-being.
Leaving that company was an act of survival for me. The longer I stayed there, feeling stuck in an environment that openly dehumanized me and my community, the more I could feel I was losing touch with all of the special qualities that made me who I am. A job is not supposed to make you feel like you’re rotting from the inside out. The right job for you will nurture and amplify you as a human first and a worker second. There are roles and companies that want you to thrive and believe you deserve to work with a team of individuals who can provide you with a sense of belonging.
Inclusivity Is a Practice, Not Just A Word
Nearly half of all companies check reviews and promotions for bias based on gender, while only 18% look at results for bias compounded by race and gender. Most companies do not consider how your racial identity interacts with your gender identity to spur specific forms of discrimination. This discrepancy makes Black women’s distinct forms of mistreatment feel invisible to our employers and can cause us to question our lived experiences. We know that the kind of misogyny and racism we experience is different from others we work with, and yet, most employers don’t bother to recognize the difference.
Black women see it in how we make 58 cents to the dollar for the same work for a man from the dominant group.
Black women feel it, as 66% of us admit to not feeling like a valued team member at work.
If you are in leadership and only consider how race, gender, and sexuality intersect during mandatory DEI sessions, you are doing a disservice to yourself and your entire team. Combating prejudice and inherent bias requires consistent effort, self-reflection, and listening to your team when they raise issues. Be extra critical of your thoughts. Before jumping to conclusions about employee attitudes and capacity, ask yourself where these ideas stem from in your mind.
Is your employee just an angry person, or are they chronically overworked?
Is your teammate antisocial, or are they struggling to socialize in an isolating environment?
Is my colleague undermining my expertise, or am I just feeling threatened?
Create a safe space for your team to elevate their concerns, needs, and experiences. Consider how the demographics of your team may be isolating or further marginalizing team members and use those insights to grow a more diverse group. Not considering how these dynamics are harmful and exclusionary creates the perfect conditions for suffering, reduced efficiency, and, most clearly, employee burnout.
Rarely does an employee experience burnout without it being apparent to team members. It is your responsibility as a leader and colleague to check in and implement changes that can help your teammate come out of burnout before it’s too late. Making a safe workplace culture for Black women is not just the employee's responsibility. Leadership sets the tone and models the expected behavior, however, all employees create the actual environment. The moment you offload that responsibility to a Black woman who did not explicitly sign up for that role, you begin a cycle of exploitation that almost certainly will burn her out.
Moving Forward From Burnout
If you are a Black woman and find yourself teetering on the edge of burnout in your current job, it’s necessary to 1. Acknowledge and validate your emotions 2. Ask yourself if the root causes of your burnout can be fixed–and at what cost. Suppose you feel burnt out because you need time off or assistance with a project; it’s worth consulting with your management and communicating your needs. Depending on the workplace, these might be easy fixes that can release some stress.
However, if your burnout is linked to unchecked company cultural and environmental stressors, discrimination, and lack of opportunities, there might not be an easy fix. Indeed trying to fix the system from within can create some progress, but if preserving your mental health that’s already declining from burnout is your main priority, try to remove yourself if possible. You can not begin to heal or reach your fullest potential in a toxic environment. Choosing your health is one of the most radical forms of self-love you can do in your professional life as it will promote longevity and career satisfaction. Black women deserve a career that enables personal growth, community, and fulfillment.
