Fortune: Kamala Harris is being ‘competency-checked,’ a gauntlet every Black woman in the workplace has to run
Kamala Harris is being ‘competency-checked,’ a gauntlet every Black woman in the workplace has to run
Shari Dunn is the author of the forthcoming book Qualified: How Competency Checking and Race Collide at Work (Harper Business)
Excerpt:
"What Vice President Harris is facing is something I call competency checking—and it’s familiar to many Black professionals in the workplace.
There are three primary, though not exclusive, ways this shows up. There is the assumption of Black intellectual inferiority and/or a lack of qualifications. In the workplace, this often leads to low expectations, marginalization, and extreme micromanagement. Then there’s the expression of surprise or unease when Black people display intelligence (“You’re so well-spoken!”), which is followed by demands to confirm how this knowledge was acquired and how deep it goes. This can result in dismissal, quizzing, argument, and tokenization. And finally, there’s activation, the fear and unease that can arise when a Black person holds authority, especially in leadership positions. These reactions form an ongoing gauntlet of skepticism that Black and other people of color must navigate to prove their qualifications.
However, pressure on a Black political candidate or executive doesn’t just come from outside their community—it also comes from within. Should Kamala Harris win, she cannot fix every historical wrong done to Black people that we might wish for in one, four, or even eight years.”