Recently, one of my friends expressed disappointment in her full-time employer for not addressing the current state of affairs with its employees. She works in healthcare and her employer is simply operating business as usual. Social distancing is the only priority while social justice is a mere option. As a Black employee, it's not a good feeling.
Or a good sign.
What a company's complete silence toward protests against police brutality or our fight for civil rights, equality and basic respect as human beings shows us is that "they don't care about you or your advancement," says Lauren Wesley Wilson of ColorComm.
Wilson, founder and CEO of the women's empowerment corporation ColorComm, recently led a conversation on corporate activism and how it pertains to company culture as well as today's climate. To Wilson, corporate activism means:
To strategically advocate for equality inside corporations to ensure underrepresented employees have the same opportunity for advancement as their white counterparts.
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This support can come in a variety of diversity and inclusion forms such as:
- Hiring a chief diversity officer;
- Partnering with community-based organizations;
- Recruiting at historically black colleges and universities; or
- Implementing human resource guidelines for inclusion.
But the programs are essentially meaningless if persons of color make up less than 30% of senior leadership, Wilson says. Who's really going to enforce them? And a company's words can come across as empty with no action to back them up.
Over the past week, my IG timeline alone has been inundated with a steady stream of company commitments to Black Lives Matter referencing "responsibility" and "rising up against racial injustice." We also see companies publicly pledging millions of dollars to various community organizations. And more recently, we see companies racing to produce CVS-style receipts detailing the number of Black executives, staff and board members on their teams for the Pull Up or Shut Up campaign. Some of those figures make me wonder if those companies should've chosen to remain mute like the hospital where my friend works.
One of y'all fave brands can't participate in the #pulluporshutup challenge because their team is all white....has always been....they only use black faces to sell....#butyallaintreadyforthatconvo
— Tina (@thefancyfaced) June 4, 2020
Wilson says every company doesn't need to make a public statement, though, especially if that company isn't internally representative of what they're proclaiming. She's referring to establishments that vow to stand behind the cause or donate money yet continuously lay off persons of color en masse during the pandemic. Or companies that slowly promote us to C-suite and management roles or pay us far less than our white peers in salary, raises and bonus.
Still Wilson says leadership absolutely needs to address the current state of affairs to their employees – at least show us some compassion or concern – and senior management also needs to create a plan for internal changes, especially if we're missing from the organization charts on the company's "About Us" web pages.
Some employers will need a push to make any real change. Others will need a clue. Here's what you can do to help:
Outright ask your senior management their plans to encourage diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
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This isn't a question that's outside or above our pay grades. We can ask even if we don't work in human resources. We also can't assume there's a program already in place and if there is, the existing plan may not even work. In fact, Wilson says that programs such as unconscious bias training, which is designed to raise awareness of microaggressions in the workplace, are usually the worst when it comes to effectiveness.
Additionally, we should ask what specific programs are in place to eradicate racial biases in hiring and promoting. And don't be afraid to find out how long employees who look like us remain in a single position, how far we can climb up the ladder and how long we stay with the company.
Discreetly form your own team of allies.
Recruit your sisters for solidarity but also gather a small but diverse group of coworkers who will fully champion your ideas for change when the time comes to formally present them. In other words, we'll need to round up Karen's more liberal cousins as our backup. I know, it sucks but don't misunderstand this as seeking their validation. They're merely a voice, or more like an echo. Just be sure you're always the one spearheading this (secret) task force.
Ask senior management how their donated funds are being used by receiving organizations.
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Find out if your company's donation to activist groups and other nonprofits is going towards education or funding for community initiatives and which ones. Also inquire whether that money would've been of better use in-house. The key is to determine if those donated dollars are, as Wilson puts it, a change opportunity or a PR opportunity.
Unfortunately, there will be instances where corporate activism is only a buzzword. Despite the conversations, social media posts and charitable contributions, some of us still won't get that much-deserved promotion or pay increase at our current jobs. And we won't get a simple email acknowledging the horrors that continuously affect our lives and livelihoods every single day. At that point it's time for my colleague and anyone else in her predicament, to seek new employment. Invest your time and talent in an organization that invests in you and shows you that our Black Lives truly do Matter.
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While speaking to xoNecole, Eva shares that she’s a lot like the beloved 1994 character in many ways. “Lyric is so me. She's the odd flower. A flower nonetheless, but definitely not a peony,” she tells us.
“She's not the average flower you see presented, and so she reminds me of myself. I'm a sunflower, beautiful, but different. And what I loved about her character then, and even more so now, is that she was very sure of herself.
"Sure of what she wanted in life and okay to sacrifice her moments right now, to get what she knew she deserved later. And that is me. I'm not an instant gratification kind of a person. I am a long game. I'm not a sprinter, I'm a marathon.
America first fell in love with Eva when she graced our screens on cycle 3 of America’s Next Top Model in 2004, which she emerged as the winner. Since then, she's ventured into different avenues, from acting on various TV series like House of Payne to starring on Real Housewives of Atlanta.
Je-Caryous Johnson Entertainment
Eva praises her castmates and the play’s producer, Je’Caryous for her positive experience. “You know what? Je’Caryous fuels my audacity car daily, ‘cause I consider myself an extremely audacious woman, and I believe in what I know, even if no one else knows it, because God gave it to me. So I know what I know. That is who Je’Caryous is.”
But the mom of three isn’t the only one in the family who enjoys acting. Eva reveals her daughter Marley has also caught the acting bug.
“It is the most adorable thing you can ever see. She’s got a part in her school play. She's in her chorus, and she loves it,” she says. “I don't know if she loves it, because it's like, mommy does it, so maybe I should do it, but there is something about her.”
Overall, Eva hopes that her contribution to the role and the play as a whole serves as motivation for others to reach for the stars.
“I want them to walk out with hope. I want them to re-vision their dreams. Whatever they were. Whatever they are. To re-see them and then have that thing inside of them say, ‘You know what? I'm going to do that. Whatever dream you put on the back burner, go pick it up.
"Whatever dream you've accomplished, make a new dream, but continue to reach for the stars. Continue to reach for what is beyond what people say we can do, especially as [a] Black collective but especially as Black women. When it comes to us and who we are and what we accept and what we're worth, it's not about having seen it before. It's about knowing that I deserve it.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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Fortunately, five simple words have simplified my dating process and ushered in clarity faster: “Would my husband do this?”
A couple of years ago, I met an entertainment lawyer who was tonguing down a twenty-something-year-old woman for breakfast while I slurped my green smoothie and chomped on a flatbread sandwich. Okay, Black love, I grinned and thought as I sauntered out of the Joe & The Juice. As soon as I stepped down from the front door, a torrential downpour of Miami summer rain cascaded and throttled me back inside to wait out the storm.
I grabbed a hot green tea and vacillated between peering out the wet door and anxiously checking my watch. My lengthy agenda started with attending the Tabitha Brown and Chance Brown’s “Black Love” panel, and I was already late. That’s when the lawyer introduced himself to me, after he made a joke about neither one of us wanting to get soaked by the rain. His female companion had braved the storm, leaving us to find our commonalities.
We both lived in L.A. and had traveled to the American Black Film Festival to expand our network. He represented various artists, including entertainment writers, while I was working as a writer/creative producer in Hollywood.
While there is no shortage of internet advice on how to strategically meet a prominent man at conferences, if I spend my hard-earned funds on career growth, I have tunnel vision, and that doesn’t include finding Mr. Right. So, I stowed his contact details away as strictly professional.
Keep It Cute Love And Hip Hop GIFGiphyAs the humidity and mosquitoes were rising around L.A., two months later, another suitor-turned-terrible match cooled off after three unimpressive dates and a bevy of red flags. I posted what some of my friends called a thirst trap, but it was really me wearing a black freakum jumpsuit with a plunging neckline to my friend’s 35th birthday soiree despite feeling oh, so unsexy and bloated on my cycle.
I’d been waiting to post a sassy caption and finally had the perfect picture to match: “You not asking for too much, you just asking the wrong MF.”
That’s when the entertainment lawyer swooped into my DMs and asked me to dinner. I was quite confused. Is he asking me on a date? Or is this professional? Common sense would’ve picked the former. Once it clicked that this would in fact be a date, I told my mentor, who’s been happily married for over twenty years and has often been a guiding light and has steered me away from the wrong men.
Upon telling him about how we met, he emphatically stated, “He ain’t it.” He followed up with a simple question, "You have to ask yourself: Would my husband do this? Would you tell others that you met your husband, tonguing down another woman, and later married him?"
Aint It No Way GIF by UFCGiphyOuch. The thought-provoking question cleared any haze. Prior to going out with the lawyer, the first thing I inquired about was the woman.
“You saw that?” He said, taken aback that I’d witnessed his steamy PDA. Surely, anyone with two open eyes peeped him caressing her backside as he kissed her in the middle of the coffee shop.
He brushed her off as a casual someone he’d gone on a couple of dates with but had since stopped talking to. He said he hadn’t been in a serious relationship in over three years. Though I was still doubtful, dating in L.A. is treacherous and ephemeral. Making it past three months is considered a rarity.
With my antennae alert, I dined with him at a cozy beachside steakhouse restaurant where we were serenaded by a live jazz band. I’d emphasized forming a platonic friendship first.
Break Up Friendship GIF by TLCGiphy“I’ll come to you,” he obliged. I liked that he had made me a priority by driving over 50 miles to see me. I also liked the effort he made to check in with me daily. But I still couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that he initiated on a professional pretense and then alley hooped through the back door on a romantic venture, which bombarded me with confusion.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my dating life, God is not the author of confusion; any man who brings confusion, rather than clarity, is simply not The One. It doesn’t matter how many boxes he checks–eventually, that confusion will manifest itself into bigger problems, in time.
After diving into deeper conversations on the phone, post our first dinner date, I quickly realized this man was indeed not The One for me. But I’m grateful for the valuable lesson I learned.
I don’t expect some unattainable fairytale of a husband; we all have our own flaws and conflict is inevitable, but after dating for two decades, through failure and success, I’ve realized that the person I ultimately marry must mirror the values I exert into the world. He must reciprocate kindness, patience, and respect. He must be quick to listen and slow to respond. He needs to be forgiving and trustworthy, practice healthy communication, and be a man of his word at the bare minimum.
If I’d had “Would my husband do this?” in my toolbox when I was dating and floundering in stagnant relationships, in my twenties, it would’ve saved me a lot of precious time. But now that I’m equipped with the reminder, it’s allowed me to ground myself in my non-negotiables and set/maintain the standard for the special person, I’ll one day say, “I do,” to.
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