HBO Max Launched Its Rebrand in Just About the Grossest Way Possible While Nella and Hazel contend with impossible decisions, the structure that made those decisions necessary remains the same-if not more powerful, with its tokens safely secured. The choice is a false one, but it’s unclear if the author is aware of that. Those same forces eventually offer Nella a choice: her career or her identity. That’s why it’s so disappointing that two recent books that attempt to unpack the unique dilemmas faced by Black women in the workplace fall flat.

This anxiety-inducing, disturbing experience is fertile ground for horror, and would make the perfect basis for a thriller novel. One unexpectedly chilly interaction or terse email can suddenly reframe an entire work relationship, slipping you into a parallel inverse universe where every kindness was actually a veiled attempt at sabotage. The hypervisibility that comes with being “the only one” can lead to constant second-guessing of our instincts.

Cultural differences and unspoken norms can create the sense that colleagues are speaking on a frequency that requires a lobotomy to tune into. Du Bois described-is just one aspect of what Black women in predominantly white workplaces of all kinds endure. This kind of experience-which results in justified paranoia and hypervigilance being layered on top of the “double consciousness” W.E.B. Send me updates about Slate special offers. “That’s when women are probably most vulnerable to getting recast as threatening, because their colleagues are pushing back on the person legitimately exerting their influence in the workplace,” she said. In an interview with Zora magazine, she explained that the inflection point most often came just as the women she spoke to were in a position for promotion or leadership. Thomas dubbed that transformation the “pet to threat” phenomenon.

But as they began to push for opportunities to grow or expand their roles, the benevolent tolerance they had enjoyed transformed into pushback, if not outright hostility. At the beginning of their careers, the women she spoke to said they believed they were well liked, if tokenized or overprotected by colleagues. Thomas, now dean of the college of arts and sciences at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, noticed an unsettling theme repeating itself in the interviews she conducted. While researching the leadership journeys of Black women in academia, psychologist Kecia M.

All her little secrets