Employers and co-workers want Black women’s expertise. But are they paying them for it?

After a summer of protests calling to defund the police, protect Black lives, and end systemic racism, many workplaces have publicly acknowledged the need to do better by their Black employees. But progress can be slow: In the months after the George Floyd protests, Black women have taken to social media to call out being asked to do unpaid work or serve as an encyclopedia on racial justice for their inquisitive non-Black co-workers.

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For Black women, the experience of being underappreciated or undervalued despite being asked to take on more work is hardly exclusive to the workplace; politically speaking, Black women make up a powerful voting bloc that is often overlooked, despite consistent rates of high voter turnout. They also tend to vote Democrat – a national exit poll found that 91% of Black women voters cast their ballot for Joe Biden, more than any other demographic.

And yet Black women often do not get credit for the (paid and unpaid) work they do, and are met instead with demands for more participation, whether it’s civically or in the workplace. Following this summer of protests, Black employees of all genders have been asked to spearhead diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts at work. Sometimes, as the New York Times reports, Black employees are asked to do this despite the fact that anti-racist education is not their area of expertise. When companies ask their Black workers to lead such efforts – without offering them some kind of compensation or considering whether or not their employees feel like they can really say no – bosses risk replicating the same racist and unfair power structures that they wish to eradicate within their organizations.

This summer served as a point of reflection for many Black women: who is asked to step up at work, and who gets compensated for it? The Guardian spoke to three Black women about their experiences being undervalued at work, despite their expertise being sought out more than ever.

Shardé Davis, 31: ‘If this is the norm, it’s unhealthy’

Location: Hartford, Connecticut
Occupation: assistant professor, communication at the University of Connecticut

I was approached by an organization to help them do work around dismantling racism – specifically anti-Black racism. It happened in June and I remember that, because I believe it happened on Juneteenth. I remember saying to myself: “You are literally asking me to do unpaid work on combating anti-Blackness on Juneteenth.” And this organization absolutely had the ability to pay me. I was truly appalled. I don’t even think it crossed the minds of the people asking me, how inappropriate it was. Most of them were white.

I thought about how I was in grief and mourning death, fearing for my life and the lives of my loved ones because of Covid-19. So this organization had asked me to do this, and I retorted with a question about compensation for my time. Their response is: “Well, this is considered service,” similar to when academics do things like give keynotes, do webinars or research presentations. I had to take the time to explain why I should not be expected to do this kind of work for free, when there are people out there who are specifically trained in anti-racism education and who get paid to do this work for clients. Maybe this is the norm, but if so, it’s an unhealthy norm that’s been created by the professional class in the US.

As an academic, it is part of my job to do service, which, yes, is basically free labor. But it’s common knowledge that Black women and other women of color do more hours of service than our white counterparts. We’re overloaded with service, and oftentimes our service is related to DEI work, even if that’s not our professional expertise.

Bukky Adebayo, 29: ‘People are saying, “I’m asking you as the only Black person I know to help me make sense of this moment”’

Location: Oakland, California
Occupation: senior product manager at GitHub

In the summer of 2016, when Philando Castile died, I was having a conversation with my co-worker. He said something like: “If Black people listened to and followed police instructions, then this shit wouldn’t happen.’” I was trying to explain that it’s actually about how police interact with Black people. It was a small startup, and I was one of maybe two women who worked there [at the time], and the only Black person. .

My co-worker was adamant that he was right, and then he went home and watched the video of Philando Castile. He came back the next day and was like: “I’m sorry, I apologize for being kind of an asshole.” And it was one of those moments when I said to myself: “The work of educating folks on racism in America is not my job.” I got mad. I had to leave at the end of the day. I was like:“You know what? There’s no more work that’s gonna happen. I’m just going to go home and chill.”

I had another co-worker of color who said something in my defense, who tried really hard to get across the point that what our other co-worker was saying was not cool. I hit him up afterwards and thanked him. I’ve been in scenarios where people don’t say anything.

I feel like something acute happened in that moment. Before he watched the Philando Castile video, my co-worker was essentially asking me to justify what was going on in the world, to explain the protests around police brutality . People are legitimately and transparently saying: “I don’t know how to make sense of this moment, and I’m asking you as the only Black person I know to help me make sense of this moment.” In the past, people haven’t been as blatant and upfront about that. [Even then,] I’m trying to help people navigate these questions without them explicitly asking me for that. Because in order for me to work with you, I’m going to [need you to] understand race and gender and the context [of these moments].

Jaila Johnson, 25: ‘Sometimes they will come back with a budget. Sometimes they won’t’

Location: St Petersburg, Florida
Occupation: influencer, K-12 science teacher

I started doing beauty videos after I stopped relaxing my hair and started wearing it naturally. I had graduated high school, started college, and didn’t have anybody that I could just go to and get my hair done or braided up. So I had to teach myself, and that’s when I started making braiding tutorials or twisting tutorials and putting them on YouTube, just to contribute to the online community that I was also benefiting from.

Recently, I went through something with an Amazon vendor that I had worked with previously; I found out that they’d taken one of my videos – it was about how to install passion twists – and shared it on their page without asking me or without even crediting me. They had blurred out my handle from the video; I had a watermark on the video, [but] they blurred that out too. They were using my content to advertise for their business. I was able to reach out to them and get it taken down. When I asked for an explanation of how that happened, their response was something like, “Oh, it was a mistake. It wasn’t communicated properly within our team.”

This happens more often than you think, especially working in the Black hair niche. Going behind a content creator who’s put in time editing their work and then manipulating that content to blur out any trace of their work is intentional.

I shouldn’t have had to find that video and complained for it to get taken down. I don’t know how long it was up [on their page] before that. All I could think of was: how many sales did they make during that time, with my video and my page on your storefront, essentially serving as an advertisement?

Within the larger beauty industry, Black women are still very much undervalued and underpaid. And it’s something that isn’t new, it isn’t surprising, but it’s still disappointing. [It’s] still disappointing to see the numbers. You can have the [right] metrics, you can have 333,000 followers, and still get offered free [beauty] products as compensation.

When I get approached to do unpaid work, I make it clear that I don’t accept free products as payment. I ask something along the lines of, ‘Is there a proposed budget for this?’ And if not, then I move along. Sometimes they will come back with a budget. Sometimes they won’t. To me, it’s no hard feelings. If I wanted to make this my full-time job, would I be able to make a living wage? Because the people who do have significant followers and engagement are still being lowballed and underpaid, especially Black women.