Member-only story
Let’s Get Real About Why Women of Color Are So Tired
Playing by the rules in capitalist America comes at the cost of our mental, physical, and emotional health
Women of color leaders are guarding a dirty little secret: Our work is eroding our mental, physical, and emotional health. We are slowly wrecking ourselves as we try to transform political organizations, foundations, media rooms, nonprofits, and the publishing industry. In the first few weeks of 2020 alone, every conversation I’ve had with my colleagues revolved around how we’re exhausted and struggling at best, or suffering from a specific illness at worst.
For nearly three decades, I have worked in the nonprofit world, which I thought was focused on justice and love. So have many of my peers. But we have also, often unknowingly, become complicit in a capitalistic system that encourages competition and compromise.
With rare exceptions (like Ayanna Pressley’s recent revelation of alopecia), we’re not talking publicly about our deep exhaustion for many reasons, including our own shame and sense of failure. It’s time for us to confront some of the core reasons for our suffering: the scarcity mentality and a culture of celebrity and competition that underpins even the most progressive spaces. Women of color experience this culture…
