Sometimes It’s Okay to Burn Your Bridges

Being quiet is overrated. Tiffany Haddish and Dr. Timnit Gebru spoke out, and you should too.

Maia Niguel Hoskin, Ph.D.
ZORA

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Tiffany Haddish.
Tiffany Haddish speaks onstage for the 2020 E! People’s Choice Awards held at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California and on broadcast on Sunday, November 15, 2020. Photo: Christopher Polk/E! Entertainment/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

Because we are positioned at the intersection of Black and female, we are often forced to endure two forms of discrimination simultaneously. And those in Hollywood or who occupy well-respected positions at Fortune 500 companies are not exempt.

Fans quickly rallied behind Tiffany Haddish after she called out the Grammys for asking her to host the preshow ceremony but refused to even pick up the tab for her hair and makeup, let alone pay her adequate compensation. The nerve. In a weird twist of fate, around the same time, one of Google’s most prominent computer researchers, artificial intelligence ethicist Timnit Gebru, PhD, accused the company of firing her after she sent an internal email to a diversity-and-inclusion group at Google. The email voiced her frustration over feeling silenced by the company after she released findings from a study she was working on.

Sadly, it seems Gebru’s and Haddish’s experiences only add to a long history in which Black women professionals encounter shady business practices at best and flagrant discriminatory treatment at worst. For decades we have been getting lowballed and paid only a fraction of the salary our White male and female…

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