During the two-week timeframe leading up to August 1, the due date for my mortgage payment, I called them up and offered them the following in lieu of money—

• visibility and exposure
• networking opportunities
• waived conference attendance fee

They turned me down. Imagine that! They said “no” to every single thing I offered and insisted on cold hard cash.

Moral of the story…..

What I keep getting offered as payment does NOT translate into “bill pay.”

Hmm.

And therein brings me to the focus of this post.

I know. What follows will absolutely be redundant to Black women.

A Little Context

“White collar criming” has been happening in plain sight. Under the guise of “picking our brain” and “getting our thoughts,” Black women’s ideas and work are vulnerable to outright theft.

Everybody but us is cashing in on and profiting off of our intellectual property.

No Black woman is exempt….whether working as an entrepreneur or working in a corporate space or building a brand on Tik Tok.

Black women are under-valued, under-paid, and over-exploited…..despite being over-educated and over-qualified.

Most of the perpetrators are melanin-deficient.

Google it.

Riddle of The Day (and Every Day)

What do you call it when the widening pay gap for Black women is exacerbated by our continued exploitation as a free labor source?

Answer: Adding INSULT to INJURY.

Let’s briefly review just some of the insults.

Please note that I’ve deliberately refrained from going into detail and in-depth analysis. If you know why, you’re already ahead of most who’ll read this newsletter edition.

Request for Proposal (RFP)

Guurrrrrllll….it’s not a “request for proposal.”

It’s really “rob from people.”

I just don’t have the bandwidth to take on an RFP right now. Sounds like they want a dissertation to even be considered. Too much upfront convincing required. Folks are reaching out knowing they already want to hire me, and so they just want to know “how much.” I’m not having to jump through any hoops.

That’s how I see it.

RFPs, generally speaking are a “no” for me. (The exceptions are very rare.)

Many Black women I know steer away from submitting RFPs because it’s a tool used to steal our ideas without paying us.

A DEI consultant friend of mine recently sent me a 14-page RFP from a company that employs 66 people, because she was considering “going for it.”

Based on what they were requiring, she admitted that it would take her a week to work on it—mind you, a non-compensated week. She ultimately decided that she just couldn’t afford to work a week for free against great odds.

What are the “great odds”?

I’m so glad you asked.

I can attest to the fact that the work the RFP would have entailed was monumental. So imagine my friend investing and pouring into that RFP to “gift” them a detailed strategy…only to then be informed by the company that they’ve decided to go with someone else.

Based on our lived experience, she had a good shot at her ideas being co-opted and repurposed by someone with a dramatically lower melanin level than her….. a white woman or a white-adjacent Asian woman.

In the end, she ended up doing what many of us end up doing—calling the whole thing “that RFP nonsense.”

Data supports that most contracts for DEI work are awarded to white women and white-owned companies.

Google it.

Discovery Calls

I don’t do discovery calls. (The exceptions are very rare.)

My general manager does the discovery calls whereby folks are informed upfront that the call will be a maximum of 20 minutes. That way, no one is trying to slip in a free consultation. The time is strategically short, and also I’m not the one on the line.

And I’m convinced that “discovery calls” got their name because racial capitalists kept “discovering” Black women’s content—and using it as their own—after insisting on an introductory call under the pretense of finding out what services we offer even when we make it clear on our…..uh, I dunno…..description of services…..accessible on our website and as a downloadable printable pdf.

Anyhoo…we should have known better based on the historical use of the term “discovery.”

After all, in the spirit of their “hero” Columbus, it was (and remains) the preferred term used by colonizers when they were stealing, claiming, and killing but yet calling it “discovering.”

Their “discovery” worked with land, property, and bodies. So, in other words, just like today.

Google it.

The Visibility and Exposure (Non)Payment Plan

While it is true that the racial pay gap has widened for Black women, this is one area in which Black women as a demographic beat out all other groups.

We are the reigning champions of this category.

The (non)payment plan works like this…

An entity—looking to performatively “diversify” a white-centering conference or podcast—reaches out to a Black woman and extends an invitation to be “the only” on a panel, in a break-out session, as a “special guest,” etc.

Part of the sales pitch is trying to convince us what a privilege it is and how grateful we should be to be offered the opportunity for VISIBILITY and EXPOSURE.

When we turn down this exploitative dumbfukkkery, they then have the caucacity to be shocked and disappointed that we’d throw away such an opportunity. Oh puhleezzze…

That gratefulness gaslighting narrative is straight out of their enslaver ancestors’ playbook. Rule 37: “Make the enslaved feel grateful for their own enslavement.”

Google it.

“Pick Your Brain” Approach

This one comes disguised as an “innocent” DM or a request to “get to know you” virtual coffee.

I’ve never liked this as an expression in any circumstance.

Because the English language is a “colonizer language,” it is rife with sinister references. I’ve been saying it louder and more explicitly that the “language is in on it.”

And in this case, “picking your brain” calls up our collective consciousness of night riders, medical experimentation, and other atrocities.

White folks who want to “pick our brains” raise a huge red flag for me.

They are seeking to “harvest” our thoughts, our insights, our ideas……

“To pick someone’s brain is to question someone who is better informed and more expert about a subject than yourself in order to obtain information.”

This turn of phrase dates back to the mid-nineteenth century.

When you ask to pick someone’s brain, you are essentially wanting to extract value without adding value.

Boom!

Sound familiar?

That’s the over-riding principle for colonization, enslavement, oppression, exploitation, etc.

Google it.

The Meet-and-Greet with the Board

“We want our entire board to meet you and learn about your approach.”

That’s what the CHRO said to me after I had been vetted and approved by him and the CEO.

After asking clarifying questions, I discovered that the intent was to get a “freebie consultation” with no guarantee that I would be hired as an external consultant.

Mind you, this was after I had been “suckered” by the CEO into believing that he would be hiring me. The only thing left was for me to iron out arrangements with the CHRO. At least that’s how he positioned it to me.

When I fired off an email to both the CEO and CHRO, a “thank you, but no thank you” communication that outlined in detail the reason I was declining to present to the board without compensation, I got in essence only a curt “okay, good-bye” from the CHRO.

And I never heard from the CEO again.

Free consultations and group presentations are being disguised as “interviews” and group “meet-and-greets.”

Google it.

What is Freedom?

Among the many definitions of freedom, Merriam-Webster defines it as….

• “the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action”
• “liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another”
• “the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous”

Does it sound to you like Black women are free? Do you really think Black folks in general are free?

Think about how YOU define freedom for yourself, your family.

We are not really free. Period.

Being freed from physical enslavement is one thing. Real freedom is another.

On any given day, at any given hour on this platform, Black women share our lived experiences……

“I’m tired. I’ve been tired. I fight for health equity and neonates in a small town…that is basically like living in Trump Florida. Everyday I wanna fake my own death and move my family somewhere black and quiet. But I know the fight has to happen…I’m too tired to be polite and professional anymore.” [used with permission]

“OMG!! I’m exhausted from the ‘visibility & exposure’! It’s literally exploitation when we do NEED it as experts!! I don’t get paid for the huge amount of time I spend analyzing, researching, and writing….so I’m a credible and reliable source!!! I’m right here on the cliff! Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. It’s not working because I’m so pissed.” [used with permission]

“I have a whole story of my life on the pay gap of being a Black woman in engineering…We Black women are always left behind.” [used with permission]

“As ALWAYS, Black women are left to fend for ourselves…Corp America nor anyone there really care about Black women. We fight for ourselves or we get nothing. Black women’s pay decreased to $.58 this past year. [used with permission]

We’re Even More at Risk in a Digital Age

“This issue needs to go viral because it’s indeed already a viral lived experience for Black women.”

It’s an excerpt from what I wrote on the post of Dr. Carey Yazeed. In reading the account of her experience, I was compelled to make this late-breaking addition to today’s newsletter.

Dr. Yazeed’s experience was featured in a Triple Pundit piece entitled, “‘Cite Me; Pay Me’: Protecting Black Women’s Intellectual Property in a Digital Age.”

Consider this excerpt from the article….

“Just last year, Dr. Yazeed posted a thought piece that went viral — more than once. Within just one month, it got 30,000 hits. She said, at first, she was just trying to keep up with moderating all the comments on social media, positive and negative responses alike. Then, she started to hear that others were being asked to speak on the topic of her article, even conducting workshops and trainings, without having relevant expertise.”

“In a post about the experience, Dr. Yazeed shared, ‘…I learned from several individuals who shared my article with their audiences on social media that they were invited to be guests on several podcasts, offered paid speaking engagements and served on panel discussions.’ One man asked if Dr. Yazeed herself had received requests to elaborate on her ideas. The answer? Barely.”

“More than one individual has simply pasted pieces of her work directly to social media — without quotation or attribution. Dr. Yazeed also learned second-hand about a training program that was created for mental health clinicians at a university. ‘And it was based on my article,’ she said. No one had reached out to her for permission or even a conversation. And when Dr. Yazeed contacted the creator of the program, she received no response.”

“One man reposted her article and was starting to get requests to speak on the topic. He kindly redirected the requests to Dr. Yazeed. Surprisingly, many insisted that he speak instead. He didn’t, but clearly not everyone has taken that ethical stand.”

On Dr. Yazeed’s post in response to my comment whereby I also referenced that the “criming” of racial capitalists is hella strong, she stressed that “it is an ongoing problem that we don’t talk about enough PUBLICLY as Black women.” [emphasis mine]

I’m publicly talking about it.

I invite you to do the same.

Racial capitalism is “alive and well” and doing great harm.

Google it.

Impact and Implication

NOT PAYING Black women for our intellectual property

and

UNDERPAYING Black women for our services

are a manifestation of a system that continues to devalue Black people, and particularly Black women, in every industry everywhere.

We are approached in work spaces, in social media spaces, in private messages by folks constantly asking

• for advice
• for pointers
• for feedback
• to be coached
• to be interviewed
• to be on their podcast
• to speak on their panel
• to review and critique their work

without talk of compensation or services-in-kind.

When EVEN ONE of us is not paid our value, it hurts us collectively.

Google it.

My Wrap-Up

It amounts to two options–

1. “I’d like to jump on a call with you, Theresa, and get your thoughts on how I can help my company to…”

or

2. My company would like to hire you, Theresa, at your stated rate to provide…”

Stop “crapping” on Black women by exploiting our labor.

Do the appropriate number 2 or stay off the can.

 That is all.