Dear Black Women, Your Job May Be Killing You.

Leaving your toxic job could save your life.

Over the past three years, four Black women that I know have suffered strokes. They were all professional women ages 40 to 55 working in corporate and government leadership jobs.

They were all unsatisfied with their work environment: getting up too early, staying in the office too late, being overlooked, underpaid and mistreated, and missing quality time with loved ones in the process.

As a result, they were stressed. And work stress is killing Black women.

While people die every day, Black women are dying at an alarming rate and in ways associated with race-related stress, trauma and unfair expectations in a world that has never reciprocated nor rewarded her constant toil.

In general, Black people in the U.S. are two to three times more likely to suffer from a stroke and are more likely to die from a stroke than their white counterparts. Black women, in particular, are dying from strokes and other ailments caused by cardiovascular conditions, which kill more than 50,000 Black women every year.

Nearly 50 percent of Black women age 20 and over have high blood pressure or heart disease. Studies show that high levels of constant, or chronic stress increases the chances of both, with high blood pressure often leading to heart disease and heart disease leading often to stroke, heart attack or death. Black women are getting sick and dying prematurely and at higher rates than their white counterparts with the same or similar health conditions.

The sad reality is that Black women are overburdened by the impacts of chronic stress associated with racism, discrimination and bias in almost every facet of life, including work, housing, environment and maternal care. The compounded stress, atop historical socio-political-economic injustices, creates a recipe for the major health disparities faced by both Black women and men.

The workplace, where Black women spend more than 50 percent of their waking hours, has become sort of a ground zero for the race-related stress dilemma literally cutting Black women’s lives short.

Work is where many Black women are experiencing racial stressors that adversely affect their physical, emotional and psychological well-being. In essence, work is killing Black women.

Black Women: Your Job Does Not Define You

As a Black woman who worked in several government leadership positions, people often tried to convince me that stress was just a part of the job. These were people who often conformed and contorted themselves for a paycheck. That was never me.

I was fortunate enough to work in the same field as my communication degrees. Some of the positions were one-woman offices, including at a public housing agency and city municipality. Offices that are staffed with only one person is a tell-tale sign. In those cases, I was the person who organized and led community engagement meetings and press conferences; crafted the press releases; wrote the speeches and talking points for the CEO; designed the presentations; conducted the media interviews; engaged with community members and stakeholders around solving problems and averting crises, and more. I completed a plethora of tasks that are typically performed by fully-staffed offices. Still, I did my job in my one-person office and did it very well. But that was still never enough. In those cases, residents appreciated me more than organizational leadership, though something can surely be said for that. I found myself feeling depleted and discouraged.

Later, I worked as a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion manager for a city government where every day was like a fight. I laced up my metaphorical boxing gloves whenever I headed into the office, dread and anxiety hovering over me. I advocated hard for employees and constituents. I was known to push and challenge leadership to operate from a lens of equity, inclusion and justice and spoke up when leadership’s actions were incongruent with what was espoused in press releases and speeches. I was often the lone voice of reason (i.e. equity and inclusion) in boardrooms and executive meetings.

This was exhausting and stressful. But I thought it was necessary. I told myself that I had to stay in the fight for my community, to amplify the voices of the oppressed. But I ended calls and meetings depleted, sometimes teary eyed because of the disregard and disrespect shown by leadership toward community members who needed them the most.

For many Black women in corporate, government or nonprofit sector jobs, work is more than a paycheck. We think it’s a part of who we are. And this warped sense of allowing our job to identify us is problematic and dangerous.

According to Gallup polls, a growing number of Black women do not feel they are treated with respect in the workplace, do not feel as if they are treated fairly by colleagues and feel unvalued or undervalued. Nevermind the wage gap and pay inequities that ensure Black women get paid cents on the dollar compared to white men and white women.

Black women have been told to work three times as hard as their white colleagues, to push through their personal needs in order to get the job done and to outwork others no matter what. What’s promised is potential social and economic mobility. In far too many cases, however, while Black women are climbing the ladder of financial and social capital, their overall health and longevity of life take a dive. And many don’t see it until it’s too late.

Many of us likely remember Naomi Osaka’s decision in 2021 to take a break from French Open press conferences to prioritize her mental health. She wrote in Time Magazine:

I communicated that I wanted to skip press conferences at Roland Garros to exercise self-care and preservation of my mental health. I stand by that. Athletes are humans. Tennis is our privileged profession, and of course there are commitments off the court that coincide. But I can’t imagine another profession where a consistent attendance record (I have missed one press conference in my seven years on tour) would be so harshly scrutinized.

She was talking about burnout, a term that has unfortunately become taboo because we’ve been conditioned to become proud, self-professed “workaholics.” We’re told that if we’re not burnt out from work, then we aren’t working hard enough. And if we’re not working hard enough, then we don’t deserve rest. And we know if we don’t rest well, we mentally and physically succomb to the pressures of a capitalist society that has long seen and treated Black women less as humans and more as commodities. And stroke, heart disease and death become our final reward. And that position that we so coveted is filled by our employer within weeks. Their business continues, while our lives have suffered detrimentally, or ended altogether.

Last September, Temple University acting president JoAnne A. Epps died after falling ill during a university service. That same month, Orinthia Montague, president of Volunteer State Community College in Tennessee, was found dead in her hotel room after not showing up for a Tennesse Board of Regents meeting. While their exact causes of death are unknown, many in the higher education field speculated that it was related to stress in the workplace. Both women were Black.

Do Not Grin and Bear It

Black women have historically existed, and sacrificed, for their family, community, workplace and for the culture.

We have long carried burdens on our backs since this country was stolen from Native Americans and African women and men were kidnapped and brought to the stolen land, enslaved and violated.

Existing at the intersection of two historically marginalized groups — being Black and a woman — Black women have quietly yet fervently led justice movements. From Harriet Tubman to Sojourner Truth, to Ida B. Wells and other Black women suffragists like Mary Church Terrell and Nannie Helen Burroughs, we often carry the torch on the journey to liberation.

Climbing the corporate ladder in a capitalist system is a form of prevailing in the face of injustice and inequity, we think. We wear the cape of the Strong Black Woman: tough, resilient, taking care of others, fighting adversity wherever, whenever and however. So, we climb, while smiling, helping, volunteering, back straight and head held hight, yet battered, bruised and, I’ll add, quietly dying.

The Strong Black Woman/Superwoman Schema is a framework that provides some understanding into the plight of Black women and the way we adapt to the multiple identities and obligations that are forced upon us in order to survive within an oppressive system. Black women feel as if they must live up to a societal superhero expectation to suppress their own trauma, wants and needs for others.

And the work environment is the place where society’s expectations of educational attainment, the lie of black excellence and the need to obtain and live according to the fallacy of the “American Dream” collide detrimentally for the Black woman. We often look past and dismiss the trauma that we experience in the workspace while putting on a mask of impenetrable strength and fortitude.

Black women are, however, reevaluating the role that harmful and toxic work environments play in the longevity of their lives.

Thankfully, I was raised by a mother who always reminded me to move on if something wasn’t working for me. That went for friendships, relationships and jobs. I learned early.

In my mid 20s, I freed myself from a job after two months of toxicity. I’d been working on a major project all morning. Lunch time had come around and I stayed on it, working to complete my deadline assignment. Later in the afternoon, my boss approaches me and asks if I’d had my lunch break. I inform him that I’m waiting for a call back from someone to complete my project. He chuckles and tells me to go out and eat lunch, promising me that if and when the person calls, a colleague would get the essential info on my behalf and that I can finish things upon my return. “We don’t want anyone saying that we didn’t let you have your lunch break,” he laughs.

“It’s OK,” I respond. “I can wait a little longer. I’m planning to go and grab something soon.” Unfortunately, I was somewhat of a workaholic then, in the context of pushing through work in the midst of feeling sick, hungry or the need to run as fast as I could to the nearest bathroom. As soon as I send this email, or make this phone call, I’d say. There was always something enticing me to put my body’s needs on the back burner for work.

“No, no. Go out and have lunch,” my boss tells me. “We’ve got you covered.”

I oblige and end up going to a nearby grocery store to grab a sandwich and chips, which I hurriedly ate in my car. After being out for about 25 minutes, I return to the office to see him pacing, red-faced and disheveled.

“Where were you?” he questions me. “You know, we really hoped you’d be here. We almost missed the call. Someone else had to take it because you weren’t here. This isn’t good.”

I literally pinched myself to ensure I wasn’t having the weirdest dream of my life. That would have made more sense to me. Otherwise, I told myself, I’m in the Twilight Zone.

I attempt a rebuttal, trying to remind him that he’d literally begged me to go to lunch at that time. But, to no avail. My head begins to throb. Another migraine was setting in and I realized at that point that I had been going home with migraines for the past couple of weeks. Prior to this job, I had never experienced migraines. I left the office and went for a walk. The next day, I quit. Although a bit saddened by the circustances, I felt empowered. My life was in my own hands, not my employer’s.

De-colonize the Mind, Rest and Restore

A friend of mine would often tell me that she didn’t know why she would get anxious around the same time every Sunday afternoon. She’d become depressed and feel physically sick. Her mood would suddently shift no matter what type of fun activity she was engaging in with family or friends.

She described it as a dark cloud bursting through her sunshine around the same time every Sunday. She later realized it was her body dreading the start of a new work week at a toxic work environment.

The signs are there for Black women. Whether it’s our body and/or mind giving us the signs, we must listen before it’s too late.

Removing ourselves from a harmful work environment is not the end of our story. It is not weak. It is brave and courageous and spiritual. It’s us saving our lives. It’s us restoring our spirit. It’s us leaving a legacy of freedom and not one of conditioning.

It’s us knowing that we have options and giving ourselves permission to break free from a colonized mindset that has from grade school ingrained within us that working at some company for more than half our waking hours is the crux of life.

There’s always finding a different job or career opportunity that will actually support your wellbeing and not compromise it. Better yet, there’s the idea of building your own, becoming your own boss through freelancing, contracting, working remote or entrepreneurship. There’s the liberating idea of restoring yourself, enjoying life on your terms, resting, engaging in therapy or therapeutic activities, traveling, sleeping and doing whatever in the heck you want to do with your days, your energy and your time. Seriously.

Black women owe it to ourselves. So much is at stake.

We can still do the good work that we want to do in a place that rocks with, and not rattles, our spirit and does not jeopardize our lives.