A Tale as Old as Time: Black Women, White Women, and Gaslighting in the Workplace
For over a decade, I have devoted my career to building workplaces worth joining. At each company I’ve worked with, my job has been to promote an inclusive culture, hire the right people, and help to foster the safest possible space for everyone. Working in HR, I carry the heavy responsibility of building workplace cultures where people can be their authentic selves and feel safe to do so.
Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that while I was looking out for others, no one was looking out for me.
Three years ago, I was working as a Director of Talent at Rangle.io, a digital consultancy firm based in Toronto, Canada. I was amongst the fifty first hires when I was tasked with the job of doubling the team in size within a year. We acknowledged that if we wanted to build a diverse team and inclusive culture, we would have to do so with intention. Unfortunately, I soon found myself struggling to both attract and engage with a diverse group of candidates. As an industry, tech is already dominated by men, and among the women I had the opportunity to speak with, I witnessed a lot of imposter syndrome, low confidence, and hesitation to join a predominantly male team. Determined to remedy the problem, I set out to bridge the gap of opportunity for women joining Rangle, and those working in tech elsewhere. In January of 2016, I came up with the idea for Bridge, now a not-for-profit designed specifically to train and educate women and non-binary people in the tech industry. It was the best recruiting strategy I had ever developed. Through Bridge, we helped woman-identified engineers level up, build confidence, and get hired. With intention and focused efforts, I hoped that more women would land the types of tech positions that I was recruiting for at Rangle with confidence.
Excited, I shared the idea with a coworker, who, from here on, I will refer to as Sharon. Sharing in my enthusiasm, Sharon and I teamed up to bring Bridge to life and we were fortunate to receive considerable sponsorship and support from Rangle. For cohort 0, I had hand selected the first Bridge students myself. I went out to the community and engaged with a diverse group of women to participate in Bridge. It was a success. On the first day of our launch for the second cohort, we had more applicants for Bridge than we ever had for any of our job postings, and we literally broke our website. Quickly, my idea had grown wings — strong ones — and was taking flight beautifully. I was proud — not only of myself but of all the incredible opportunities that Bridge would create for deserving and ambitious women.
Everything was going smoothly — and then, on November 26, 2016, I was sexually assaulted by a coworker.
About a week before my assault, I issued a complaint to a member of the Rangle leadership team about the man who later became my assailant. I’d had several uncomfortable interactions with this man, from unsolicited and inappropriate comments to a forced hug. I suggested that he be fired as he was a threat to the general safety and wellbeing of myself and my fellow employees, but my request was met with swift and steadfast rejection. “We’re not a company that fires people,” I was told. “If we were to fire someone, he would be top on the list, but we don’t do that here.” I was assaulted one week later, leading to a whirlwind of life-changing events. After my assault I shared my experience with two (other) members of the executive leadership team and his employment with Rangle was terminated shortly after. Despite my assailant being let go, I still went on medical leave from work and I managed depression for months. I was unable to cope in the workplace that had made me feel so unseen and unprotected, and I ultimately made the difficult decision to leave Rangle on August 25, 2017. I told a handful of people about my experience including my former coworker and Bridge-collaborator, Sharon.
My time at Rangle had ended but it was just the beginning for Bridge and I had no intention of stopping. I expressed to Sharon that I would continue with Bridge — business as usual, so to speak — but it wasn’t long before things started to go awry. On October 9, 2018, I received an email. In short, Sharon had requested that I change my Bridge title on LinkedIn from “Founder” to “founding member, or something similar that acknowledges [my] contribution to the creation of Bridge while still distinguishing legally from the corporation itself.”
Basically, I was being asked to forfeit my title as the creator and original organizer of Bridge. Confused, I sent Sharon a response email asking for clarification but I never received a response. Then I sent another email, again no response.
While we had brief interactions via direct messages on Instagram, Sharon did not answer my questions relating to Bridge. Wanting to give Sharon the benefit of the doubt, my first thought was that she was just busy. After a few attempts to arrange a meeting with Sharon and feeling a bit worried about the email she sent me, I reached out to a lawyer to learn more about my rights as it related to Bridge. I learned that because Bridge was incubated under Rangle.io, I did not “technically” have rights to ownership. So, I left it alone.
Soon after, I learned that Sharon had blocked me from viewing Bridge’s social channels. Sharon also deleted a recommendation she had written on LinkedIn about building Bridge together. Soon after, she posted a blog post where she took credit for the origin of Bridge with no mention of my contributions. She even went on to incorporate Bridge as a legal entity, without my knowledge.
Months later, it was also brought to my attention that Sharon had written a thread on Twitter that referenced me and used my full name. She was challenging my involvement with Bridge and went on to again minimize my contributions. People in our network were asking why I wasn’t responding. What they didn’t know was that Sharon had blocked me from viewing her personal social media accounts months prior — I couldn't.
At some point over the past few months, my name was included as a founding partner of Bridge on their website. While I’m happy that this recognition was reflected, it does not change everything that has happened. Despite the changes it still feels as though I’d been erased from the history of my own idea. At the time, it all felt highly personal, and in some ways, it still does. Sharon did not inform me about this update and I have yet to receive a response from her. It was only with time that I came to realize that my situation was far from unique.
Sharon, a white woman, was doing what other white women before her have done: taking credit for the work and innovation of black women.
Whether it’s the Kardashians stealing from black culture, art, and style and rarely giving credit or white folks co-opting language or black-led campaigns (like the #MeToo movement, originally founded by Tarana Burke), Black women continue to be targeted and bled dry of their original ideas, talents, and accomplishments by white women. An example of this is Zendaya and Kylie Jenner. Kylie Jenner was once credited with starting an ‘edgy’ new hair trend, while black actress Zendaya faced criticism for wearing her hair the same way. But Kylie Jenner, a person with no ties to Black culture, was given credit for taking something that wasn’t hers.
Like countless Black women before me, I was gaslit into wondering whether I was wrong for wanting to own and receive credit for my work and ingenuity. I wondered if I was wrong for wanting to preserve my role as a founder. Was I overreacting? Were my contributions not enough? Did I really deserve the credit I was asking for? Was I being overdramatic? Is this all happening because I was vocal about my harassment experience at Rangle? These are the questions that ran through my mind for a very long time.
It wasn’t until Sharon’s attempt to discredit me on Twitter that I knew I had to say something. I knew the role I played and the impact I made in the founding of Bridge. I saw a problem and set out to build a solution for it. Sharon and I had even pitched the idea together to the CEO of a coding bootcamp prior to launching it at Rangle internally. While this knowledge is enough for me now, I also know that I do myself and others a disservice by remaining silent. When I saw executive team members at Bridge sharing false information about me on Twitter, I decided that I could no longer allow my story to remain untold.
This is not simply a matter of credit. When Sharon co-opted my idea, she stole my intellectual property. When the team erased my initial role as founder and minimized my contribution to that of social media management only, they undermined my credibility among industry peers. Finally, when Sharon asked me to renounce my title as founder, she asked me to be complicit in my own erasure.
In a million different ways, women and BIPOC need to fight for their own lived experience to be accepted as true and real. This is a boundary we face every day, and it is a boundary that becomes significantly more difficult to transcend when you’re ‘the only’ in the room.
It is for these reasons that I am sharing my experience. I don’t wish to villanize Sharon or my previous employer; the purpose in sharing my story is to arm other Black women with the knowledge I wish I’d had back then.
Here are 5 tips to manage gaslighting and microaggressions in the workplace:
Document everything.
When someone is gaslighting you, their goal is to make you feel as though you are overreacting, or to convince you that you’re wrong. Always keep a paper trail of any important conversations or exchanges you have in or about the workplace. This way, you can identify when you are being gaslit and know with full confidence that what you’re experiencing is a legitimate threat to your professional wellbeing. Documentation helps you to preserve your truth whenever you experience self-doubt.
Be selective with who you trust.
One of my biggest regrets is that I trusted Sharon with my idea for Bridge in the first place. What I thought was an exchange and thought-partnership between friends turned into a silent and insidious coup . If I had the opportunity to do it again, I would have done my due diligence and formalized the company as a legal entity before sharing the idea with anyone else. I would have also done so on my own, without the help and sponsorship of the parent organization.
Speak out.
Gaslighting and microaggressions thrive when they are permitted to do so and remain unchallenged. In retrospect, I spent far too much time giving Sharon the benefit of the doubt. Had I spoken out earlier, perhaps I could have gathered a network of support. Similarly, I wish I had spoken up more loudly after my assault. Yes, I spoke openly about my experience, but after the incident I tried my best to just move on. There were no other Black women in leadership at Rangle (at the time) and I was scared of being perceived as “too loud” or “too angry” I wanted to be seen as the person who handled the harassment with grace and simply moved on. That experience shook me to my core and forever changed the way I feel about working in a traditional workplace. I know it’s not always easy and there are many times when it will feel like too much, but I encourage you to always speak out on your behalf as much as possible.
Listen to Black women. Believe Black women. Support Black women.
After the thread of tweets on Twitter, people reached out to me about my role with Bridge. It was through my conversations with other women of colour that I realized just how common my situation was. I’ve had about 30 women — all women of colour — reach out to me to say that they’ve gone through similar experiences of being discredited, shamed, and dismissed. However, for all the privately messaged words of support I’ve received, only two people came forward publicly in my defence. I am reminded yet again that we have to stick up for each other. When you see something wrong being done against a woman, say something. Hear her out, listen to her story, and spread it far and wide. Our power is magnified when we amplify individual voices as a collective.
Take time to heal.
Finally, it’s important not to mask your pain with outrage or apathy. Situations like these often leave emotional wounds that must be healed. Take the initiative to reclaim your power by seeking support, whether that be through friends and family, or through talking to a professional therapist. Healing is an ongoing process, but it’s the one thing I know that no one else can ever steal from me. At first, the healing process came from building two new businesses and diving into entrepreneurship. Now, my healing process ends with sharing my story with you.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you. If you are a Black Woman experiencing something similar, I’m sorry — hang in there, here are some resources I put together for your mind, for your heart and for your growth. If you are aWhite Woman looking to do better this is a resource for you to learn and grow from.
I’ll leave you with a quote that got me through this.
“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” — Maya Angelou
With love,
Avery
