What Vice President Harris is facing is something I call competency checking—and it’s familiar to many Black professionals in the workplace.
There are three primary, though not exclusive, ways this shows up. There is the assumption of Black intellectual inferiority and/or a lack of qualifications. In the workplace, this often leads to low expectations, marginalization, and extreme micromanagement. Then there’s the expression of surprise or unease when Black people display intelligence (“You’re so well-spoken!”), which is followed by demands to confirm how this knowledge was acquired and how deep it goes. This can result in dismissal, quizzing, argument, and tokenization. And finally, there’s activation, the fear and unease that can arise when a Black person holds authority, especially in leadership positions. These reactions form an ongoing gauntlet of skepticism that Black and other people of color must navigate to prove their qualifications.
However, pressure on a Black political candidate or executive doesn’t just come from outside their community—it also comes from within. Should Kamala Harris win, she cannot fix every historical wrong done to Black people that we might wish for in one, four, or even eight years.
While we should hold Harris accountable and challenge her, we must also consider the situation she inherits. The “glass cliff” exists—it’s when women and people of color are promoted to leadership roles only when things are so bad that the result will be inevitable failure. We must not put all our expectations on one person and continue working for change locally and in our workplaces.
A Black candidate or president cannot wipe away over 400-plus years of history that has shaped every system in this country. Just as Barrack Obama’s presidency did not usher in a “post-racial” America, neither will a Harris presidency. The workplace remains a hostile environment for Black people, especially Black women, who, according to research from LeanIn.org, are “having the worst experience of all.”
Symbolic victories, while significant, do not equate to systemic change. These victories can lead to what researchers have called “an illusion of diversity,” where we perceive more diversity and advancement than exists. However, the cold fact is that it will take the vast majority of Black Americans between one and three centuries to reach economic and employment parity with white Americans if we continue on the current path.
There’s a misperception about where we are on the racial progress timeline: We think that racial progress is linear, going only ever in one direction toward justice.
Whether Harris wins or loses, we must stop others and ourselves from requiring superhuman efforts from her and all Black people and people of color to be seen as qualified. And we must continue challenging the structures in society and the workplace that reinforce this unfair burden.
Each of us must decide if Kamala Harris is the candidate to vote for, but none of us should question her basic intelligence and qualifications. Let her run for office instead of running the dehumanizing gauntlet that is competency checking.
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