When you’re 6-foot-3 and can move like a gazelle at the NCAA level, you’re certain to be successful. Angel Reese certainly discovered that after winning a national title with the LSU Tigers in 2023 and being awarded a First-Team All-American in 2024.
However, when you make the transition to the WNBA, where there are plenty of other very skilled athletes who are as large, if not bigger, than you, things can quickly change.
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Three important findings published in the last three months reveal that Black women are not treated equally with their counterparts in the workplace, particularly in terms of hair discrimination, salary discrepancy, and an increased risk of pregnancy prejudice.
But we don’t need reports to know this; we see it firsthand. We are two Black female lawyers who travel the hallways of the court system with the fire of authenticity, passion, and ingenuity, only to have our flames extinguished by misogyny, humiliation, and indignity. While navigating anti-Blackness in the job, we were both told to “play the game,” as have many other Black professionals. However, the game is rigged with limited boxes, prejudices, and unconscious biases beyond our control, ensuring that we will lose.
This is part of a bigger issue with how the concept of professionalism, which in theory applies to everyone, is “widely policed and regulated persons of color in numerous ways including hair, tone, and food odors,” as Leah put it in an essay for the UCLA Law Review. Professional standards are not applied evenly to all, and when a person of color deviates from the norm, even to oppose workplace injustice, they are sometimes regarded as “unprofessional.” This particularly affects Black women, who are frequently undervalued in the workplace and report feeling the least appreciated. For Black women, the pendulum can swing from being considered professional if she silently weathers toxicity to being considered unprofessional if she responds, defends herself, or pushes back.
We witness this again and over again.
Angel Reese of the Louisiana State University women’s basketball team was dubbed a “classless piece of s**t” and a “f***ing fool” after pointing to her ring finger and making a “you can’t see me” gesture to her opponent Caitlin Clark. Critics chastised Reese for poor sportsmanship, yet her opponent, Clark, received no criticism when she made the same move lately.
It happened to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who faced denigration and public humiliation as part of the US Supreme Court’s hearing process to demonstrate her worthiness. She maintained her composure during the accusations, but she would have been branded unprofessional if she had defended herself or opposed the hostility.
Angela Bassett was chastised online for her reaction at the Oscars after losing the best actress in a supporting role category to Jamie Lee Curtis (for her role as Queen Ramonda in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever). Bassett did not clap when Curtis was named the winner.
