Four Facets of Workplace Character Assassination: Black Folk Edition

Reader, following my last two posts, a friend and fellow reader has asked me to follow up on character assassination at work. I told this friend to look no farther than the public humiliation of Georgia DA, Fani Willis, for a very good example of this at work. However, he still asked for an extended post. And we both thought it a good idea to share it, because many African Americans and people of color do not know what character assassination looks like in real time.

Reader, in my other life, I am an Industrial-Organizational Psychologist who travels around the South helping those in management become leaders and not straw bosses. I am traveling and teaching employees of color and women to respect those in management who look like themselves. I am traveling around the South destroying jealousy-ladened, toxic workplaces. I am traveling around the South snuffing out intellectually-lazy narcissists and administrators who just want a paycheck and the power to tell other grown folk what to do.

That’s my other life. In my dreams.

In my real life, I am a wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt, writer, and struggling professor. I’ve been teaching higher education for almost 20 years and I want so badly to turn my back on it, but something keeps pulling me back. And the sad part is, even though I am in higher education, I have seen more than my fair share of toxic work cultures and have been the target of nonsexual harassment and multiple character…