You Want My Magic But Not My Name: The Unpaid Labor of Black Women in the Professional World

I walk into rooms where I already know I’ll have to work twice as hard to be seen as half as good.

Where my silence is taken as weakness. Where my confidence is labeled aggressive. Where my brilliance is borrowed, bent, and rebranded, then handed back to me like I should be grateful it was even considered.

Let’s talk about the professional world and what it does to Black women. How it feeds off our ideas, our flavor, our labor, but never gives us credit. How it smiles in our faces while stuffing our innovation into someone else’s portfolio.

They love our vision but not our voice.

They love our culture but not our critique.

They love to "diversify" the room but not redistribute the power.

How many times have we sat in a meeting, offered a solution, only to hear that same solution repeated, word for word, minutes later by someone else with lighter skin and a deeper sense of entitlement? And the room nods in agreement like they’ve just witnessed genius, when in reality, they just witnessed theft.

And the worst part? We still show up.

We show up, suited and stretched thin, with our resumes memorized and our boundaries bent. We show up with natural curls and nappy roots, knowing HR will clock them before they clock our credentials. We show up knowing our presence is powerful, but our presence alone won’t protect us from erasure.

We mentor, we nurture, we build community in cold, sterile spaces. We absorb microaggressions with a smile because we’ve been trained to protect other people’s comfort at the expense of our own.

And don’t let us get angry, not even once. Because the moment we raise our voice or advocate for ourselves, we become the threat. The problem. The "difficult to work with."

We are expected to educate and not be exhausted. To lead and not be loud. To create and not claim.

But enough is enough.

This world, this workplace, was not built for us. And yet, we’ve been the blueprint. The backbone. The brilliance in the background. We deserve to take up space without having to shrink. We deserve our names in the credits, not buried in the footnotes.

So no, we’re not imagining it. Yes, it's exhausting. And no, we’re not going to play small to make others feel big.

Black women deserve rest.

We deserve recognition.

We deserve to be paid, IN FULL, for what we bring to the table.

And if they won’t give us a seat?

We’ll build our own damn table. And bring the whole village with us.