Reading The Room
Rarely did anyone meet my eyes.
I was present, but invisible.
I recall sitting in a meeting with a project team, preparing to discuss performance data as a team lead. At the time, I served in a dual leadership capacity, overseeing both operational and programs system-wide. I was also the only Black person, and the only Black woman, in the room. In fact, I was the only Black person and Black woman on my team, and now in the boardroom.
I had spent weeks poring over growth and performance data, alone and with my team, in preparation for our review. Yet as the meeting began, very few words were directed toward me. Meaningful conversations seemed to pass over me. When I asked questions, asserted myself in the conversation, they were met with vague responses, if acknowledged at all. Comments were addressed to others, even when they pertained to my work. Even if I had asked the question.
I have always been an observer. I have always listened closely, watched carefully, and felt deeply. As I often say, I am reading the room. Reading the room is not just about noticing what is being said. It is about what is left unsaid. It is the unspoken rules often not shared, but learned.
Reading the room sometimes requires us as Black women to be performative or reserved to fully gather and understand the dynamics of spaces that we are operating in. This includes not only the rooms, but the people in them that we are navigating while in theme.
That was not a typo.
As women in leadership, and most intimately, as Black women, we are taught early how to shift. How to enter the space quietly, how to read the energy, how to adjust ourselves to make others feel whole. We show up in theme or character to make others feel comfortable with themselves while sacrificing our own comfort, or even our sense of identity.
This is not only a personal experience, it is a professional reality. It shows up in schools. In breakrooms. In district offices. In business meetings. In board rooms. In how we are seen, heard, and held in leadership positions.
I wondered if my experience was the norm, an experience not to think too deeply about. Though, while self-reflecting, fermenting in my own wonderings of who I was, who I was to be, or how I was to be seen, I noticed something.
I saw other women, Black women casually becoming casualties.
Intellectually dismissed. Professionally disregarded. Physically scrutinized. Confident voices demonized. They “disappeared”; the glass cliff became an elevator ride down back to entry level positions, staring back up again to prepare for their second climb.
I often found myself wondering where they went?
Where have they gone? The Bernard Perspective is not just my voice. It is a gathering of many voices. It is a collection of experiences, mine and others, told or untold. Lessons learned in the quiet corners of classrooms, offices, board rooms, break rooms, and meeting rooms. Stories passed down in private sister circles, revealed during hair salon “shop talks”, cautions shared in passing when entering new spaces as others exist. Truths whispered to each other when no one else is listening.
The intention of The Perspective is to provide community, not competition.
The Perspective is a collection of narratives gathered in a space of safety, healing, awareness, and guidance. It is the confirmation that you are not “crazy” or imagining what you are experiencing. It encompasses historical narratives and connections made to understand the why to help us better understand how we can continue to thrive despite The Lack. The Perspective provides us with knowledge and insight so that we no longer live in lack, which is at times the expectation or a strategic plan to disrupt or derail. Narratives intertwined with historical connections and research-based information ground us in the knowledge that what is being experienced is not a figment of the imagination, but rather, the actual act.
Using research-based information and the ancestral act of storytelling, The Bernard Perspective provides a space to share our narratives and guide the next so we know to remember, how to resist the dismantling, how to remain whole.
Women are the backbone of education.
Here’s an example. Research shows that roughly 77% of teachers are women (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2023a), approximately 56% of principals are women (NCES, 2023b), but this drops to around 26% for superintendents (Education Week, 2024). Yet when we look specifically at Black women, the disparities become more pronounced. Black women make up only about 7 % of public school principals and represent just 1.4 %of superintendents nationally (Pottiger, 2023). These numbers reveal a concerning drop as leadership roles grow more senior. We fill the classrooms, the meeting rooms, the late-night planning sessions. We carry the heart work and the hard work. Yet when it comes to leadership, to decision-making tables, to the shaping of policy and practice, our presence becomes less visible and our voices less heard.
This conversation matters because education does not move without us, women, and yet too often, the systems we uphold are not designed to hold us.
This is especially true for Black women.
We often lead from behind, in silence, or in roles that demand much and recognize little or become weaponized by systems that exploit their resilience. Research shows that Black women in leadership are frequently held to higher standards than their peers and are often placed into roles during crises, only to be judged more harshly when outcomes fall short (Ryan & Haslam, 2005). They face the “double jeopardy” of race and gender discrimination, and their contributions frequently go unseen or unacknowledged (Harris & Kobayashi, 2022). Within educational and professional settings, Black women are subjected to everyday and sophisticated forms of racism and sexism that silence their voices and undermine their authority (Showunmi & Tomlin, 2023).
If reading this resonates with you, you probably felt a little tightening in your chest at the thought of when you have had to perform, question your abilities or skill sets, or feel the need to dim your light in a dark room. It is an uncomfortable feeling of the suffocation of one’s self.
You are not alone.
We are not alone.
How do you adjust to the room without losing yourself?
As Black women we are taught to adjust, to shift, to carry the weight of making others whole. But in those moments of shifting, how do you hold on to your truth, your voice, your presence?
ReferencesEducation Week. (2024, April 9). When women hold each other back: A call to action for female principals. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-when-women-hold-each-other-back-a-call-to-action-for-female-principals/2024/04
Harris, T., & Kobayashi, H. (2022). Failure is not an option for Black women: Effects of organizational outcomes on evaluations of leaders. Harvard Kennedy School.
National Center for Education Statistics. (2023a). Characteristics of public school teachers. In The condition of education. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/clr
National Center for Education Statistics. (2023b). Characteristics of public and private school principals. In The condition of education. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cls
