That one time I learned to open my mouth
Discovering the lie of meritocracy as a teenager navigating high school
Senior year of high school I learned an incredibly important lesson: how imperative it is to take the risk of speak up for myself.
As a teenager with limited social skills and undiagnosed PTSD, I was a "high achiever" in the International Baccalaureate program at a Broward County school (Yes, I grew up in Florida). I was in the final year of this intense college prep program that allowed me to learn Japanese, be introduced to the philosophy of Existentialism, the study of Epistemology, but most importantly, helped me to discover I was an Artist.
Our art teacher at the time, Robert Smith, couldn't be bothered to run his class, as he was a few months away from retiring. We children did not know this and thus, could not figure out why he seemed disinterested to the point of resentment with our class. We assumed the problem was us and we were left to our own devices to contextualize why exactly we had become a problem.
However, he made time for one student with whom he had a personal, familial relationship. We'll call this student Tammy. We children knew this. The entirety of the senior IB art class took notice and complained openly about the redirection of guidance and resources to just one student. I watched and listened and nodded in agreement when someone spoke up out of frustration, but generally minded my business. At home, I was not allowed to have opinions of my own and I was certainly not allowed to stand up for myself in any way. If my abusive mother called me a liar because she felt like it, I had to nod and agree. If I stood up for myself, I was given the silent treatment for weeks on end, constantly insulted and berated for having thoughts of my own, and/or violently beaten for being noncompliant.
Fear taught me to be quiet, and I became very good at keeping my mouth shut.
===
Recently, Gabrielle Union and Orlando Jones were outright fired for speaking up about the toxicity in their respective workplaces. They are both veteran actors with careers spanning over decades, formerly attached to projects that were ultimately boosted by their participation. They were both fired because they spoke up for themselves. They named and described the ways in which they were being belittled and taken advantage of at work. They broke the sacred covenant of secrecy and were punished by having major sources of their livelihoods taken away from them. Granted, these are two financially stable Black celebrities with resources they've amassed over time. They are, however, still artists whose firings will follow them as they continue to navigate their careers and being fired or let go, especially as a Black person, does not often bode well for your future.
Folks will get stuck on your dismissal but will never interrogate why and how you were dismissed.
So, a few years ago, I was blacklisted from the New York Times Arts & Culture desk because I called out the hiring practices of the editor who got me my contract with NYT in the first place. Prior to sharing this observation publicly, I'd spoken to her personally (alongside the other NYT editors I worked with) about wanting to do my part as an artist in the pending age of Tr*mp and document Black artists, celebrities, and basically any Black person doing their thing in the world to help combat all of the propaganda that was coming. I've seen white photographers make monumental careers off of photographing Black bodies and I was tired of that, frankly.
Shooting celebrities is a huge boon to an early career photographer, I thought those opportunities should go to more than the same two white photographers so I said as much. And I said it very publicly knowing full well there would be some form of retribution.
My most consistent client at the time became my least consistent client after that Facebook post. It reminded me of my mother's silent treatment punishment. For months, I told myself I should have kept my mouth shut until I noticed something very, very significant: the same photo editor was hiring more and more Black and non-Black photographers of color to shoot celebrity portraits. I've only seen this pattern continue over the last two and a half years, and many of my colleagues of color began shooting regular assignment work, assigned directly by the editor I had called out.
A little accountability can go a long way.
==
About a third of the way through our final quarter, Mr. Smith announced his retirement to us: He'd be leaving within the month and we'd have a new art teacher -- weeks before presenting our senior thesis'. This change meant, however, we'd be presenting our work to a teacher who had no idea what any of us had been working on for almost two years and we were less than six months away from our senior thesis show and test. I was still busy reading feminist texts and researching the divine feminine for my thesis. My sketchbook was filled with my research: examples of goddesses to explore, sketches of images to create, lighting setups to try out in the makeshift studio. We turned in this sketchbook at the end of every week because it was necessary to keep track of our process to include with our thesis for those sweet, sweet IB test points in order to qualify for our diplomas (IB students are eligible for both a standard high school diploma AND an IB programme diploma)
Here is where I mention a couple of important things: 1) Smith's relationship with Tammy was my introduction into the informal social economy of nepotism, as he used his personal relationship with her outside of school as a family friend to provide her with all of the guidance and resources meant for twenty plus other students, 2) Tammy was making lots and lots of photographs of her boyfriend and their relationship and had decided this would be her project: an exploration of young, heterosexual love, 3) Smith decided, either with Tammy or without her, to feed her research and writing from my sketchbook.
I can confidently talk a lot of shit now, shout out to CBT therapy and proper meds, but as an eighteen-year-old kid who had no sense of autonomy, the thought of speaking in front of a new teacher in front of my classmates gave me bubble guts. That feeling of my guts churning expanded into one of betrayal and rage, upon hearing Tammy read aloud my artist statement, verbatim, to our new art teacher in front of our entire class.
The work she presented were images of her boyfriend, now with some images of his little sister but it wasn't a body of work attempting to suss out how girls and women's experiences are documented on film. By the time our new teacher asked me to present my work and read my artist statement, I was fighting through tears and trembling, then she stopped me to accuse me of stealing Tammy's artist statement in front of my classmates. I shut down and walked back to my desk.
Tammy didn't apologize or acknowledge that anything was amiss. I still believe she said nothing because it would not have benefitted her to say anything.
===
Last year, I had to navigate one of the most toxic sets I've ever been on and I've navigated some wildly toxic workplaces and sets. Primarily, my well-being was never a consideration as I worked over 100 hours in a little over a week without one day off. The final straw for me came upon finding out on our final day of shooting that additional work had been added to our plate. I found this out because the client's liaison stopped communicating me entirely, and instead began communicating with another crew member. This shortcut, so to speak, meant that I could not set necessary boundaries around my crew's time or well-being or my own.
I'd spent the prior days talking everyone off the ledge because this liaison was not there to ensure that the project was completed successfully as evidenced in the fact that: we were a crew member short two weeks prior to the beginning of the project, budgeting issues were ignored, I was told to lower my rate to deal with said budgeting issues, I had to learn to produce a shoot because liaison took time off before making sure production was completed to ensure the success of project despite the project has been on our radars since the following Fall. I acted as a therapist, talking up the confidence of crew members who were either so belittled or so stifled by the client's liaison, that they complained of feeling as though they had failed at their jobs less than six days into the project.
I made sure to only address any issues they brought to me about the liaison's morale busting behavior, so as not to jeopardize our final product. I needed them to be sharp and to feel supported and trusted so they could do their very best work. But the thought of working an unexpected ten-hour day and finding that out from a supporting crew member broke my threshold. For all intents and purposes, we were set up for failure and yet, we did not. I hired a strong team of capable people who I knew had a track record of showing up and doing the work well. I knew if I failed, it could mean the very end of my career as this was not the sort of potential fuck up you bounce back from. This was one of those potential fuck ups that often cost people like me their jobs, forever.
Growing up in an abusive household may have taught me to learn when to keep my mouth shut but it also taught me to pay attention to behavior and to be able to link chains of behavior to certain outcomes. What I saw clearly was sabotage in the making and I made sure to take careful note of the ways in which I saw behavior linking to that projected final outcome.
After all, I'd been here before.
===
Mr. Smith decided Tammy was better suited for the project I created and was working on and made sure to say as much in front of my parents during a meeting with the IB coordinator due to an accusation of plagiarism. I raised the accusation but I also ended up in the meeting. See, if you are reported by any teacher or student for plagiarism, you are removed from the program. Period.
Mr. Smith was excluding my senior class from the resources he was supposed to be dispensing, without prejudice, to all the students in attendance. He instead used his position of power and invoked a familial relationship, as the why behind his decisions and behavior. His end goal was sabotage so one person could "succeed". It didn't make sense but the coordinator didn't disagree with his decision making because nepotism set a precedent to allow him to offer that up as good, sound reasoning.
Our new teacher, however, did disagree with Smith's behavior. She apologized to me directly for not allowing me the opportunity to discuss with her how my words ended up coming out of the mouth of another student with a completely dissonate project. She asked Tammy to re-write her artist statement. Tammy was not dismissed or punished in any significant way for her blatant plagiarism of my work.
There was no meeting on her behalf.
Within a few weeks, it became evident that somewhere along the line, Smith wanted Tammy to succeed by stealing someone else's work and ride their coattail's to an IB diploma. To me, this is the primary reason white women often find themselves in cahoots with powerful white men: the proximity to power and what that power can provide. Instead of attempting to build power over time through solidarity and personal accountability, that power is easily accessed with little to no effort if you're just in close enough to a white dude. Both parties understand this even if they are not able to articulate 'wokely' just what is going on here.
There is a material benefit when you align yourself to nepotism and this is why so many people don't question the system and instead, just go along with it.
===
There have been countless Smiths and Tammys in my life — especially so in academic and professional spaces, surprise surprise. I know I keep harping on about nepotism but it's because I don't think we all have a deep enough understanding of how that informal economy works and it works a lot, for a lot of people. It also denies and takes from a lot of people in order for it to thrive. Nepotism is a corruption of community because in order to be a part of the community you need to be willing to leverage your status or wealth for the benefit of a selected few. Then you continue to leverage your status or wealth for the selected few so you too, can eventually become part of the ultra-exclusive and exclusionary clique.
Nepotism now extends community past shared DNA or shared identity to focus, instead, on how status, resources, and wealth can be excluded from anyone who doesn't belong to the chosen few (in the States, that's the ruling racial class). Nepotism also depends on riding coattails -- who you know and how you are able to exploit their talents and successes for your direct benefit, or simply being in near enough proximity to have said successes and talent 'rub' off on you. Guilty by association, so to speak. This form of economic exploitation is insidious, often hard to track on its face, and is one of the primary features of nepotism.
Ever wonder why you are constantly asked who you know and how you happen to know a person? How often do you ask someone where they went to school in an attempt to figure out what/who you might gain access to? Notice how certain names help put white people at ease when around you and others elicit an uncomfortable silence? A majority of the time, the coattails being ridden have no direct access to the material benefits of nepotism. And that, to me, is what makes the economy itself a grift.
If we've learned anything over neon orange fried snack's tenure, it's that the most American practice outside of outrageous violence is outrageous theft.
What part are you playing in this ongoing theft of resources?
This International Women's History month, I personally challenge you to divest out of jobs, relationships, and projects that could cause you to ride someone else's coattails for your own material benefit. Instead, openly challenge anyone and anything that is exploitative of The Work and the labor of marginalized peoples in this country.
It'll cost you something, for sure, but won't cost you your integrity.