The Data Doesn’t Lie: Black Women Aren’t Safe at Work—That’s Why We Need Each Other

Long before the research confirmed it, we already knew: the workplace was never made for us.

A recent report from the Harvard Kennedy School makes that truth harder to ignore. In “Intersectional Peer Effects at Work: The Effect of White Coworkers on Black Women’s Careers,” researchers found that Black women who begin their careers on majority-white teams are 16% more likely to leave and 12% less likely to be promoted.

Not due to poor performance.
Not for lack of ambition.
Not because we aren’t qualified.
But because proximity to whiteness in the workplace often comes with isolation, heightened scrutiny, and deeply embedded bias.

The workplace doesn’t just overlook us.
It penalizes us.

We’re funneled into training instead of leadership.
We’re given fewer client-facing opportunities.
We’re labeled “low performers” even when our work speaks for itself.
We’re asked to represent diversity—while being denied meaningful power.

We spend more time managing how we’re perceived than being developed.
We tread lightly in conversations.
We rehearse our tone before speaking up.
We wonder whether we’re being too much—or not enough.

The report doesn’t break new ground for us.
It simply gives language to what Black women have whispered to one another for years:

The lonely Slack channels.
The skipped-over promotions.
The leadership programs we never hear about.
The trauma of being the only Black woman in the room—again and again.

And still, we show up.

We edit ourselves before anyone else can.
We aim for excellence, not to thrive, but to be taken seriously.
We contort. We overcompensate.
We shrink what makes us different in exchange for a little peace.

But shrinking isn’t safety.
And survival isn’t thriving.

When the workplace fails to hold us, community becomes the place we remember who we are.

That’s why M.O.R.E. exists.

When traditional workplaces offer no room to breathe, we create spaces where we’re fully seen.
When corporate culture demands constant proof, we gather in rooms where our worth is never in question.
When proximity to power requires self-erasure, we lean into one another and return to ourselves.

At M.O.R.E., we protect the fullness of Black women—without condition, without compromise.

We build community that nourishes ambition and makes space for exhaustion.
We create room for softness and strategy to exist side by side.
We connect, heal, and grow in spaces where we are not the exception.
We are the intention.

And the need for that space has never been more urgent.

Workplaces aren’t just slow to evolve. Some are actively undoing the progress we fought for.
DEI programs are disappearing. Language around equity is being erased.
And “merit” has re-entered the chat—as if access and opportunity were ever distributed fairly to begin with.

The message is clear: belonging will always be conditional unless we define it for ourselves.

We don’t need to wait for permission.
We don’t need to carry the weight alone.

The data is damning. But our response can be powerful.

Let it be rooted in each other.
Let it be strategic. Let it be sacred.
Let it be M.O.R.E.