The Invisible Black Leadership Man
No heart-harming institution, regardless of how prestigious the title or position it offers, should ever convince you that your presence no longer matters—or, worse, that your very life has somehow become void of mattering.
When I was a principal, I remember standing in the school entrance lobby talking with my Custodial Engineer, a great guy, who happens to be white, about something I can no longer recall.
While we were talking, a Caucasian deliveryman entered the building pushing goods on a hand truck, clipboard in hand. He walked directly up to the two of us: me, in my usual shined Rockport shoes, shirt, and tie—my principal uniform—and my Custodial Engineer, who was clearly dressed in custodial work clothes and was not even wearing a collared shirt.
“I need the principal to sign for this.”
And he handed him the clipboard.
My Custodial Engineer, clearly pained and embarrassed, pointed in my direction.
“He’s the principal.”
I signed for the delivery, and the man left.
What stayed with me was not simply what the deliveryman had done. I had already accumulated enough experience as a Black man in America to understand what had just happened—I was invisible.
What struck me more deeply was how badly the incident made my Custodial Engineer feel. He was very sad and apologized to me profusely.
And suddenly I found myself drawing upon one of the lessons I had learned during my twelve years of attending Children’s Sunday School: When you are hurting or feeling bad, one Christian response is to do something that helps to relieve someone else’s suffering. In doing so, you may discover that some of your own pain has been lifted.
And it worked.
I realized how deeply the incident had affected my Custodial Engineer, and so I spent the next few minutes consoling him, assuring him that I would be all right.
After all, this was not my first encounter with America’s racialized reality. My personhood did not suddenly become vulnerable to racial diminishment because I had become a NYC principal.
The principalship had not provided me with some magical protective shield. I was still the same Black man who, the moment I stepped outside my Bed-Stuy door, entered an American social reality in which other people could make assumptions about my intelligence, authority, professional standing, social position, or even my right to occupy certain spaces—all before I had spoken a single word.
Being the principal did not make me immune from being rendered invisible.
Years later, when I became a superintendent, I engaged in an important Black group-self-care affirming exercise that stood in opposition to society’s professional and personal dehumanizing behaviors.
A group of us Black superintendents would meet on designated weekends each month. We deliberately chose out-of-the-way restaurants and met in secluded back rooms.
It was a kind of superintendent’s underground railroad ride to mental health.
Nothing about these meetings was publicized.
My executive assistant did not know about them. My deputy superintendents and other senior district staff did not know. Nothing was placed on an electronic calendar. Nothing was committed to paper.
We created a confidential space where Black superintendents could talk honestly with one another—without translation, without performance, without having to carefully calculate how every word might be interpreted outside the room.
We talked about the work.
We talked about educational leadership.
We talked about what was happening inside our districts.
But we could also talk about what was happening inside of us.
We could talk about how the work of the superintendency was affecting us at a deeply personal and distinctly Black human-experience level.
We provided one another with professional advice, personal encouragement, emotional support, and, when necessary, a safe place to say what could not safely or productively be said anywhere else.
I found those gatherings amazingly therapeutic and spiritually uplifting. I suspect others did as well.
There is a larger leadership lesson here.
Being appointed to a high-profile, influential, impactful, or prestigious position does not shield a Black American—or a Black British, French, German, or other Black professional—from the painful slings and arrows of racial dehumanization.
The title may sound impressive.
You could even be told that “you are in charge.”
You may be paid a really nice salary and enjoy many of the “perks of the office.”
But all of the degrees, publications, awards, professional accomplishments, and public accolades cannot automatically grant you immunity from being racially diminished, stereotyped, excluded, underestimated, ignored, or rendered invisible.
And you do not necessarily receive a racial-experience exemption because you have entered one of the world’s highly exalted, liberal, progressive-minded institutions of higher learning—or any other prestigious professional space.
Indeed, in such environments, the racism may not always announce itself loudly. The exclusionary practices may become more sophisticated. The downgrading of your presence may become more subtle. The disrespect may arrive wrapped in impeccable professional language.
In these sophisticated, heart-harming spaces, the racial diminishment may not be as simple, open, and immediately recognizable as watching a clipboard that should have been handed to you being placed into someone else’s hands. But it can be just as painful.
The exclusion may occur through an invitation never extended, a conversation that somehow takes place before you enter the room, a decision effectively made before your voice is solicited, an idea ignored when you offer it and enthusiastically embraced when someone else repeats it, or the persistent assumption that despite your title, credentials, accomplishments, and demonstrated expertise, someone else in the room must surely possess the greater authority.
The racial insult may become more eloquent.
But eloquence does not make it less injurious.
And so, I especially implore Black professionals working in these highly exalted spaces: Do not allow yourself to become merely the “spook who sits by the door”—physically present, institutionally useful, symbolically celebrated, but never fully invited to sit at the table where consequential power is actually exercised.
Find one another.
Create spaces of conversational trust.
And yes, when professional circumstances require it, those spaces may need to be discreet, confidential, and even clandestine.
Create support networks where you can speak without performing.
Create spaces where you do not have to explain every racial nuance before discussing what happened.
Create spaces where professional advice can coexist with emotional honesty.
Create spaces where somebody understands why something that might appear insignificant to others was not insignificant to you.
Create spaces where people remind one another:
I see you.
I know what burdens you are carrying.
I understand what is happening to you.
You are still very much needed.
Your gifts and talents still matter.
Your past, present, and future contributions matter.
Because there is too much important work left to be done. And there are too many communities that need your gifted and talented leadership.
No prestigious title or position is worth allowing professional isolation, racialized diminishment, or institutional exclusion to slowly convince you that your presence no longer matters—or, worse, that your very life has somehow become void of mattering.
