Issa Rae has been known to keep it all the way 100 when it comes to pro-black rights. She’s a black woman in a white, male dominated industry with a successful television series, a bestselling book, and a beauty deal with Cover Girl. So you can imagine her journey to success was no walk in the park.
In a recent brief conversation with The Cut, Issa broke down the obstacles minorities face while pursuing a higher education and their careers.
They don’t get that we’re not all starting from the same starting point. Straight, cis, white men don’t have the same obstacles — there’s not much in their path. That’s not to say they don’t have any of their own problems, but the playing field is not level by any means. It’s easy for people to dismiss your history, dismiss where you came from. Just because we graduated from the same college doesn’t mean we have the same opportunities. There’s bias, even in the hiring process, and that’s something not enough people are aware of. It feels like a vicious Catch-22 when there aren’t diverse people behind the scenes. That [lack of diversity] alters the company or organization perspective, which means they’re not going to have people who look like the people they are trying to recruit. Even when we do these diversity events, I find that we tend to include other diverse people who also know the struggle and who are already familiar with the burdens, where the audience should be mostly white men and women. People aren’t aware, and they choose not to be. For so many people, unfortunately, the issues with people of color don’t affect them, so why would they burden themselves with caring?
Leave it to Issa to provoke thoughtful conversation and stand up for the rights of her and her people.
