When Your Expertise is Valued More Than Your Humanity

Blog 1. Part 2.

When Your Expertise is Valued More Than Your Humanity

What many people fail to understand about racial trauma in the workplace is that it does not remain neatly contained within office walls. The body keeps score long after the meeting ends.

At first, I told myself I was simply stressed.

That I was tired...

That I needed rest...

That maybe I was overthinking...

But over time, I stopped recognising myself. The impact was not only emotional. It was psychological. Physiological. Existential.

I became uncertain in ways I had never experienced before.

In social work, certainty matters. Not arrogance, but professional confidence. The ability to trust your judgement, your assessment, your instincts, and your understanding of people and systems.

But racial trauma erodes that certainty slowly. Especially when you are repeatedly dismissed, disbelieved, undermined, or made to feel as though your reality requires verification from somebody else before it can be considered legitimate.

You begin double-guessing yourself. Replaying conversations. Questioning your interpretations. Wondering whether you are “too sensitive"... Whether you misunderstood... Whether you are the problem... That is the psychological violence of institutional gaslighting.

And while this was happening internally, the external environment continued uninterrupted.

Comments about my hair. Questions about why Black people “change hairstyles so much.” Comments about “your people.” Questions about why Black or African names could not be “simpler” or “more European.” Each comment perhaps small enough to dismiss individually, but together - impossible to escape.

And this is what people often fail to understand about racial trauma: it is cumulative.

It is death by a thousand cuts disguised as workplace culture.

Even attempts to create support became exhausting.

When trying to establish a Black workers’ group, there were endless rules, barriers, questions, scrutiny, and resistance — hurdles that seemed disproportionately heavy compared to other, more generalised workplace initiatives. No thought, consideration or reflection around why this space was fe;t 'needed' by a particular cohort of staff ...

And at the same time, staff of colour continued leaving. One after another. Exit interviews repeating the same undertones. The same concerns. The same themes around racism, exclusion, and culture.

Yet nothing changed! The stories existed. The patterns existed. The evidence existed. But the want to see these - this was nowhere to be found and somehow, the people experiencing the harm remained the least believed people in the room.

And perhaps the most painful contradiction of all was this:

In moments of national racial tension — when organisations suddenly felt pressure to say something publicly — they would turn to me. The same collection of people that struggled to see me and refused to 'see me' and refused to hear my lived experience, suddenly wanted my expertise! My wording. My emotional labour. My cultural navigation. My reassurance.

They wanted proximity to Blackness without accountability to Black people.

By the end, my body had begun responding before my mind could even catch up.

The closer I got to the building each morning, the harder it became to breathe.

Every step felt heavy. Like my feet were moving through cement. My chest tightened before I even reached the door. And eventually, the panic attacks came. And with a relentless pursuit.

This was not weakness. It was what happens when the body can no longer absorb what the mind has been forced to survive silently. And perhaps the hardest thing to admit is that I have always considered myself a strong person. Resilient. Capable. Grounded. Yet in that environment, I began to feel insignificant and small. Not because I lacked ability. But because prolonged exposure to dismissal, disbelief, and racial harm has a way of making even the strongest people question their worth.