The Great White Hope Was Fuel to the Fire

And her presence opened up a can of worms--HR has finally seen the light.

AI-Generated Image: The world: crashing down on three Black women.

We exist during a time when Black women’s words mean nothing

And it takes someone else—a non-Black/non-Person of Color counterpart to approach the ropes, tag us, and relieve us during a round that is pummeling us to shreds. Why the wrestling reference, you ask? Because this entire ordeal has left us feeling like we have fought two main events in the ring with wrestling champions of the corporate world.

We are tired. But the fight must go on.

On Friday, April 11, 2025, we had yet another meeting with The Beast, and Human Resources was also on this Teams call. But this meeting was different. We have a new co-worker. She is White. She has years of experience in the medical field as well. We could tell during the meeting that we had someone on our team who was for us.

One of my co-workers gave her the low-down on what we have been experiencing in her first few days there, so she had a window’s view before opening the door. She wanted her to be informed since the two of them would be working together at the same site.

During the call, The Beast, as she typically does, fell short. She rolled her eyes and scoffed at a statement one of my Black co-workers made, and we all looked directly at the HR Manager, who quickly turned her camera off and muted her phone. I said to myself, “There’s no way she didn’t see that. And she better be making a phone call to the Head of HR to relay what just took place.” I looked at my co-workers in their respective frames and then looked at The Beast as she continued to step on hot stones throughout her explanation to my co-worker’s question. She was loud and wrong and insistent upon being loud and wrong.

When the HR Manager returned, the conversation was casually moved to a talk about attendance, tardiness, and the expectancy of minimal absences. None of this applied to the three of us, so it was for our new co-worker, who happened to be late the previous morning. She also, as we were told, called while she was in traffic during a monstrous downpour and was trying to make it to work as safely and quickly as she could.

Hearing this, we were all empathetic to her plight, because surely, we wanted her to arrive at her site with our other co-worker safely and in one piece. The Beast did not see it this way. One of my co-workers and I were asked to drop off the call so the conversation could continue with our two other co-workers (since it directly affected their site): The Great White Hope and Intelligent Black Woman #3 (we’ll call her this because she was the last of the three of us to join our region before The Great White Hope).

After their portion of that call, my phone’s text messages started blowing up. It was Intelligent Black Woman #3. She proceeded to tell me how The Beast verbally abused The Great White Hope and reduced her to a crying, mumbling, apologetic human being. And this is when I lost my shit.

It takes half a second to be kind

Reading the messages, something in me boiled to 250°F. I mainly do much better talking things out over the phone if I know it will take a lot of time to text back and forth. It helps me process details appropriately, especially with sensitive information. I called Intelligent Black Woman #3, and I sat and listened to her as she explained what took place. I could hear The Great White Hope in the background, sighing and sounding out of breath.

I said, “This does not sit well with me at all. It takes half a second to be kind, and she was trying to get to work on time. There is no reason to act like this about her being fifteen minutes late. Have you reached out to Human Resources?” Intelligent Black Woman #3 said she had just mentioned HR before my call to her, and The Great White Hope said she would file a report. The report was filed. Human Resources called and spoke with both of them. We pressed forward with our day.

My phone began lighting up again before the afternoon was done. It was Intelligent Black Woman #3. She was informing me of how The Beast called back and made more statements, and then proceeded to infuriate not only the Front Desk Manager at their site, but the Front Desk Representatives as well. Since I have worked at both my site and Intelligent Black Woman #3’s site before, I am well-versed in how to operate both sites. The Beast is not. There are plans in place and guidelines to follow in which she has not educated herself. I informed my co-worker I would come by her site one day the following week.

I made arrangements to visit the site and speak with the Front Desk and make sure everyone knows Intelligent Black Woman #3 would continue to proceed with operations that were agreed upon and would not be following suit with changes that would be detrimental to testing and the flow of operations for the site. This took place on Tuesday, April 15, 2025.

Walking into the office for Intelligent Black Woman #3 and The Great White Hope’s site, the Front Desk Representatives were elated to see me, and I stopped to chit chat with one of the managers and informed her I came by to make sure nothing would change and that the flow would not be disrupted. She hugged me and thanked me for taking the time out to come over and make sure things would stay the way they needed to.

The Beast had made so many messes, we had to clean them up and ensure our relationship could remain intact with this contracted site. It only took a few moments out of my testing day, after I had dropped my samples at the closest FedEx location, to make sure my co-workers would be okay until the end of their shift at their site. Our details of what took place were also relayed to Human Resources.