Black women are invisible?

A few years back I was reading an article by Valerie Purdie-Vaughn, Professor of Psychology and teacher at the Business School @ Columbia that examined the challenges that black women faced in corporate America.  I began to recount my own personal struggles in the work environment, and personally identifying with this article.   I’m not under valuing the challenges that all women continue to face but recognizing the unique struggles for African American Women.

In this same article Yvette Miley, senior VP and executive editor of MSNBC gave an account of how she had left meetings holding on to her ideas because she felt they would be undervalued. I had personally experienced the same thing once or twice.
Valeri Purdie-Vaughn position was that some people’s brains were biased to ignore black women. For example, when you think about black executives, do you visualize black-men? When you visualize executives, do you visualize white women?  Purdie-Vaugh believed that “black women” are not typical of the categories, “black” or “women”, people’s brains fail to include them in both categories.

She concluded that article with this statement, Black women suffer from a “now you see them now you don’t” effect in the work place. Please share your opinion.

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