Unacceptable Disqualifier for Black Women

U.S. Census statistics show that 82 percent of residents in Jackson, Miss., are Black. Seventy-one percent of its city council is comprised of Black members who were elected to represent seven wards. John Horhn, Jackson’s 54th mayor, is Black. RaShall Brackney, a Black woman, was Horhn’s pick to be the city’s next police chief. The city council confirmed the selection by a 6-to-1 vote, a local news source reports. Ashby Foote, one of the two white council members, cast the dissenting vote. He deemed Brackney “too well educated and charming” to lead the Jackson Police Department.

Brackney has a Ph.D. and more than 35 years of experience in law enforcement. She served as a commander for the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police and as George Washington University’s police chief, and she was appointed chief of police for Charlottesville, Va., the summer after the Unite the Right rally there left a woman dead in 2017.

According to her bio on the U.S. Library of Congress website, Brackney is a graduate of the FBI National Academy, the United States Secret Service Dignitary Protection course and the Redstone Arsenal “bomb school” for managers. Additionally, she was a 2024 Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow. She also has taught as an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University, her alma mater. Brackney’s faculty web page at George Mason University, where she has served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Practice since 2022, says she is currently writing two books about policing.

Clearly, Brackney is an expert and extraordinarily experienced leader in her profession. Why wouldn’t Foote or anyone else want someone as credentialed as her to lead Jackson’s police department? It seems that attracting her to the role would be a tremendous honor and a big win for the city. Foolishly, organizations too often forfeit such amazing opportunities when Black women are involved.

Over the past two decades, I have conducted several dozen climate studies on college and university campuses as well as in corporations and other workplaces spanning a vast array of industries. Consistently, Black women professionals talk about being passed over for job opportunities and promotions because they were seemingly too qualified. Accordingly, reporting to someone (usually a white colleague) with fewer years of experience, fewer or no college degrees, and quantifiably less stellar records of professional accomplishment is particularly hurtful. I cannot overstate the frequency and pain with which Black women talk about this in my research interviews with them.

Admittedly, my understanding of this is not based entirely on my workplace climate studies. I have also heard and witnessed it in my roles in various higher education search processes. One reality that is well understood among Black professionals in academia and other industries is that we have to run twice as fast to get half as far. I have seen Black candidates who indeed ran considerably faster and built irrefutably outstanding scholarly records get passed over. Some instances have been absolutely ridiculous.

“A rock star like that wouldn’t possibly come here” is one excuse that I have repeatedly heard. “There is no way we would be able to afford her” is another. “If she comes, she won’t stay here long because she’ll get recruited away by another institution” is another. In one case, a colleague argued that a high-profile Black scholar would disrupt the culture because she would bring too much attention to the department, which would disrupt the “harmony” that faculty members had long enjoyed.

A few years ago, I served on a major award committee for a professional association. One colleague argued that a Black woman nominee was too qualified and had already been recognized enough with accolades in the field. When comments like these are made, I do my best to disrupt them. “I thought it was excellence that we were after” is a statement that I often put on the table as a reminder to colleagues. Admittedly, these experiences aggravate me because the presumptions and excuses about Black standouts are not typically made about recruits and applicants who are white.

Last month, I wrote a column here about the absurd notion of so-called DEI hires. I deemed it racist and insisted that there is no such thing. Brackney, for sure, is no version of a DEI hire. Yet, the opposition to her appointment shows how even talented Black professionals with résumés like hers too frequently encounter resistance from white people at the epicenter of power who look for a reason—really, any reason—to not hire someone Black. As it pertains to Black women, especially, they are either too qualified or not qualified enough. The intersectionality of racism and sexism uniquely disqualifies them at unacceptably high rates.

One question in response to Foote’s comments about Brackney: Would it be better to hire a mean-spirited person who lacks charm, earned just one or no college degree, has considerably fewer years of experience, and has a quantifiably weaker record of leadership and achievement? If the answer is yes, then here is one reasonable follow-up question: Why? Both are recyclable queries for higher education search committees and for awards-selection processes.