“I’m of better use to you dead.”
Those were the words that slipped out of my mouth on a winter morning, shortly after I hung up from an unexpected phone call with an executive and a representative from HR, informing me that my role was being eliminated. I didn’t even realize I had said them aloud until my husband, voice trembling, responded as assuredly as he could, “Don’t say that. We love you. We want you here.”
Before the call, my home office looked the way it always does when I’m gearing up for a full week of work: a warm cup of coffee within reach, my planner open, a few sticky notes from my daughter stuck to the side of my monitor, the light coming in from the east-facing window in a way that makes the room feel a little softer, a little safer. It was a space I built with intention. A space I fought to have. But as the call began, the air in the room shifted, first subtly, then violently.
The executive’s voice was too calm. Her phrasing too scripted. I felt the first drop in my stomach before the words even came. My hands went cold. My chest tightened the way it does right before an asthma flare or a panic attack — I couldn’t tell which. My coffee, still warm, suddenly smelled too strong. My throat felt thick, and my ears rang like someone had struck a tuning fork inside my skull.
Then her words landed:
“Eliminated.”
“Reduction.”
“Transition support.”
My vision blurred at the edges. The room felt too small. I could feel my pulse in places you shouldn’t be aware of — behind my eyes, in my teeth, at the base of my skull. There is a particular kind of out-of-body sensation that comes when the ground disappears beneath you, and you’re expected to keep sitting upright in your office chair while the corporate language of destruction unfolds in sanitized, gentle tones.
I wanted to curse them out. Truly. Everything in me wanted to say, “How dare you? After everything I’ve built here? After everything I’ve carried?” But my conditioning kicked in instantly.
The nice Black woman script that’s been drilled into me since childhood snapped into place like muscle memory. I thanked them – thanked them – for taking away my livelihood, for destabilizing my family, for heightening my depression. I was gracious because I was raised to be gracious, even in the face of violence that arrives wearing polite corporate language.
I wish I could tell you that, at this stage of my life, I no longer tie my self-worth to my job. I wish I could say that my identity isn’t bound to my career or my ability to provide. But, like many Black women in America, I am the primary breadwinner. I am the safety net. I am the backstop. And suddenly, with a single, scripted meeting that lasted barely seven minutes, that safety net evaporated, and it felt like everything I had worked for was gone.
After the call, I sat frozen at my desk. The coffee had since gone cold. My hands were shaking, tiny tremors that made the surface of the cup ripple like a disturbed pond. I tried to breathe, but my breaths stayed shallow, perched at the top of my chest. My body felt both heavy and hollow at the same time, like my bones had been replaced with wet sand. There was a ringing in my ears that made it hard to hear my husband when he rushed into the room. He touched my shoulder gently, and that was when the sentence escaped, unannounced and instinctive: “I’m of better use to you dead.”
Not an intention, but a feeling
Even now, writing that sentence, I can feel the shock of hearing myself say it. I wasn’t announcing an intention, I was naming a feeling. A brutal, fleeting thought shaped by the crushing reality of suddenly not knowing how to care for the people who depend on me.
Since then, I’ve been searching for the right word for what I’m feeling.
Is it grief?
Is it mourning?
Is it fawning?
Is it languishing?
None of those words feel big enough, wide enough, deep enough to hold the weight of this new reality.
Psychologists have a name for what happens when your body absorbs a truth your mind can’t yet process. In 2023, the American Psychiatric Association updated the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual to include “moral problems” as a recognized clinical category, an umbrella for the distress that occurs when a person is forced to witness or participate in actions that violate their deeply held moral beliefs, or when institutions betray the values they claim to uphold.
Traditionally, we talked about moral injury in the context of war or medical crises. But research now shows it is increasingly present in workplaces, especially for Black professionals tasked with carrying the emotional and ethical weight of diversity work within systems that refuse to change. It is a rupture, not just of trust, but of meaning. And that is the sensation that flooded me at my desk that morning: not just fear, but moral injury.
The corporate shift away from equity
What happened in my home office is not just my personal crisis. It is a symptom of a broader cultural and economic moment in America: a mass displacement of Black women from the workforce as companies quietly retreat from their promises of racial equity.
While I understand that the threat and impact of losing one’s job is not exclusively felt by only one group of people, we are living in a world where, just last year more than 300,000 Black women were pushed out of the workforce. That number continues to grow. Consider that Black women make up roughly 7 percent of the U.S. population, but face unemployment rates noticeably higher than the average. This trend is not random. The level of sharpshooting precision required to keep hitting that specific demographic is not accidental. It signals intention. It signals a pattern. And when patterns repeat with this level of consistency, we have to name them for what they are.
For years, I’ve been a client-facing DEI counselor, the person companies call when they want to say the right thing, repair harm, shift culture, signal progress. I spent countless hours helping CEOs and HR teams navigate issues of race, inclusion, and belonging, even as my own company was quiet about its commitments.
They loved the optics of my work, the expertise I brought, the way my presence could make them look capable, accountable and evolved. But they never invested in the work internally. They left me, and people like me, to shoulder the emotional labor alone. And then, when the political winds shifted and the anti-DEI backlash became profitable, they cut me loose.
I have long been acutely aware that, in every room I walk into, there is always someone who believes that, despite my degrees and experience, I have only achieved my position because of affirmative action.
In America today, anti-DEI sentiment is a cultural trend, and anti-Blackness is openly worn like an accessory. Whether because of fear or because they didn’t really mean it in the first place, we’ve witnessed a drastic U-turn from the (not so long ago) corporate statements about values and equality to the current landscape.
And, predictably, Black women — especially those in equity-related roles — are the most prominent casualties as such performative morality crumbles.
The mental health impact of job loss
We rarely talk about the emotional aftermath of being let go, especially for people like me, who have been conditioned our entire lives to be strong, agreeable and accommodating. To be “nice.” To work twice as hard, never complain, absorb the discomfort of others, and prioritize everyone else’s needs before our own. Niceness was never designed to protect Black women. It was designed to make us easier to dismiss.
Instead, we talk about layoffs in the language of business strategy:
Restructuring.
Realignment.
Reprioritization.
But we don’t talk about the mental health impact of mass displacement in a country where Black women already carry more than our share. We don’t talk about the quiet devastation of being told, explicitly or implicitly, that you’re no longer valuable. That you’re expendable. That you are a line item, not a life.
And we certainly don’t talk about how that lands when you are responsible for many lives beyond your own. For many Black women, economic mobility is not freedom; it’s responsibility. And so, when a layoff hits, it doesn’t topple one life; it threatens an entire ecosystem.
I grew up in deep poverty, the second oldest of eight children. I was the one who “made it out.” I went to college, earned multiple degrees, became an executive, built a national reputation, and carried my family with me along the way.
Acknowledging the “Black tax” and network poverty
My success has never been mine alone. I’m the person everyone comes to when something breaks, or someone gets sick, or rent is late, or the world turns sharp and unfair. In Black communities, it is sometimes referred to as the “Black tax,” the unspoken obligation to support parents, siblings, nieces, nephews — anyone who needs you — once you’ve reached some measure of stability.
I used to hear, “your network is your net worth,” but a more honest version would be “your network is predetermined by your zip code and your family’s proximity to slavery.”
Sociologists call this network poverty: when your personal network is made up of people with limited resources, and so what you earn is already spoken for before it even arrives. No matter how many dependents are officially acknowledged on my tax forms, the IRS has no category for the people I actually support.
When I whispered those words, “I’m of better use to you dead,” it felt like something inside me speaking before I could stop it. It was the collision of my crushing reality with the cold efficiency of corporate layoffs. I was forced to wonder whether the financial windfall my life insurance policy would provide might be more helpful than my now-uncertain income situation. And I was acknowledging the fact that my depression and chronic illness — my “multi-hyphenate disabled” identity — doesn’t get a day off, even when my paycheck does.
The timing, of course, makes it worse. Right before the holidays. The season of thankfulness — of joy, abundance, cheer. The season when families rely on the steady earners among them. They could have waited until January. They didn’t. I won’t be gaslit by the “it’s just business” chorus. Anyone who has ever been laid off knows there is nothing impersonal about suddenly losing your income, your routine, your community, and your sense of security in a single blow.
But when you’re a Black woman, statistically underpaid, under-promoted, overworked, and disproportionately responsible for supporting others, the blow lands harder.
And now, here I am. I join a growing statistical category sitting at the intersection of grief, exhaustion, responsibility and uncertainty. One of the many left feeling like the world is collapsing in on itself, yet still needing to hold up everyone else. The strains of network poverty leave no visible scars, but the wounds are felt nonetheless. I’m not asking for pity. There are people facing circumstances more dire than mine. I am aware of my privileges. I have savings. I have degrees. I have a network. I have a voice. I know many women don’t have any of that.
But I am also allowed to be shaken. I’m allowed to be angry. I’m allowed to be confused about how to exist in a country, and yes, a company, that has made it clear that I am not valued, seen or wanted.
Black women: the backbone of the American economy
I don’t have answers right now. I don’t have a triumphant bow to tie around this moment, no “everything happens for a reason” platitude to soothe the pain. What I do have is a question that has lingered since that HR call ended:
How can I be of use to those who mean the most to me in a world that keeps telling people like me we are not useful?
My experience is only one story, but it sits inside a much larger truth: corporations are complicit in creating an anti-DEI reality with every choice they make.
In my case, I was one of fewer than five senior Black women in leadership roles at a global company of roughly 6,000 employees.
That type of scarcity does not happen by mistake. It is manufactured. If you zoom out, the research shows us that the racial wealth gap persists not because of individual failure but because of structural design — an American economy built to advantage whiteness and extract from Black labor.
I don’t write this seeking sympathy. I write it because I know I’m not alone. I write it because someone else is whispering the same sentence I whispered, and they need to hear that their worth is not tied to a corporation’s spreadsheet.
I write it because Black women have been the backbone of this economy for generations, and we deserve to live lives that do not actively seek to break us.
Amira Barger
Amira Barger is author of "The Price of Nice," a diversity expert, and global communications executive. She is also an adjunct professor of marketing and communications at Cal State East Bay. Views are the author's own.