Slay In Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible

I was fortunate to have my parents as role models and to influence me. So few young black women have role models outside of their immediate family and friends to help them navigate the inevitable hurdles that do exist. To give them valuable advice, encouragement, and support. I firmly believe that you need to See it to be it. It is no wonder that my careers advisor, all those years ago, thought that my future ahead was as a nurse or a teacher (in fairness, I do a bit of both in my current role!). They couldn’t see anything else for a young West Indian woman. Black female role models were just not visible then to inspire them or me.

It is no coincidence that I personally know so many of the women featured in Slay In Your Lane. There are too few of us who are visible and known. I admire and respect all of them. A number of these amazing women I count as my cheerleaders, and I am theirs. They encourage and support me in my journey, and I try to do the same for them.

This book needed to be written. It is a book of inspiration, a book that tells the story of struggle, of resilience and, most importantly, of achievement. It answers so many questions that I had when I started my own career journey and looked around and had few people to ask. I wish this book had existed then, I am so glad that it exists now.

If you are a young black woman you should read Slay In Your Lane. Elizabeth and Yomi have put together an incredibly valuable resource for you. They have collated the stories of women who have pioneered and gone before you. These women give their honest reflections and pearls of wisdom.

We are your cheerleaders. Now go SLAY!

Dr Karen Blackett OBE

INTRODUCTION (#ud19a9d54-6548-5579-a064-8d337269503e)

‘It’s Always a Race Thing With Her’ (#ulink_744b0df9-d50d-5aa2-912e-9289c86459f0)

ELIZABETH

‘Work twice as hard to be considered half as good’ was a saying that I, like most black women, grew up with. But it was only as I began my twenties and started to experience more of the world that it really started to hit home.

Slay In Your Lane is the love child of exasperation and optimism. I can’t pinpoint the exact incident that tipped me over the edge – the various microaggressions start to blur into one after some time – but after one particularly frustrating week at work, I realised I was done. Done with feeling conscious of my blackness and femaleness and apologising for just existing. Like me, my black female friends have the ambition and drive to succeed within spaces that were not initially set up for us to excel in, but we have all found that navigating them has proved to be a challenge at times.

I sought advice where so many women do: in books. I bought Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, and although there were parts that I learned from and related to, I felt it failed to address the uniquely challenging experiences faced by me and women like me. And why would it? Sandberg can only speak to one facet of my being, my womanhood, which, for me, is wholly intertwined with my identity as a black woman.

So I went looking for black women at networking events who could speak to my experience, and advise me on how best to navigate my way through the challenges I saw ahead of me. I still felt optimistic and positive about the black female experience and I met successful and inspiring black women from a variety of industries – from a tech entrepreneur turning over six figures to a Magic Circle lawyer carving out her place in a male-dominated field. We shared stories about the challenges we encountered and the triumphs we could see on the horizon. These women were not the finger-snapping stereotypes from a TV series, to which society often reduces the black female experience. They were not monolithic; they were awe-inspiring, amazing and relatable. But something just didn’t add up: why were they only celebrated at ticketed events with limited numbers of seats?

I would leave these events feeling reassured that I wasn’t alone, but also saddened that this sense of sisterhood ended with the event. This longing led me to call my best friend, Yomi, who is a journalist, to persuade her to be the one to take on the challenge of amplifying these women’s voices and utilising their priceless advice on a bigger scale. I asked her to write a book that spoke to me, and other young, black, twenty-something women navigating life. Later, we decided to work on this campaign together.

Role models matter to the next generation more than ever, and black British women and girls have them in vast amounts, but you wouldn’t guess that from a glance at the shelf of your average bookstore. We need a movement that amplifies the voices and increases the visibility of black women who have been made thoroughly invisible by the mainstream. That’s what Slay In Your Lane hopes to be; we hope to offer confidence and inspiration, but also, most importantly, support to other black women who are in the process of building their own foundation and who will, if the world has its way, be constrained by the limitations society tries to place upon us.

There is a saying: ‘It takes a village to raise a child,’ but how about 39 of the most trailblazing black women in Britain? Slay In Your Lane is the personal-development course I never knew I needed; as you read this book I hope it gives you the tools and support to be in the driving seat of your life and not a mere passenger. Slay In Your Lane is #BlackGirlMagic personified. It is exactly what we’ve been waiting for: a chance to revel in the achievements of those who ran so we could fly, as well as to encourage those who are just about to take flight.

YOMI

I owe a great deal to the TV medical comedy, Scrubs.

In an episode in Season 3, the white female doctor Elliot Reid turns to the black male doctor Christopher Turk and says he has ‘no idea how hard it is’ being a woman in their profession. ‘I have no idea?’ he says, eyebrow raised. ‘Look, I’m not gonna fight about whether in medicine it’s harder being black or a woman,’ she responds. ‘Black!’ Turk shouts. ‘Woman!’ Elliot retorts. At that very moment, a black female doctor passes them slowly. ‘Much props, Dr Rhodes,’ says an awkward Turk. The pair shuffle on the spot.

Something that my then 13-year-old self had already frequently experienced but had never been able to articulate was perfectly captured in a 30-second skit: that the different facets of my identity – being black, being a woman – impact on who I am, and what my experience in this country is. It explained why I only somewhat related to stories focused on black men and white women. It highlighted why seeing my identity and my experience reflected mattered. Scrubs had just explained what, years later, I would realise went by the name of ‘intersectionality’ – and I immediately felt seen.

Being black and British, people know our parents are from somewhere else before we even open our mouths. Or if not our parents, our grandparents. Or great grandparents. We are tattooed with our otherness. We are hypervisible in predominantly white spaces, but somehow, we often remain unseen. Growing up, I felt keenly the dearth of visible black British women in the stories our society consumed and it made me feel all sorts of things. It made me feel as if I was invisible, too. It made me feel frustrated. It made me feel annoyed, upset and, most of all, restless. Restless, because I knew (or at least hoped) that when I was old enough, I’d one day be a part of changing things.

I attempted to do something about it when I turned 21, breathlessly starting up a publication aimed at young black girls in the UK. Birthday Magazine was the primordial goop from which Slay In Your Lane was indirectly spawned. Its aims were similar: to outline the black female experience as well as excellence, and offer equal amounts of realism and optimism. It was a small-scale attempt to uplift; its distribution was local and the team was small, but its impact was larger than I expected. Slay In Your Lane was the next logical step that I didn’t see coming, but Elizabeth did, animated by the very frustration, annoyance and restlessness that my younger self had felt.

Now, at 26, the same sense of restlessness has begun to set in, but this time it is without the anger, or even the upset. The current overriding emotion I feel is unbounded hopefulness, because black British women in 2018 are well past making waves – we’re currently creating something of a tsunami. From authors to politicians, to entrepreneurs to artists, black women in the UK continue to thrive against all odds and well outside of the world’s expectations. Women who look and talk like me, grew up in similar places to me, are shaping almost every societal sector, from the bottom and, finally, from all the way up at the top. All a younger Yomi would’ve wished for was the ability to learn from them; an older Yomi wishes for pretty much exactly the same thing.

If white women fear the glass ceiling, black women fear a seemingly impenetrable glasshouse. We’re blockaded from all sides and there is little to no literature on offer to advise us as to how we’re supposed to push on. So much is currently happening on an individual level to combat this, and it’s of paramount importance that it is recorded, noted and passed on. We almost never hear of the persistence, perseverance and drive that fosters such success. Perhaps more importantly, we rarely hear of the failures, the flops and the insecurities that black British women have managed to push through to get to where they are today. We rarely hear about black British women, full stop. And this silence can be just as damaging as the negativity of which we’re so often on the receiving end.

Throughout my teenage years I was a keen reader, and I am no anomaly – findings from a 2014 study by the National Literacy Trust show that black girls are more likely to read than any other ethnic group in the UK.

Yet books rarely touch meaningfully on the black British experience – and even less so the black British female experience. As a part of this group, I have a vested interest in Slay In Your Lane that goes beyond simply wanting to write a book. I guess you could say that Elizabeth and I are writing this as much for ourselves as we are for other black women. Just like our peers, our friends and our sisters, we are still learning how to navigate the workplace, the dating world and life in general.

We’re not here to tell you that if you simply go for gold, put your mind to it and believe, that you can will yourself out of systemic racism. As pointed out by Elizabeth, even your parents would’ve no doubt once said that you’d have to work ‘twice as hard’ and meritocracy is a myth – and stats continually prove this. But what we are saying is that there is much empowerment and inspiration to be gained from the many women who have jumped over the very hurdles that you too will find yourself up against. There are practical ways to aid you to win, and admitting that there will be difficulties and challenges along the way doesn’t mean submitting to defeat. It means coming to battle armed and prepared.

EDUCATION (#ulink_cca07469-6487-534b-99a7-b775f1d1ed1c)

‘I also remember thinking that there was often a double standard between the black girls and white girls in school. We were punished when they would be given second chances.’

Elizabeth

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‘For instance, there was the time the cheerleading club decided to give its annual “slave auction” a Django Unchained theme …’

Yomi

Lawyer, Doctor, Engineer (#ulink_cca07469-6487-534b-99a7-b775f1d1ed1c)

ELIZABETH

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‘Even today when I get into a taxi and someone says “What do you do?” and I say “I’m a space scientist”, they do a double take. I’m a woman and I’m black. “How come you’re a space scientist? That doesn’t add up.”’

Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock MBE

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When I was 16 I thought I was going to fail all my GCSEs. The grades I had been predicted suggested that wasn’t going to be the case, but I still had a deep and looming fear that I wasn’t going to pass a single one. At home, the pressure to do well in school and in my exams was immense. Results day in my household was set to be an unfair cup final between two rival football teams: on one side were my parents, armed with all the best players and expecting straight As. On the other was me, with my mediocre players and a subpar defence, trying not to crumble under pressure and get annihilated. As the weeks passed and results day got ever closer, the tension increased, and so, to mitigate what I felt sure would be my parents’ imminent disappointment, and rather than wait to be caught out on the big day, I naively started to job hunt. With no GCSEs and no experience, I knew I was probably fighting a losing battle, but it still felt less frightening to me than the real battle that I was convinced I had coming my way on results day.

I partly grew up in Dulwich – a suburb of South London, home to Dulwich Picture Gallery. I would often pass the gallery, so I had noticed that they hosted a range of events aimed at their usual demographic – middle class, middle-aged and white – nothing that 16-year-old me particularly fancied. But I needed work experience, and I had an idea, so I went on Google, did a quick search and found the email address of the person who headed up the gallery’s events and marketing and sent her an email. In it, I said I believed their events could do with appealing more to young people. I asked to meet her and, much to my surprise, she agreed – obviously she had no idea she was arranging to see a teenager. On the day of the meeting, as I sat there waiting for her to arrive, I was so nervous. To say I felt out of my depth is an understatement. I was thinking, ‘This middle-aged white woman is not expecting some inexperienced 16-year-old black girl asking to be involved in her events.’ But when she did arrive she looked pleasantly surprised. It just so happened that during that summer the gallery was introducing outdoor cinema screenings, and she wanted my input to help bring the idea to life. And that’s what I spent my summer doing. It became my first experience in marketing.

Results day came and, much to my surprise, I did well and my parents were pleased. My panic had propelled me into finding work experience that would go on to prove valuable in my career, so I don’t regret that move, but looking back on that summer, what I do regret, and find depressing, is how I let my crippling fear of not doing well and letting other people down take over my life. Instead of making the most of those weeks I spent them waiting anxiously and fretting about my future. Why? Where did my lack of faith in myself come from? On balance, when I look back on it, the work experience was a good thing for me to do, it was just the circumstances that drove me to do it that were far from ideal.

In my school, unless you were identified as a gifted and talented student achieving straight As and exhibiting model behaviour, it was almost inevitable that you would fall through the cracks and be forgotten about. By the time it came to making decisions about your future, you could find yourself in a no-man’s land, caught between your parents’ very high expectations and the lower opinions of the teachers who doubted your ability – not forgetting the usual teenage peer pressures. For me, this self-doubt then developed into a loss of self-esteem, and anxiety crept in about what I was good at and how I could translate that into a future.

When the time came to take the exams, I had noticed that some of my friends didn’t believe they could possibly do well, so they just started to give up and misbehave – because this seemed to be what was expected anyway. This tension often became a ‘one-way ticket’ to disengagement, and so they began to succumb to that feeling – whether they had started out well-behaved and ambitious, or not. Being doubted by your teachers and put under great pressure from your parents created a sometimes toxic combination. The truth about educational achievements is often more complex than the stats suggest.

When the topic of race and education is covered by the media it is usually cast in an overwhelmingly negative light. When they aren’t focusing on the low achievement of white working-class boys, the experiences of ethnic minorities are characterised by low aspirations, high exclusion rates and subsequent underachievement. With black children, the spotlight tends to be focused on black boys – perhaps understandably, because their educational attainment levels are shockingly low compared to black girls. As a result black girls are largely rendered invisible within the education conversation, so there has been little contemporary research and literature that looks into their experience of our education system, asking the question: how are black girls in the UK really doing in school?

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‘My friend, face your books, not this Facebook.’

Unknown African parent

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It’s not hard to see why an extremely high value was placed on education in my childhood home and in the homes of my friends, as well as in those of many of the women we interviewed for this book. We are a generation of people who grew up with parents – or grandparents – who had gained professional qualifications in the countries they had migrated from, but who often found it difficult to get jobs in the UK that reflected their skill sets because those qualifications weren’t always recognised when they went to job interviews. Educated though they were, they often faced discrimination as they entered the labour market, and many had to take jobs for which they were overqualified.