Issue No. 07 - THE CLARITY MEMO: Unfiltered.
Being “The Only” Is Unsafe.
Nolan Wells. Kendrick Johnson. Tamla Horsford. Black grief, Black safety, and the lie of 'bring your full self to work.'
Founder’s Note: This issue is coming to you a day early. Black grief doesn't wait for a publishing calendar, and neither will I. In the last issue, I argued that leaders often treat symptoms while the real diagnosis goes untouched. Here is that misdiagnosis, made literal. Most leaders have never once reckoned with what it actually costs to be the only Black person in a room. To deeply feel the toll of hypervigilance, constant calculation, and the weight of a lonely burden while everyone else calls it a normal day. Read this one slower than usual.
The Memo.
We don't yet know what “officially” happened to Nolan Xavier Wells.
On July 4th, he was on a boat trip to Horn Island, Mississippi, the only Black person among three friends. He was last seen around 3 p.m. His friends returned to the mainland without him, assuming he'd caught another ride. His phone turned up separately. By Monday, his body had been found. DNA testing is pending. No foul play has been established. And his mother is planning a funeral instead of a homecoming.
As of this writing, Nolan's story has only been carried by local Mississippi outlets and Black media, ahead of any major national outlet. We know what the coverage would look like if the reverse were true, and a white teenager had gone missing on a boat trip with three Black friends.
What we don't know about this specific case amplifies what we DO know about the pattern.
Black people recognized this story before the headlines caught up, the way you recognize a familiar knock at the door.
The lone Black friend, the unclear timeline, the instinct to ask what he did wrong instead of what happened to him. We've been here before.
In 2013, 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson was found dead, upside down, inside a rolled-up wrestling mat in his Valdosta, Georgia high school gym. Authorities ruled it an accident, however, his family has never accepted that ruling. This past March, a federal judge dismissed their $1 billion lawsuit on procedural grounds, while writing in her own ruling that she still had concerns about inconsistencies in the official reports. Kendrick’s parents filed a new $10 billion complaint days later. Thirteen years later, their fight for accountability is still active in federal court.
In 2018, Tamla Horsford, a 40-year-old mother of five, went to a sleepover, a birthday party for a friend. It was the kind of gathering built on the architecture of women's friendship – moms who knew each other through their sons' youth football league, getting together to celebrate, unwind, be seen by people who supposedly cared about them. She was the only Black woman there, and by morning, was dead in the backyard. Investigators ruled it an accidental fall. Her family's independent autopsy disputes it. No charges were ever filed.
Sit with what Tamla wanted that night for a moment. Friendship. Community. Belonging. The exact things we tell women to go out and cultivate. She showed up for and with the people in her circle, and paid the price with her life.
I want women leading teams and organizations to wrestle with this one specifically, and perhaps see yourself in Tamla's life. Your after-school pickup line. Your neighborhood group chat. Your work happy hour.
If the one Black woman in your circle of moms, your team, your friend group, stopped showing up tomorrow, would you know why? Would you have made sure, in ways she never should ask for, that she was safe in the space you invited her to?
Nobody has to die for this pattern I’m describing to be true. It is visible in the workplaces you lead, and exists inside your org chart.
A 2023 study out of Harvard, Boston University, and MIT, tracking over 9,000 new hires found that Black employees are 32% more likely to leave their jobs within two years, and 26% less likely to be promoted on time, than their white counterparts. Black women specifically are 51% more likely to leave than white women. And were the only group whose turnover and promotion were significantly affected by the racial makeup of their coworkers.
Simply put, when Black women work in whiter teams, they have worse job outcomes.
The Unfiltered Take.
I've lived both sides of this letter.
Years ago, I was in a white family's home, on a tour of their lake house, being shown their historic memorabilia when someone placed a hat on my head. Casually, warmly, the way you'd hand someone a souvenir. I took it off to look at it, and it was a Nazi hat. With the actual symbol.
I made it out of that house alive, but not everyone does.
I've also sat in meetings the morning after another headline broke, another Black person gone, and watched my Black colleagues go quiet while a white colleague looked around, genuinely confused, "Why's everyone so quiet? We need to get this done!" There was no malice or cruelty in their intent, it was something worse in its own way. Zero awareness that a “random Tuesday” for them can land completely differently on the next person because of what they're carrying, and what that does to their productivity and performance.
And I've been the one who had to fix it. As the leader of a Black employee resource group, I once wrote and sent a letter acknowledging our collective grief over yet another headline, because the official communications team wouldn't. I emailed, I waited, nothing came back. So I did the job myself, on top of my workload, on top of my grief, unpaid and unasked, because someone had to say “I see you” while silence rang through the office. And that is the labor nobody puts in a performance review.
We tell people to “bring their full selves to work”, but what we actually mean is“bring the parts that don't require anything from us”.
Not the grief, the fear, the omnipresent question of whether they're safe in that meeting, that boat, that home. Just bring the deck. It's due at 8AM.
Black bodies have historically been treated as disposable, and our labor as both expected and disposable. When we name danger – physical, psychological, financial – we’re dismissed, second-guessed, or punished for saying it out loud. No leader gets to claim ignorance of this anymore, not with these many receipts.
And to the white leaders reading this specifically; I want you to hear this without flinching or collapsing into guilt. Guilt keeps you frozen and focused on your own discomfort; action moves you toward someone else's safety. Only one of them is useful to the people you lead.
This is where the first question, B – Belief Systems, in my courageous leadership BRAVE Framework™ comes in. Do you know, and have you examined, what you actually believe about people and power; and can you trace where those beliefs came from? Majority of leaders have never once audited the beliefs fueling their own leadership, formed by early experience, cultural conditioning, and years of organizational survival. And those beliefs surface as decisions made from bias dressed up as instinct, and cultures shaped by what a leader unconsciously believes people are capable of rather than what they actually are.
The danger of being the only Black person in an all-white space – at work, at home, in community, at play – is not a metaphor. It is a measurable, historically consistent, and current risk. That risk doesn't disappear because your intentions are good, only when your structures change.
So, what will you do about that?
The Action.
In standard issues of this newsletter, I give you only one action. This is the exception. Pick whichever is true for you right now, and start there today.
At work
Build a structural accountability and governance mechanism. One that is documented and reviewed on an executive level for taking concerns about safety, exclusion, or bias seriously. And before you respond to complaints, notice if your first instinct is that the person raising it is “overreacting” or being “difficult”. That reaction is data about you, not about them.
Build cultural and emotional intelligence about differential impact and the labor it creates. Learn to recognize why a “random Tuesday” does not land the same way on every person on your team, what it does to focus, output, and presence.
Ask who is quietly absorbing undue emotional and psychological burden for everyone else this week. Who’s acknowledging the grief, checking in on people, holding space in the meeting nobody else noticed had gone quiet? Is it their job? Were they thanked, compensated, or even just seen? Most importantly, is that person you?
At home
Have the uncomfortable and unfiltered conversation with your family. Not the "isn't this a tragedy?" but what would you have done differently if it had been your home, your boat party, your memorabilia, your gathering?
If your child brings a Black friend home, will that friend be safe in every room of your house, including with your relatives, your jokes, your history?
Everywhere
Don't perform this. Don't post a statement that took less time to write than it takes to read. And definitely do NOT ask the nearest Black person in your life to explain, comfort, or build your Inclusion & Belonging strategy for free. Don’t be the reason the burden of being “the only” becomes heavier for a Black person.
Nolan Wells, Kendrick Johnson, and Tamla Horsford lived in three different cities across three different decades, yet one unbroken thread runs through each of their realities. Being “the only” is dangerous and unsafe. And institutions, people and spaces remain unable, or unwilling, to fully account for the safety of a Black person under their watch.
If this moved you, ask yourself: what would need to be true in your organization, and in your home, for someone like me to never have to write this again? Then forward this to someone who needs to sit with that question too. The Clarity Memo: Unfiltered drops bi-weekly. Subscribeto get it directly to your inbox.
This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional, legal, financial, or organizational advice. For guidance specific to your organization, contact Fadéké Strategic Consulting, LLC at admin@fadeke.com