EP 16: The Performance Tax: The Price Black People Pay to Succeed (Ft. Savon & Antoinette from the Can’t Afford Therapy Podcast)
About this episode
Kier Gaines discusses the emotional costs of code-switching and the performance tax Black professionals face in corporate culture with Savon and Antoinette.
Some rooms don't just ask you to show up.They ask you to perform. To soften your voice. To shrink your personality. To make yourself "easier" to digest. To become a version of yourself that feels acceptable even if it doesn't feel authentic. For Black professionals, that performance often becomes second nature. We call it being professional. We call it code-switching. We call it reading the room. But every performance has a cost. In this episode of (L)Earned The Hard Way , Kier Gaines sits down with Savon and Antoinette , hosts of the award-winning Can't Afford Therapy Podcast , for a conversation about identity, corporate culture, authenticity, and the invisible emotional labor Black people carry every day. Together, they unpack the pressure to constantly translate yourself, the exhaustion of navigating spaces that weren't built for you, and the question so many people quietly wrestle with: At what point does surviving become abandoning yourself? From code-switching and racial battle fatigue to the tension between protecting your career and protecting your peace, this conversation explores what happens when success requires performance and what it looks like to finally stop…
More episodes of Learned the Hard Way with Kier Gaines
- EP 24: Are You Asking Your Partner to Be Your Peace?
- EP 23: Your Job Is Not Your Identity ft. Jason Rosario
- EP 22: Who Told You You’re Behind?
- EP 21: I Love My Kids… But I Don’t Love Being a Parent
- EP 20: Why Men Are Afraid to Say “I Don’t Know” ft. Dr. Dakotah Tyler
- EP 19: You Can't Fix People You Love
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