Decolonizing Professionalism: Why Respectability Won’t Save Us
Listen. By most traditional standards, I don’t fit the mold of what’s often called “professional.” And honestly, I’m more than okay with that. For as long as I can remember, I was expected to fit into a version of success that was never meant for me. I was the overachiever. The one who kept everything moving, who showed up for others when no one was really showing up for me. The one who held the emotional weight of teams and environments that expected care from me but rarely offered it in return.
Before I embraced the fullness of who I am, I was the dependable “yes” person. My tone was monitored. My expressions filtered. I was told to stay humble, which often meant staying quiet while others with less skill and less care were praised for doing the bare minimum.
So when I say I’m not what many people consider “professional,” I’m not saying I’m unprofessional. I’m saying I reject the idea of professionalism as it exists within systems rooted in white supremacist values. I reject the belief that care must be quiet, that truth must be palatable, and that success must come at the cost of authenticity.
The Myth of Neutrality
What we call “professionalism” is not objective. It is a set of cultural expectations shaped by whiteness, capitalism, and colonialism. It favors perfectionism, urgency, emotional detachment, and the prioritization of individual achievement over collective well-being. It tells us to downplay our identities, quiet our voices, and adapt to norms that were never built for our survival.
For Black, brown, queer, trans, and disabled folks, professionalism often demands a kind of erasure. It tells us our hair is unkempt, our accents are distractions, our emotions are liabilities. It upholds assimilation as safety and equates respectability with belonging. And still, it fails to protect us.
Respectability cannot save us, because it was never designed to.
For BIPOC, professionalism often becomes a performance of palatability. We are expected to contort our language, tone, posture, and emotions to meet standards that are inherently racialized. Wearing natural hair, speaking in culturally rooted dialects, or even expressing frustration in the face of injustice are often viewed as unprofessional or threatening. These dynamics create a double bind, where we must either erase aspects of our identity to be perceived as competent, or risk being labeled difficult, unpolished, or “not a good fit.” The result is a chronic sense of hypervigilance, where authenticity is sacrificed for survival, and self-worth becomes tethered to how successfully we can mimic whiteness.
What’s often overlooked is that professionalism doesn’t just live in policies or dress codes, it lives in the pauses before we speak, in who gets deemed “too emotional” during meetings, in who’s called a leader and who’s called “passionate.” It shows up in assumptions about lateness, the pressure to always be available, the belief that personal challenges must never interfere with output, and the normalization of urgency over care. These expectations don’t impact everyone equally. They create a culture that rewards proximity to whiteness and penalizes difference, all while claiming to be neutral. Unpacking professionalism means recognizing these patterns not as coincidences, but as a deeply entrenched design—and choosing to build something different.
What We Can Choose Instead
Decolonizing professionalism means refusing to shrink ourselves for comfort or credibility. It means building cultures that center care, nuance, and accountability without demanding conformity. It is a commitment to honoring how people move, speak, rest, and lead in ways that are culturally rooted and deeply relational.
This might look like:
Recognizing lived experience as legitimate expertise
Creating space for emotion, reflection, and grief in professional spaces
Valuing community over individualism
Encouraging rest and spaciousness as signs of sustainability
Modeling leadership as relational and accountable, rather than hierarchical
Decolonizing professionalism is not about lowering standards. It is about redefining them. It is about shifting from practices that silence and flatten to practices that affirm and expand.
We deserve to be seen and respected not in spite of who we are, but because of it.
Keanu M. Jackson, LCSW (he/him)
Keanu is a New York–based consultant, facilitator, and licensed psychotherapist with expertise in anti-racism, organizational culture, and mental health strategy. Through his consulting practice, he partners with mission-driven teams to build more liberatory, care-centered workplaces rooted in psychological safety, equity, and accountability.
Learn more at keanumjackson.com.
