Shaun Dawson (00:02.798)
Hey y’all, you’re tuned into Assigned Sex: Unarchived.

I’m your non-binary cousin, Shaun Dawson and this is a safe space where we’re honest about what it means to show up as Black, trans, and genderqueer.

Today I'm sitting down with Nandi Kayyy to talk about why we both left tech, what we're unlearning, and what it feels like to build a creative life on our own terms. We get into imposter syndrome, burnout, and whether AI is a tool or a threat to creative work.

Let's get into it.

Shaun Dawson (00:39.308)
First, Nandi...I want you to tell us about how long have you been in tech? I got like nine years in, like close to 10.

Nandi Kayyy (00:50.658)
I think I'm also this is the ten year mark for me. 2016 was my first tech job. And yeah, it's been ten years for me in tech total.

Shaun Dawson (01:04.002)
How did you get into tech? What was your first? What was your little? How'd you get your toe in?

Nandi Kayyy (01:08.206)
So I worked in restaurants in New York City hospitality for a long time for about six years. Before that I did retail. But one of the restaurants I was working for, I was a maître d' at that restaurant. And we got some new software to manage our seating and our reservation book.

And when the customer success manager, who I later found out, came in to teach us how to use it and answer any questions, set stuff up, I was like, what do you do? What is this? I could do this. and he was like, okay. So I eventually interviewed for a job at this company, which was a hospitality tech company called Reserve at the time.

And I went in as a SDR. So I started off cold calling, baby. It was so depressing.

Shaun Dawson (02:08.491)
Not the cold calls. Cold calls are the worst. Yeah, I can't do cold calling because I don't really like people like that.

Nandi Kayyy (02:19.66)
You know, this is what happens when you come from customer facing roles like this. Again, I'm coming from retail. I'm coming from hospitality where I am interfacing with people a lot. And in this particular role, where I was coming from was helpful because I had to call restaurant operators and I didn't know how to speak directly to the issues that they might have been experiencing in their restaurant and how our software could help. However, nobody wants to be cold called. We used to buy shady lists from people. Sometimes people would be like, How did you get this number? People hang up on you. And I did eventually get laid off. That was actually...I got laid off my first tech job.

Shaun Dawson (03:09.846)
Yeah, salespeople get laid off first. They go first. I think it was, I got into tech from doing TV and film. When I got out of grad school, went to, it was this company called, it's not called anymore. I'll probably have to beep that out. Bee. But...

Nandi Kayyy (03:12.15)
Mm. Yeah.

Shaun Dawson (03:39.758)
I started off there just doing like some tech support. They had like this big contract with this agency that just did international streaming of like, it was just tennis. It was all the games. Everywhere. And they had hired I forgot the name of this company but they hired like 50 people and we had to spend like 10 hour shifts like watching these games all day and responding to any issues that the producers were having live streaming while they were using our equipment. And that's where I started at and I did really good at that and also you know how it is a startups it's like you be working somewhere and be like I like you come to my department.

That's how small of a company this was when I first got there. And they was like, wow, you're such a good worker. You work so hard. Let's bring you over here. A hard working Black. Eventually I was running my own. Like I had like it was just me and like three other people. And we just ran. Like I was the leader and I ran it and it was cool.

Nandi Kayyy (04:39.372)
A hard working Black. Like the way you toil, nigga.

Shaun Dawson (04:53.346)
And I liked it and that's what got me into engineering because they pulled me away from sports stuff and I went into advertising, like how to make money off the streams. Cause that's what it's all about anyways, like getting money. So I learned how to like traffic ads during for like video breaks and how much that costs and how to set up campaigns and do all that shit. was, it was a cool and it's very...

It's like one of those things where they're going to always be looking for people to do that job. It ain't nothing...AI can't do that one.

Nandi Kayyy (05:27.662)
Mm.

Shaun Dawson (05:28.942)
But I would say when I look back now, I've been really digging into where I first started when I got into tech, which I just calculated it was not 10 years, it was more like 12 years.

Nandi Kayyy (05:43.34)
I was gonna say that doesn't really make sense. Yeah. I met you in my first tech job and you were already..

Shaun Dawson (05:50.762)
It was 12 years and when I look back at that time in my life, was like, wow, I was like, I worked real hard at looking good on paper. Like I was checking all the boxes, stacking degrees. I was getting into all these rooms that weren't built for me. But from the outside, like it looks like it looks what I thought like success was. But on the inside, when I look at it, I felt like I was just Tap dancing. Just performing like you're always performing at work.

Nandi Kayyy (06:24.32)
You was working pretty hard. I remember when we met being like, Do you get paid three people's salaries for doing three people's jobs?

This is pretty weird, to me. Mind you, I'm new to tech. I know nothing. I'm like, is it normal for one person to get paid a a single salary for three people's job? Come to find out, that is actually the case.

Shaun Dawson (06:52.328)
That is, especially if you Black.

Nandi Kayyy (06:53.474)
But you were working too hard. You were on call all the time. Yeah, it was crazy.

Shaun Dawson (07:02.222)
These past couple months, what do you think that you've had to unlearn? What are you trying to unlearn?

Nandi Kayyy (07:11.11)
Oh man. So I feel like every time I like get laid off or like leave a job, I always kind of learned something. So like a few years ago, I guess this was like seven years ago. When was this? This was when we moved to LA in 2019. And you had started working at another tech company, but we both struggle struggled longer than usual to get new jobs. And it took me even longer, the longest it's ever taken for me to find a new job. And I was really struggling with that because financially I couldn't contribute. And I think also New York City is a place where cost of living is so high. We eventually move back to New York. Cost of living is so high, it's a wild experience to not be able to financially contribute. And I worked with my therapist to kind of disentangle myself from what I do is not who I am.

This time I think that I'm learning that I don't have to limit myself in where I can execute on my skills. So this job, a job is not the only way I can be a software product manager or a digital product strategist. I don't need someone else's company. There's a bunch of other companies and business owners that actually need my expertise.

And so now I'm kind of being like, I'm the one who offers these things and that if a company can get rich off me, I can definitely get rich off me. So that's what I'm trying to learn. Not fully internalizing it yet. It's pretty fresh. I'm still pretty locked into old habits. I'm still like applying for jobs kind of passively, but nothing's happening.

Shaun Dawson (09:25.486)
Listen, that's going to keep happening. Yeah. Every time I'm like, I need a lot of money. I'm like, let me go apply for a job. And then I get through like around interviews and I've like been interviewing for weeks and....they'll have you do like for me, I like have to usually do like a project, so I haven't spent like a month with this company meeting them, interviewing and doing free work. Then they'd like, oh, nope. And then I go into this hole for another three or four months from it's like, I'm not getting another job.

Nandi Kayyy (09:56.448)
Yeah. I feel like crying whenever I think about going on an interview loop. Like I did have that one interview and I had a panic attack that day and it was really bad. So...

Shaun Dawson (10:09.696)
Yeah, I don't see myself like I've been working really hard with my production studio, like getting like state to get like state, like federal contracts so that I love like engineering. love like making like love like front-end design. I still want to continue to do it. I can do it for myself. I don't have to go to another startup that's going to drain the fuck out of me. I can just do it for myself.

I think when I first started this journey, like I've been unlearning this idea that my worth is tied to how much stuff I can make. I'm just like, if I'm not making up and then I don't I don't deserve anything. So that's what I've been trying to unlearn.

Nandi Kayyy (11:03.746)
Yeah, you've been actually really helpful since you've been in this kind of stage longer. Because... I'm about to cry. I'm like, it's really hard. To be like, I know I've struggled to like believe in myself that I can. I've always been able to get a job. And that's something that I have prided myself on. Now we're in a market that most people aren't getting jobs. It's not just me, it's actually not about my skill set. And also like layoffs really like fuck with your psyche.

Because they're not based on how well you delivered or your performance or they're just a bookkeeping decision. And so I know I've had some days where I've been feeling really sad and like I have no skills and that like I've done nothing. And you've been really helpful just because you're like a little bit farther ahead, you know, in this journey. So I've been appreciating that a lot.

Shaun Dawson (12:13.976)
You've been really sad. Do you feel... But also like when you were there, they was... You was sadder.

Nandi Kayyy (12:17.28)
I mean, yeah, kind of, but I mean.

I was sadder! That's been kind of the wild thing of like this these past couple months of the further I get away from it, the kind of more I'm like, yo, this shit was stealing my energy. So was stealing my fucking energy. so I was like, I'm just like so glad that I now realize that.

Yeah, work was draining me. I could barely get out of bed in the morning. I wasn't doing any of my routines. And now that I'm not working, and it's not that I'm not working. I actually am super the crazy yes, like work was actually getting in the way of what the fuck I actually had going on. Like I was pulling a lot I was doing a lot of double duty because I had to also work a job.

And now that I don't have that job, the space is there, but it's stuff to fill up the space. Like there's plenty of things that I'm doing. and so that's been like really helpful 'cause I'm like, actually y'all was bringing me down. Being completely real.

Shaun Dawson (13:50.9)
Okay, so it’s time for a little Black trans and genderqueer history. Today, we’re centering the story of Wilmer “Little Ax” Broadnax.

Shaun Dawson (14:18.936)
Willmer Broadnax was born in Houston, Texas, in either 1916 or 1922; historians aren't exactly sure, but the 1930 census tells a story. A younger sibling named Armatha gets crossed out and corrected from "step-son, male" to "daughter, female." Some researchers think that sibling, became Willmer. If that's true, he wasn't born in Houston in 1916. He was born in Louisiana in 1922. Either way, we don't know which birthdate is real.

He grew up with a brother named William, the oldest or maybe the second-oldest of three kids. William was big. Willmer was small. William got called Big Axe. People started calling Wilmer Little Axe.The names stuck for life.

The brothers sang gospel together as teenagers in Houston in the 1930s. They moved to Los Angeles and sang on weekends with a group called the Southern Gospel Singers. Eventually, they broke off and built their own group: Little Axe and the Golden Echoes.

William left for Atlanta, but Wilmer stayed and led the group through the 1940s.

Little Axe and the Golden Echoes (15:29.774)
Oh, when the saints go marching in
Lord, I want to be in that number
When the saints go marching in

Shaun Dawson (15:47.062)
In 1949 they cut a single for Specialty Records, "When the Saints Go Marching In" but the label dropped them before they could record again. The Golden Echoes broke up soon after.

Willmer's voice was high. Not falsetto. Naturally high. A pianist who worked with him said it plainly: “somebody else had to sing the bottom, because Little Axe couldn't go low.” Onstage, his tenor riffed against another singer's baritone. Together they made one voice with an impossible range. A music critic called Willmer’s lead sweet but almost vicious. Dripping with emotion.

Shaun Dawson (16:42.112)
In 1950 he joined the Spirit of Memphis Quartet. He recorded for King Records with two other powerhouse leads where he stayed until 1952. After that he moved through a touring network of Black gospel quartets that worked churches, theaters, and gospel programs across the South and Midwest. He sang with The Fairfield Four..

The Fairfield Four (17:02.51)
So many years that I've lived in sin. That I've lived and sin...

Shaun Dawson (17:18.798)
Then in the early sixties, the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, filling in after their longtime lead died,

The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi (17:25.165)
That's why I'm sending on up my timber
Every,every,every day
Oh, yes, I am

Shaun Dawson (17:45.934)
By 1965, quartet singing was losing money. Willmer came off the road and though he still recorded sometimes in the seventies and eighties; He just stopped touring.

The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi (17:57.91)
I stepped down in the the water one day, the water got chilly cold...

Shaun Dawson (18:15.032)
For over fifty years, Willmer Broadnax lived as a man. He sang as a man. He toured as a man; even within a genre built on rigid ideas of Black masculinity. Almost nobody outside his immediate family knew he had been assigned female at birth.

He died in 1992. His partner, Lavina Richardson, stabbed him after a jealous fight turned violent. He saw her in a car with another man. He rammed his car into theirs. He pulled her out and pulled a knife. A bystander disarmed him but Richardson picked the knife back up and stabbed Broadnax. Willmer died days later and a court convicted Richardson of involuntary manslaughter. Only at the hospital did the truth come out: Willmer Broadnax had been assigned female at birth.
People started rewriting their own memories almost right away. JoJo Wallace of the Sensational Nightingales told reporters, "I always wondered about Axe." Other singers said the same kind of thing. The more honest account says only his brother and a few close family members knew. Everyone else found out from the news.

The segregated South even separated bathrooms by race. For many touring gospel singers, that meant no bathroom welcomed them at all. For Willmer, that hostile world held a second danger underneath it. He had to use the bathroom alone, every time, on every tour, for decades. Claude Jeter, another singer who knew him, said, "Ax would always go off by himself." He said it like a quirk. It wasn't a quirk. It was a man guarding a life-or-death secret on the road, with no one to protect him.

Fifty years of quartet singing. Fifty years of shared hotel rooms, shared dressing rooms, shared everything that touring demands in a tight gospel circuit where everyone knows everyone's business. He held the line that whole time. Alone.

We don't know what Willmer Broadnax called himself in his own head. He never gave an interview about it. Maybe he never got the chance. Maybe he never chose to. The people around him pieced things together after he was gone. The historical record can verify facts, but facts aren't the same as his story in his own words. So we won't put words in his mouth. We'll do the only honest thing: tell you what happened, and let his music speak for the rest.

The Spirit of Memphis Quartet (20:38.424)
God save America....if you please

Shaun Dawson (21:03.34)
Little Axe's voice still lives on those records. Spirit of Memphis. The Fairfield Four. The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi. Decades of hard gospel, sung by a man who spent his career making sure no one looked too closely at anything but the sound.
That sound was the only part of him the world ever saw. He kept the rest for himself, because he had to.

Shaun Dawson (21:32.12)
So do you feel grief from your job? Like what do you miss about it?

Nandi Kayyy (21:37.599)
I definitely feel grief, but it's not that I like miss my job. I think the grief is just about general loss. I also felt really caught off guard by the layoff. I didn't think I was gonna end up get being laid off for like another two or three months or something like that. So I think it's just general loss grief, not I miss my job because I don't. They're doing bad. And I'm adding to that.

Shaun Dawson (22:15.598)
So what are some things like what does creative freedom look like for you now?

Nandi Kayyy (22:22.382)
Right now I think it looks like time for me to think about all the skills I have, which are a lot, and how to leverage those on my behalf and make the mark that I wanna make in the world. Because honestly, I've been working on a bunch of products that I don't give a fuck about for the past ten years, basically.

Shaun Dawson (22:49.794)
Exactly.

Nandi Kayyy (22:50.902)
Yeah, it's like not stuff I care about at all. And so I'm like, okay, if I can do really well on shit that one I'm not knowledgeable about and two, I don't wanna get knowledgeable about.

Shaun Dawson (23:05.844)
So you mentioned that the market is crazy right now and it is. What do you think has contributed to this market? Because there was a time where I was a fucking hot commodity. Like I'm Black, I'm a veteran, non-binary, like those companies that were all about, we love a diverse place they were running for me. Like, get over here, get over here. That's not happening no more.

Nandi Kayyy (23:35.162)
There's a lot of things, but obviously the biggest elephant to call it an elephant is being generous. This bitch is a Bronnosaurus at this point. Yeah, AI. It's the dinosaur in the room. It's the Jurassic Park of it all. AI has promised things that it's not delivering on.

Those people are walking back those promises, right? They promise that they would be able to eliminate jobs. And so companies have been eliminating jobs, making their current workers work more using AI, because AI doesn't make you work faster. It just gives people more work to do. And people think at the end of the day, these people want slaves. They want people who can work at any time, any point of the hour and won't complain. That's what AI is. But AI needs human beings and it's not infallible. Especially when we're talking about generative AI, which is what we're mainly talking about. when we're talking about the issues with current the yeah, is the the widespread use of generative AI. it can't replace people, but that's how it's been advertised in all these companies, especially in venture capital and private equity. I'm not going to say that bought into the lie. I think they know it's a scam. But so is private equity.

Shaun Dawson (25:00.942)
I've been seeing a lot of companies pulling out of it too. They're starting to be like, uh-oh. But what's weird to me is that when I do get interviews, like the first two rounds I'm talking to a AI bot. They be like, you have an interview with this AI bot to test you as an engineer. What?

Nandi Kayyy (25:22.294)
Yeah. The last interview that I applied for a job and they were like, do an interview and it was an AI interview where parts of it they record you speaking and other parts you type in your answers. I'm like, no. I started doing that and then I said no. I'm not gonna train your AI for you for free? No.

Shaun (25:51.362)
Yeah. So now that we're on this creative journey, what are you doing to like feel the most creative? Like I've been kind of noticing that I used to have a lot of these very weird things that I do to stay creative. And it's a lot easier when you live by yourself because you might be like, Shaun, what the fuck is wrong with you? Like, why do you? Yeah, but.

Nandi Kayyy (26:18.552)
I already say that.

Shaun Dawson (26:22.446)
You haven't even seen half of the weird

Nandi Kayyy (26:26.26)
But the thing is you have your own office for this reason, right? Like this is why we also have our own spaces because so you can do stuff like that, you know?

Shaun Dawson(26:38.338)
But one of the things I used to do, well, I do, like I usually like to start my morning off with like, like biking. I've learned that I really like cycling. A walk. I used to write my self a lot of sticky notes everywhere and that looks a little chaotic.

Nandi Kayyy (26:54.52)
Yeah, that's my main like everywhere. Like I have to go through and like throw them away sometimes because I'm like, what even is this? Sometimes I can't even read what I wrote. Like I'm looking at one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, twelve sticky notes in front of me as we speak.

Shaun Dawson(27:18.796)
Yeah, that, I think this is also like, you gotta go outside. And I think that's a big thing with us, how we haven't been wanting to go outside, but just going outside and being around other creative people makes you more creative.

Nandi Kayyy (27:34.7)
Yeah, that's true. I was telling you that I had saw this thread a few week maybe it was like a couple of weeks ago and it's like two introverts hook up and then you don't see them for eight years. And that's I definitely think that's very true of us for the past eightish years.

Shaun Dawson (27:53.903)
It's true. But also you have to take into everybody always forget about the COVIDs.

Nandi Kayyy (27:59.092)
I was about to say, I was actually gonna bring that up. We moved during COVID. Yeah. And we moved from New York City to Florida, where Florida wasn't having COVID. which was a wild experience. And even now, I mean COVID is still a thing, right? And so we really only try to go to like outdoor stuff as much as we can.

But yeah, being outside is important. I actually feel like it's the perfect time for us to go back outside. it's feeling right. I've been outside a lot this week in particular. And even I had a business lunch yesterday, and they were like, you gotta go outside. I said, Fine, I will, I'm ready.

Shaun Dawson (28:53.87)
How do you think you're gonna figure out how to balance like that freedom with also some structure so that you still work and don't get all playtime?

Nandi Kayyy (29:06.67)
I think I'm pretty good at that. I think remote work is a lot of that. especially my work. Yes, I had meetings, and also there was a lot of stuff that I had to make time for individually. And so I've been doing that. I think I've been thinking about maybe setting up some days where I do specific things, but I also don't necessarily do too well when I start adding too many guardrails to what's supposed to be creative. Because for me that's not really how my inspiration my inspiration doesn't strike in structured time. And so I know there's like, you know, the habit of creating art and like getting in that habit, but I don't think that any of the art that I make works like that. And like some of the stuff does. Like my podcast does record at the same time every week. Unless we're off or unless there needs to be a schedule change. And when I start adding more podcasts to the routine, which I am, it'll be the same. So it's just little stuff like that.

Shaun Dawson (30:20.344)
Yeah, I think for me, I've read The Artist's Way a couple of times over the past couple of years, and that has provided me with some guardrails that I find that I do best with. Because if I don't journal every day, it's a wrap. Like if I don't journal, something's wrong. Like I'm off. And then the other one, which I always struggle with was...taking myself out like once a week, like on a date by myself, like an artist date. And that book gave me that. But you've been going outside. So that's my new thing is like, I need to go out once a week by myself for artist date.

Nandi Kayyy (31:03.436)
Yeah, I need to start doing more artist dates. I haven't been doing that. This week has been more social, but I would like I don't know if every week is something that I can do, but I need to start doing it once a month because it is important to be gleaning a lot of info and just being out in the world by yourself.

Shaun Dawson (31:25.934)
I mean, but the way they describe it, like the way I think about it is that it doesn't have to be like this really crazy artistic thing you're doing. Like we were talking earlier about getting out of the house and maybe going to the library a couple of times a week. If you went to the library, like that could be your artist date. That's an artist date. Yeah.

And I'm curious if you see AI as a tool. Is it like a, and this is all related to creative work. Is AI, do you think AI is a tool or if it's a threat to creative work?

Nandi Kayyy (32:14.072)
So when we're talking about generative AI, it's a threat to creatives everywhere. Creatives are already losing.

Shaun Dawson (32:22.014)
Can you explain generative AI because some people don't know?

Nandi Kayyy (32:25.206)
Yeah, so there's all types of artificial intelligence. For example, and maybe you can speak a little bit more to this, Shaun, but film editors, especially people who are animators, people who use CGI, they've been using AI and their processes for years and years, whether that's to create composites, to create hundreds of thousands of people, where the initial shoot only had 400 or something like that. AI has been used in a lot of stuff. People use artificial intelligence for predictive modeling and healthcare work. There's all types of stuff, but specifically, generative AI is using a prompt to and you prompt a model. A AI model that's been trained on usually stolen data. And you say, Create me a picture of myself in the style of Studio Ghibli.

They scanned Studio Ghibli illegally. They didn't pay Studio Ghibli for their work. They also stole from artists who did fan art of Studio Ghibli and trained that work because these models are trained on, and now there's a lot of lawsuits about what they were allowed to train on or not. Anyway, generative AI is just prompting something and say, make me a picture, and it comes out with a picture. And every time you prompt it again, you get a different result.

Shaun Dawson (34:07.918)
Mm-hmm.

Nandi Kayyy (34:09.09)
Yeah, so that's a threat to especially like with the like I was saying, the SAG-AFTRA strikes
and they're about to go on another strike if they're not already, but they're training AI models on actors who have not been paid so they can recreate those actors and not pay them.

The first AI generated film is gonna be shown at the Tribeca Film Festival if that hasn't already happened. No actors involved. No, like the person who wrote the script was like, oh my God, this is not what I wrote the screenplay for. So yeah, it's taking it's a threat to creators because these people don't want to pay creators, but they still want the benefit of creative work.

Shaun Dawson (35:01.484)
Mm-hmm. Damn. I don't think, I think AI got like another good, I'm gonna say five years. That's too long though. That's sad to say, but I think it got...

Nandi Kayyy (35:14.324)
Our water supply doesn't have five years. We're gonna we're already seeing water shortages. Now. Yeah...

Shaun Dawson (35:18.476)
How long does our water supply have?

Shaun Dawson (35:29.998)
Okay. And the last thing I wanted to talk about is imposter syndrome. Because I feel like both of us, we've both been in tech for so long. You we got all these degrees, we take all these classes, all these certifications. It's like we do all these things to make ourselves better. But still we're like...

I feel like a big part of this journey is just like, I don't want to go back. I'm not good enough. Like, how do I compete with other people in the market right now that kind of just got out of school and are willing to take half the money? That's my situation.

Nandi Kayyy (36:09.27)
I'm not competing with them. I'm like, y'all could have it, being completely honest. Because maybe you still live at home with your mama. You can take half the money. But I don't. I live at home with my boo. It's our home that we have to pay for. And so we can't afford to take half.

Shaun Dawson (36:28.756)
Yeah. And they're taking like with like these engineering roles, it's like take half to train this AI bot so we can get rid of you in a year or two.

Nandi Kayyy (36:37.39)
Bruh. They're also paying people just to train AI.

Shaun Dawson (36:41.934)
Yeah. I've got so many, every day I get them. They're like, come train this AI, we'll pay you $100 an hour.

Nandi Kayyy (36:47.948)
Yep. They sure will. But I'm not gonna do it, even though that hundred dollars a hour do sound nice.

Shaun Dawson (36:59.734)
I've thought about it, but then I was like, this is so bad.

Nandi Kayyy (37:03.906)
Yeah. Yeah, the dangers of capitalism are just like you have to eat. And they be like, Well, here's a gun to kill someone. You could get some food that way.

Shaun Dawson (37:15.982)
Damn. Niggas be like, give me the gun.

Nandi Kayyy (37:19.884)
Yeah, they when you hungry.

Shaun Dawson (37:23.082)
Give me the gun.

Nandi Kayyy (37:24.492)
They like I don't even know that nigga. Truly sad. But the world is collapsing. The United States is collapsing. She's in her final year. it's probably gonna be like pretty bad, but it's probably gonna also happen slowly-ish. And yeah, I'm just gonna believe in myself. Again, if these companies who are stupid can make millions of dollars and fumble millions of dollars, I don't need millions. It'd be nice. I'll take it. But I need like a few hundred thousand and I can make a lot of shit shake. So that's what I'm trying to remember. It's like I've worked for so many incompetent, inept business owners. I'm smart.

So I just keep telling myself that. I'm not gonna let imposter syndrome. I feel like more white people need to have that, not us. We're smarter than all of them.

Shaun Dawson (38:29.166)
Because we do, and you have to work so hard. That's why I was getting so mad when all of this fucking content was trending about the DEI hires and how they're like so lazy. And I'm like, what? If you saw a Black person at a company, which is a of other like white people, please believe that Black person is working 10 times as hard as everybody else. Exactly. They not just letting any nigga up in there.

Nandi Kayyy (38:52.65)
And they're overqualified for that role.

Shaun Dawson (38:58.465)
You gotta be the best one.

Nandi Kayyy (39:00.499)
And you gotta be like them.

Shaun Dawson (39:02.862)
What do you mean you gotta be like them?

Nandi Kayyy (39:05.504)
You think they're promoting Black people who love Black people.

Shaun Dawson. (39:09.634)
Oh. No. You're not getting it. Also, like I'm a Black vagina. That's what they see me as. As a Black vagina. Nobody's listening to a Black vagina so I'll never be in a leadership role. Not a real leadership role.

Nandi Kayyy (39:20.62)
That was a real tough learn. I learned in this last role that I was never actually gonna be in a management role. That kinda broke me. But also it helped me not care. It gave me kinda I was like, this gonna be my last tech job.

Shaun Dawson (39:36.846)
Alright y’all, thats all I got for today.

This story was inspired by A Black Queer History of the United States by C. Riley Snorton and Darius Bose. Check the show notes for the book and for any archival audio from today's episode.

If this episode dragged you a little bit or if it hugged you a little bit, please share it with someone you love. You can find me, your nonbinary cousin, Shaun Dawson on all platforms @iamsdawson. Ya’ll be safe out there.