WHO'S QUALIFIED?

How do we decide who is or isn't qualified for a job, a promotion, a title, or even the right to simply be in certain places and how exactly does race impact those decisions?

In her book, "Qualified: How Competency Checking and Race Collide at Work," Shari Dunn combines deep research with enlightening interviews and anecdotes to uncover the history of Competency Checking, the hidden hand assessing the qualifications of Black and other people of color.

The advancement of Black and other people of color in the workplace is under attack as there is a turn away from the promise of the "racial reconciliation" of 2020. This period saw Black talent rise from DEI managers to CEOs to junior-level hires. Yet, the post-2020 workplace is seeing an alarming retreat from creating workplaces and leadership that reflect the nation’s diversity.

That retreat is characterized by underemployment, cracked glass cliffs, toxic work environments, and claims of “empty pipelines.” More concerning, Black professionals and other people of color often face greater scrutiny than their peers regarding job applications, work experience, and qualifications even to be considered for employment or advancement. And that scrutiny has a name: Competency Checking. 

When it comes to hiring Black talent, the pipeline isn’t broken; rather, it is the assumptions we make about who is competent and qualified. Competency checking, Dunn argues, continues to be practiced consciously and unconsciously and is the key reason why Black people and other people of color are underrepresented in so many industries and why there continues to be a revolving door of Black talent even after the hiring surges of 2020. 

In Qualified, Dunn identifies and uncovers the history of Competency Checking, how it manifests in the workplace, and what can be done to change it.

From the Publisher, Harper Business:

As we continue to contend with our shared national history, it’s important to publish books that confront and dismantle the false and often racist narratives that continue to negatively impact Black people and people of color in the workplace and their day-to-day lives and to give voice to non-white authors who have historically been underrepresented, overlooked and who bring fresh eyes and ideas to age-old issues.

JOINS THE RANKS OF WORKS BY MICHELLE ALEXANDER AND IBRAM X. KENDI:

Like The New Jim Crow and How to Be an Antiracist, Qualified illustrates the scope of the issue at hand, delving into centuries of American history and law while also addressing the present day and bringing a fresh take on old assumptions. Dunn advances the issue by identifying Competency Checking, how it works, why it developed, and how to stop it. Dunn lays out why we must end Competency Checking once and for all. Like Stamped from the Beginning and American Whitelash before it, Qualified is a deeply researched and reported analysis of one of the most relentless forms of institutional racism that still functions in our workplaces today: Competency Checking based on the assumption that Blackness, in particular, is by its very nature unqualified.