Issa Rae is the newest face of CoverGirl, has published a best-selling novel and has killed it with her own HBO series Insecure that she has written and directed. All of this success hasn't come without the ongoing struggle of being a black woman in a male-dominated industry. The 32-year-old was apart of a conference for members of the National Black MBA Association in Philadelphia. Before she hit the stage Issa summed her thoughts on the challenges minorities face while pursuing a higher education.
She told The Cut:
"They don’t get that we’re not all starting from the same starting point. Straight, cis, white men don’t have the same obstacles — there’s not much in their path. That’s not to say they don’t have any of their own problems, but the playing field is not level by any means. It’s easy for people to dismiss your history, dismiss where you came from. Just because we graduated from the same college doesn’t mean we have the same opportunities. There’s bias, even in the hiring process, and that’s something not enough people are aware of. It feels like a vicious Catch-22 when there aren’t diverse people behind the scenes. That [lack of diversity] alters the company or organization perspective, which means they’re not going to have people who look like the people they are trying to recruit. Even when we do these diversity events, I find that we tend to include other diverse people who also know the struggle and who are already familiar with the burdens, where the audience should be mostly white men and women. People aren’t aware, and they choose not to be. For so many people, unfortunately, the issues with people of colour don’t affect them, so why would they burden themselves with caring?"
Issa recently met up with Michelle Obama, where the former President's wife proved she was a fan Issa's series by telling her she was "mad" about the ending. The final episode (spoiler alert) had a short and sweet montage of Issa and her on-screen boyfriend having a fairytale life with a sweet happy ending, but the montage scene cut back to reality proving it was just a daydream.
