'Quiet quitting is not for us': Black employees share why quiet quitting is not for people of color — and why they're outright quitting instead

• Quiet quitting is a "privilege" that isn't afforded to most people of color, experts and workers told Insider.
• Members of minority communities have historically had to work harder to attain professional recognition.

"Quiet quitting" has taken workplaces across the US by storm, but it's left many wondering where people of color fall into the discourse.

Conversations about the now-viral concept, which refers to employees choosing to work within the boundaries of their job descriptions, have largely left out considerations of minority communities.

"Quiet quitting is a privilege that is afforded to people who have some perception that they have power at work, that their voice matters," Nita Chhinzer, associate professor at the University of Guelph's Department of Management, told Insider.

For many people of color, scaling back on work is not an option, according to work trend experts.

"Many Black and brown people grow up with the notion that we need to work twice as hard to get half as far, and in the workplace, we feel the need to overperform due to being overlooked for promotion and advancement opportunities," career coach Ciera Graham said.

If employees of color scale back on their work to do the jobs they're paid for, they are also more likely to face backlash by the company, which is why quiet quitting can be "double-edged" for minorities, Tega Edwin, a career coach, said.

Racial minorities have long faced disproportionate demands in the workplace, a pattern that stems back to America's history with the transatlantic slave trade to Japanese internment camps, according to Graham. People of color were not given the choice of what type of work they could do — and faced severe repercussions for working less or setting boundaries, including beatings, ridicule, even death.

Today, people of color still face "undue pressure" at work, Graham said. Those demands are only exacerbated when you throw other minority markers like gender and sexual orientation into the mix: Ethnic-minority women are more likely to experience burnout than non-minorities, according to Deloitte's 2022 Women at Work survey.

Some employees of color have outright rejected the idea of quiet quitting. Black employees shared with Insider why quiet quitting doesn't work for people of color — and why they're outright quitting instead.

Here's what three employees Insider spoke with have to say, in their own words.

'We have to be overachievers to be acknowledged'

"Quiet quitting for people of color, and specifically for Black people, is nonexistent. There is no such thing as Black people quiet quitting because we're micromanaged to a higher degree than most other people are."

"We have to be overachievers to be acknowledged in the workforce. I don't think quiet quitting is really in our DNA, because Black people have to show our hands more. You're either really good at what you do, or you're not. And when you're not good at what you do, you're cut. There's no leeway for us."

"When I first started the job, I had no more than 20 tasks to do each day. Then it went up to 100. If I took PTO, I'd be worried about who's covering my work. And when I came back from PTO, my workload would double again."

"I like to think of myself as an overachiever. I've always been the type of person who wants to do things better than others. I always wanted to help everyone; I always wanted to be a listening ear. I would drop everything to help others who came to me with questions."

"But things have changed now. I didn't believe in quiet quitting until now, because I'm being told I have to leave. Last month, I was told my department is no longer needed and we're being laid off. I have until the end of October to find a new job. At this point, I may be quiet quitting, whereas before I wasn't — I no longer go above and beyond to try and make this company any more money."

"A week before I was told I'd be laid off, the company told me I was an overachiever and make the most money in my geography. It was said in a positive way, but I took it neutrally because of issues with management in the past. It kind of felt like they were fluffing me up before dropping the atomic bomb — like when you kill a sheep, you don't cause anxiety or stress, or it'll spoil the meat. It felt like that's what they did to me."

– Ifeoma Alaka, employee at a healthcare company

'Why would you try to compete with others who are being looked at more?'

"With quiet quitting, people of color are not accepting extra terms of their employment without being rewarded for it. We don't get gratitude or the proportionate rewards because we're not valued in the American workforce. This is the way we've always been treated."

"I've worked in probably every industry at some point — from restaurants to retail — and people of color have less opportunities to be rewarded. We have fewer eyes on us in the workforce."

"When it comes to being a quitter as a person of color, why would you try to compete with others who are being looked at more, even when they might not be as skilled as you are? We're undervalued and not being looked at, and people wonder why we don't want to work the extra hours or take the extra shift — what do we gain out of it?"

"I used to work at Amazon. I was super excited, hoping that I could work my way up and apply to other tech positions. I worked at the warehouse for a year and a half, thinking one of those opportunities would open up to me. Managers and leadership finally began to notice me and offered up training for a position… But they stopped it without any explanation. They started saying I talked to too many people on the clock, and I immediately knew I'd have to think about other work. I'd been in this situation before: They find whatever reason to put pressure on you to quit."

"At the end of the day, you're not going to work for somebody that berates, targets, or ignores you. I quit a few days ago for another job."

"People should quit if it's not serving them. I think one of the reasons the Great Resignation happened was because people had that time away from the workplace, then they come back and see it's a complete sh-thole — nothing's changed at all. I don't think people want that anymore."

"People of color shouldn't be accused of not being able to quiet quit — it's such a condescending thing to say. We just know how to move on because it's in our history and our nature."

– Michael Walker, technical support representative at a cellular provider

'Quiet quitting for people of color is quiet firing'

"Quiet quitting is inherently privileged, because I felt like despite having worked really hard and gone to an Ivy League institution like my peers, I was underpaid. I've never felt like I could say no. I didn't have the social capital to have that bargaining power to set boundaries."

"I'm not saying employees of color aren't quiet quitting. I'm saying that to underperform and to make one's job secondary, is to be without one. Because the minute you underperform, they use tactics, like performance reviews and coded language, to strategically push you out. So you either stay, or you quit."

"I wouldn't say I was quiet quitting. I was burning out. They were doing a slow pushout, micromanaging me and giving me projects way out of my scope. In these cutthroat worlds, you can't quiet quit, because they're going to shame you and finagle you and performance evaluate you until you either acquiesce or you leave."

"Acquiescing means becoming completely bondaged to the role. In an old job at another consulting firm, I slept with my phone under my pillow because my boss would call me at 2 a.m. in the morning. If I didn't respond, I was met with passive aggression. Any mistake you make is amplified when you're part of a minority group."

"If my white peers made the same mistake, they were fine. Even if a role didn't work out, doors were open elsewhere."

"Quiet quitting is not for us, because they're going to make your life hell since you're not a Luke or a Josh. Just quit. I've tried to set boundaries, but that's just made me seem incompetent in their minds. Quiet quitting for people of color is quiet firing: Slowly scaling back means they're going to look for your replacement."

"There's also a sense of responsibility I feel for others from my community. If I underperform, they might think, 'She's a troublemaker, she's lazy.' And they might be unlikely to consider a person like you in the next round of hiring. So you're also carrying that burden of keeping the space for others, which is why I think a lot of us just quit before we're fired."

– Iman*, formerly employed in corporate management consulting

*Last name has been omitted to protect privacy.