Brittany Luce

But there's this idea very present that humans have a desire and workers have a desire to be creative with their work.

And that without necessarily changing the work that people are expected to do, you're changing the way that they think about it, which is making them feel like it's this much more creative, collaborative experience.

Which I'll say, as someone who has to work for a living, I actually do work in a creative job.

But I also have worked in workplaces where there was no creativity to be found.

And that entrepreneurial...

kind of idea of like, we're bringing our best creative juices to the spreadsheet.

You know what I mean?

Exactly.

It can feel very forced.

I also want to touch on something that you get into that comes up multiple times in the book.

The idea that if the employees see themselves as bosses or being like their bosses, then they might not feel like they need to unionize as workers.

That seems like a pretty big benefit for a boss.

The concept of like making one's own job, that idea can feel really salient for some groups of people, especially people who are marginalized in the workforce.

Because, you know, perhaps making your own job either within, you know, salaried work or outside of the workforce could feel like having more agency.

I attended Howard about 20 years ago, and entrepreneurship, even within the bounds of full-time salary to work for someone else, that was one of the skills that they were really big on drilling into our heads.

And they touted a lot to us how entrepreneurship was going to be the way of the future, regardless of what your major was or what you were studying.

It didn't matter.

The idea seemed to be that if we could work for ourselves, we'd not just, you know, protect ourselves from unemployment, but possibly create jobs for other Black people too.

But how is this idea of making your own job also weaponized against marginalized groups?

Stick around.