In the summer of 2014, Crystal Jackson was working as a manager of nurse education in Ferguson, Missouri. Michael Brown, a Black teenager, had been fatally shot by a white police officer, and the city was on fire. Jackson hoped that her institution would respond, issue a statement about what had happened and the pain that it might bring Black and brown employees. It never did.
“It’s traumatic. I have sons,” says Jackson. “Just acknowledge that there is emotion that comes with what has happened and [offer] some resources.”
Although Jackson was in a leadership role, it was her first. She never considered raising the issue.
Crystal Jackson
The tension took a toll.
“It was draining,” she says. “It was exhausting. [You] start to question your personal morals and values in relation to where you work. Do you work for an organization that doesn’t support what’s important to you?”
The situation that Jackson faced is just one of the many difficulties that can confront nurses from minoritized backgrounds. Such nurses represent just 19.4% of all registered nurses, according to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing and the National Forum of State Nursing Workforce Centers. This paucity is mirrored in academia, where only 19.2% of full-time nursing school faculty are minoritized, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing.
