Content note: This article discusses sexual assault, violence, racial violence, workplace abuse, retaliation, and death, focusing on the system.
However, I keep hearing these stories as if they are separate within system.
I don’t.
I see the through lines clearly.
However, I see the system perpetuating toxic masculinity.
I see group loyalty.
I see the bystander effect.
I see white supremacy culture.
I see systems built around hierarchy and proximity to power.
I see people protecting people who look like them, move like them, have access like them, or can do something for them.
I see institutions protecting themselves.
And I see what happens to the people who aren’t protected.
That’s why, when I look at what is happening at Cornell, the allegations surrounding Madison Brooks at LSU, what happened to Nolan Wells, the long history of Black people being found hanging in the Deep South, the decades-old testimony of Anita Hill, the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, the networks surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, and what happens inside corporate America every single day, I don’t see unrelated incidents.
I see a pattern.
Not identical circumstances.
Not identical evidence.
Not identical legal outcomes.
But a pattern in how power works.
And more importantly, a pattern in how power protects itself.
Cornell: It’s bigger than seven men
The allegations involving members of Cornell University’s Chi Phi fraternity are horrific.
A former student alleges that seven fraternity members sexually assaulted her in 2024 after she became severely intoxicated. Prosecutors initially declined to bring charges, but the investigation was reopened in September 2026 and is expected to be presented to a grand jury. The allegations remain contested, and no criminal finding of guilt has been made.
But I keep coming back to the group chat.
According to reporting on the lawsuit, messages about the woman circulated in a Snapchat group used by active fraternity members, with some members allegedly encouraging others to participate.
And that’s where my attention shifts beyond the seven men accused.
Because there were other people around them.
I often hear parents say:
We have to protect our sons.
I understand that instinct. I have sons.
But protect them from what?
Consequences?
Or are we preparing them to become the kind of men who know what to do when everybody around them is making the wrong decision?
What are you teaching your son if he finds himself in that fraternity house?
What have you taught him to do if something disturbing pops up in the group chat?
Does he laugh?
Ignore it?
Put the phone down?
Decide it isn’t his business?
Does he protect his fraternity brother?
Or have you raised him to be the one who says:
What the hell is going on up there?
Have you taught him to check on the woman?
To get help?
To stop his friend?
To risk being called soft, disloyal, a snitch, or worse because somebody’s safety matters more than belonging to the group?
Because here’s the flip side.
What if that was your daughter?
What would you expect those young men to do?
What would you expect from the fraternity?
What would you expect from the university?
Would you want them protecting their “brother”?
Or your child?
We cannot ask society to protect our daughters while teaching our sons that loyalty means protecting one another from accountability.
At some point, we have to ask what kind of men we are raising.
Being a good man cannot simply mean:
I didn’t do it.
Sometimes being a good man means:
I didn’t allow you to do it either.
That’s what friendship is supposed to mean
That brings me to Nolan Wells.
Nolan was an 18-year-old Black college student who went to Horn Island, Mississippi, with a group over the Fourth of July and never came home.
His body was found two days later.
The official record says there was insufficient evidence to establish criminal conduct. His cause and manner of death were listed as undetermined. An independent autopsy commissioned by his family was also unable to determine precisely how he died.
I know what the documents say.
I believe Nolan was murdered.
I am not presenting that as the official determination.
I am telling you what I believe after looking at the circumstances, the unanswered questions, the conflicting information, and what we know about the systems involved.
And Nolan’s story has made me think a lot about friendship.
One of the lessons I learned very early in life is this:
Acquaintances are not friends.
Friends care more about you than they care about peer pressure.
Even at my age, I have friends I’ve known since nursery school and elementary school.
If I sent out an SOS, I know some of them would be by my side before the smoke cleared.
That’s friendship.
But I also know something else about those same people:
They love tough.
They will tell me when I’m wrong.
They will challenge me.
They will tell me what I may not want to hear.
They aren’t going to watch me walk toward danger because they don’t want to ruin the vibe.
That’s not friendship.
Friends don’t just cosign your choices.
Friends care about whether you make it home.
Sometimes friendship sounds like:
No.
Sometimes friendship means you’re the unpopular person in the group.
Sometimes friendship means everybody else wants to leave and you say, “We’re not leaving him.”
That is part of why Nolan’s death bothers me so deeply.
And then there are the questions about the system
Nolan’s family sought an independent autopsy.
The pathologist initially reported that because the state autopsy had already been performed, organs including the lungs and internal neck structures were not with the body when he first examined it, limiting portions of his examination. Later proceedings indicated that retained neck tissue was made available for additional examination.
This matters to me.
Not because retained tissue automatically means somebody did something wrong. Forensic pathologists retain organs and tissue as part of legitimate autopsy practice.
It matters because when public confidence in a system is already low, independent verification matters.
Another fact has raised understandable questions: a parent or stepparent of one of the young men connected to the outing is a judge within the Mississippi court system.
Let me be very clear.
Being related to a judge does not prove interference.
There is no verified evidence I have seen establishing that this judge manipulated the investigation.
But I’m also not going to pretend proximity to institutional power is irrelevant when we’re having a conversation about institutional power.
Access matters.
Relationships matter.
Knowing how a system works matters.
Who gets the benefit of the doubt matters.
And sometimes protection doesn’t require somebody to break the law.
Protection can look perfectly legal.
That may be one of the most important points in this entire conversation.
Protection doesn’t have to look like a conspiracy
We tend to imagine corruption dramatically.
Somebody makes a secret phone call.
Evidence gets destroyed.
Money changes hands.
People meet in a smoke-filled room and decide what story they’re going to tell.
But that’s not the only way systems protect people.
Protection can look like procedure.
Discretion.
A determination about what information is relevant.
A decision about who needs to be interviewed.
A threshold that supposedly hasn’t been met.
A closed personnel process.
An internal investigation.
A decision not to pursue something further.
An institution saying:
We’ve looked into it.
Every one of those things can be legitimate.
They can also produce protection.
That’s what makes systemic power so difficult for people to see.
A system doesn’t need a conspiracy to produce the outcome it was built to produce.
People understand where power sits.
People understand whose phone call gets returned.
They know whose father, mother, boss, mentor, donor, partner, fraternity brother, executive, attorney, or board member has access.
They know whose reputation carries weight.
They know who understands the rules.
They know who can afford to keep fighting.
And they know whose life this society has historically treated as more valuable.
Nobody has to say, “Protect him.”
Sometimes everybody already knows what to do.
And history matters—especially in Mississippi
This is why I cannot separate Nolan’s story from the history surrounding it.
I also can’t ignore the repeated images of Black people found hanging from trees in Mississippi.
When 21-year-old Demartravion “Trey” Reed was found hanging from a tree on the Delta State University campus in September 2025, state authorities ruled his death a suicide and said they found no evidence of foul play. His family sought its own independent examination.
Then in 2026, 29-year-old Tasia Fortune, a Black mother of four, was found hanging from a tree behind an abandoned home in Jackson. Her death was subsequently ruled a homicide, and a suspect was charged with murder.
Those cases are not the same.
The available evidence does not establish that either was a racial lynching.
But you cannot show Black people a Black body hanging from a tree in Mississippi and demand that we experience that image without history.
We know the history.
Our grandparents knew the history.
Our great-grandparents lived closer to that history than this country likes to acknowledge.
The Deep South did not simply have random acts of racial violence.
It had systems that enabled racial terror.
People knew.
Communities knew.
Law enforcement sometimes knew.
Politicians knew.
Businesses knew.
Churches knew.
And people remained silent.
That history is part of the reason I keep coming back to the thought:
Someone knows something.
Not necessarily someone who witnessed a murder.
Maybe someone saw something that didn’t seem important.
Maybe someone has a text.
A conversation.
A photograph.
A contradiction.
Maybe someone simply knows that the official version doesn’t align with what they saw.
But people rarely move through these situations in complete isolation.
The question becomes:
Who feels safe enough to tell what they know?
And do they believe anybody with power actually wants to hear it?
I’ve seen this question before
I also think about Kendrick Johnson.
Kendrick was a 17-year-old Black high school student found upside down inside a rolled gym mat at his Georgia high school in 2013.
Not Mississippi—but still the Deep South.
Local and state investigators concluded his death was accidental, saying he became trapped in the mat and died from positional asphyxia. His family rejected that conclusion and commissioned an independent autopsy that found evidence the pathologist interpreted as non-accidental blunt-force trauma. A federal investigation later closed without criminal charges, and a reopened local investigation again concluded his death was accidental.
Again, I understand what the official record says.
But I understand something else too.
His family looked at their child found dead, rolled inside a gym mat, and said:
We want somebody outside the system to look at this.
That matters.
Because independent scrutiny should not threaten a trustworthy institution.
If the conclusion is sound, scrutiny should strengthen it.
And if the conclusion changes when someone outside the system looks at the evidence?
We need to be willing to confront that too.
White supremacy culture is bigger than racial hatred
This is where I think people get uncomfortable.
When I use the phrase white supremacy culture, some people immediately hear:
She’s calling white people white supremacists.
I’m not.
I’m talking about systems that developed within a society where power, opportunity, credibility, safety, wealth, authority, and legal protection were not distributed equally.
Those systems didn’t evaporate because laws changed.
They show up in whose innocence is presumed.
Whose mistakes are forgivable.
Who receives grace.
Whose reputation must be protected.
Whose future suddenly becomes important when accountability arrives.
Who is seen as threatening.
Who is considered credible.
Who must provide extraordinary amounts of evidence before anyone will believe what happened to them.
And who can remain mediocre while still being protected by power.
That’s the system I’m talking about.
Gender intersects with it.
Race intersects with it.
Class intersects with it.
Money.
Education.
Prestige.
Connections.
Position.
Institutional affiliation.
The closer you are to the center of power, the more layers of protection you may have available.
And when people experience protection often enough, something happens.
Protection creates cockiness
People behave differently when they believe consequences aren’t coming.
You take bigger risks.
You push further.
You dismiss criticism.
You stop worrying about who saw what.
You become convinced the rules apply differently to you.
Because experience has shown you that maybe they do.
We’ve seen versions of that dynamic reach the highest levels of power in this country, across institutions and across time.
Serious allegations, findings of misconduct, ethical questions, and legal controversies do not necessarily remove someone’s access to enormous authority or influence.
I’m intentionally not making that paragraph about one current officeholder.
The pattern is more important than the person.
The question is:
What does society teach people when proximity to enough power appears to make consequences negotiable?
Young men see it.
Employees see it.
Leaders see it.
People experiencing harm see it.
And people causing harm see it too.
The lesson becomes:
Maybe power will protect me.
Maybe money will protect me.
Maybe my network will protect me.
Maybe my institution will protect me.
Maybe being valuable enough means I don’t have to follow the same rules as everybody else.
That’s where confidence becomes entitlement.
Entitlement becomes impunity.
And impunity becomes dangerous.
Anita Hill showed us the system
In 1991, Anita Hill testified that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas sexually harassed her while she worked for him. Thomas denied her allegations.
Hill appeared before a Senate Judiciary Committee composed entirely of white men. The Senate’s own historical account acknowledges the reaction of women across the country who watched that committee question a Black woman making allegations against a man being considered for one of the most powerful lifetime appointments in the nation. Thomas was confirmed.
Twenty-seven years later, Christine Blasey Ford alleged that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers. Kavanaugh denied the allegation.
The FBI conducted a supplemental investigation. Ford and her attorneys criticized its scope, including the fact that she was not interviewed as part of that supplemental inquiry. Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court.
Different women.
Different men.
Different allegations.
Different evidence.
Different circumstances.
I’m not saying the cases are identical.
I’m saying I’ve seen this movie before.
When someone close to significant power is accused of causing harm, watch what happens around them.
Who becomes defensive?
Who begins attacking credibility?
Who shifts attention to the accuser’s behavior?
Who starts talking about what the accusation could cost the accused?
Whose entire life gets examined?
Who receives the benefit of the doubt?
And who has to prove—not simply that something happened—but that they are worthy of being believed?
That is the pattern.
Epstein shows us how large the ecosystem can become
Jeffrey Epstein is perhaps one of the clearest examples of why we cannot study abuse solely by studying the abuser.
Epstein operated for years inside networks containing wealthy, famous, politically connected, and extraordinarily influential people.
In 2026, the Justice Department said it released roughly 3.5 million pages of Epstein-related material, along with thousands of videos and images, under a congressional mandated disclosure law.
And I need to make an important distinction:
A person’s name appearing in an Epstein file does not prove that person committed a crime or participated in Epstein’s abuse.
But I’m less interested in playing celebrity bingo with the documents than I am in asking a much harder question:
How does abuse continue that long around that much power?
Who knew something?
Who suspected something?
Who saw something and decided it wasn’t their business?
Who enjoyed the access enough not to ask questions?
Who rationalized?
Who looked away?
Who decided association with power was more valuable than curiosity about who might be getting hurt?
One person may commit the harm.
But systems make sustained harm possible.
That’s where the bystander enters the story
We often talk about the bystander effect as if it’s simply psychological paralysis.
Everyone assumes somebody else will act, so nobody does.
But add power to the equation and the calculation changes.
People aren’t always frozen.
Sometimes they’re calculating.
What will happen to me?
Will I lose the friendship?
The invitation?
The opportunity?
The promotion?
The relationship?
The recommendation?
The job?
Will I be called disloyal?
Will the group turn against me?
Will I become the problem?
That is not simply bystander behavior.
That’s culture.
Culture teaches us who we are allowed to challenge.
Culture teaches us whose behavior we are supposed to excuse.
Culture teaches us when silence is rewarded.
And that’s where courage becomes important.
Courage is expensive
Organizations love courage when it is theoretical.
We put it in leadership competencies.
We put it on websites.
We tell people to bring their whole selves to work.
Speak truth to power.
If you see something, say something.
Raise your hand.
Challenge respectfully.
But courage isn’t courage when nothing is at stake.
Courage becomes real when speaking might cost you something.
Your relationships.
Your access.
Your social standing.
Your career.
Your income.
Your reputation.
Your belonging.
That’s why I have stopped asking only:
Why didn’t someone speak up?
I want to know:
What happened to the last person who did?
Because that answer will tell me more about your culture than your values statement ever will.
I’ve watched the protective shield activate in corporate America
This part isn’t theoretical for me.
I’ve seen bad behavior in corporate environments.
I’ve also watched the protective shield go into action almost immediately.
And the sociologist in me is fascinated by it.
Because so much of it appears unconscious.
No one announces:
We’re going to protect him.
People simply begin doing it.
The explanations start.
The rationalizations start.
Context appears for the powerful person’s behavior.
People who acknowledged what happened privately suddenly become much less certain publicly.
People who called themselves allies get quiet.
People who told you:
I saw that.
That wasn’t okay.
You’re right.
suddenly cannot seem to find their voice when saying the same thing publicly might require them to spend some of their own social capital.
The sociologist in me could watch the system organize itself in real time.
But the worker in me experienced something very different.
I didn’t have the luxury of that protection.
I was the lone Black woman on the team.
That changes the equation.
Because when you’re already on the margins of the group, naming the behavior carries additional risk.
Your tone may suddenly become the issue.
Your confidence becomes aggression.
Your questions become insubordination.
Your frustration becomes an attitude problem.
Your unwillingness to tolerate bad behavior becomes evidence that you’re “difficult.”
And then something fascinating happens.
The behavior you originally raised disappears from the conversation.
And the question becomes:
What’s wrong with her?
There it is.
The protective shield.
This is how victims become villains
We see it everywhere.
The person with power causes harm.
Someone names it.
And gradually the conversation moves away from the harm and toward the person who named it.
What was their motive?
Why didn’t they report sooner?
Why did they handle it that way?
Why were they angry?
Why didn’t they leave?
Why didn’t they say no differently?
Why can’t they just move forward?
Why are they creating so much disruption?
The person naming the problem becomes the problem.
And corporate America has its own sophisticated mechanisms for doing this.
Sometimes the weapon is a PIP
A performance improvement plan is supposed to provide an employee with clear expectations, support, and an opportunity to improve.
Used properly, it can.
But I’ve also seen how performance management can become a power play.
Suddenly the employee who challenged something has performance problems.
Old mistakes acquire new significance.
Every conversation gets documented.
Expectations shift.
Relationships change.
Opportunities disappear.
A paper trail emerges.
And eventually the organization can say:
This wasn’t retaliation.
This was performance.
That’s why procedural justice matters.
Ask:
Was this employee’s performance considered strong before they challenged power?
Are the standards being applied consistently?
Would another employee be put on a PIP for the same behavior?
Who else has made similar mistakes?
What support did they receive?
Who gets coached?
Who gets punished?
Who gets grace?
Who gets documented?
Patterns matter.
Mediocrity is also protected
This is another part we don’t say out loud enough.
People aligned with power can often operate with a much lower performance bar.
We’ve all seen it.
Mediocre people who remain protected because they have the right relationships.
Their mistakes become learning opportunities.
Their potential remains visible.
Their shortcomings are developmental.
They get coached.
Mentored.
Sponsored.
Moved into another role.
Given another chance.
Meanwhile, marginalized employees often experience the opposite expectation.
You have to outperform simply to be considered competent.
Over prepare.
Anticipate everything.
Document everything.
Manage everybody else’s comfort.
Stay composed while somebody disrespects you.
Be assertive—but not too assertive.
Confident—but not arrogant.
Direct—but not threatening.
Honest—but not difficult.
Excellent—but somehow humble enough not to make anyone uncomfortable.
And make fewer mistakes while doing it.
When the same people repeatedly receive grace and the same people repeatedly have to demonstrate exceptionalism, we are not talking about random individual experiences anymore.
We’re talking about a system.
The system isn’t broken
And here’s where I probably lose some people.
I don’t think the system is broken.
I think we’re often watching it do exactly what it was designed to do.
Systems built in eras of racial, gender, economic, and social hierarchy don’t automatically become equitable because we update the employee handbook.
Institutions designed with concentrated authority don’t naturally distribute power.
Systems built to protect institutions don’t suddenly prioritize the people harmed within them.
That’s why intent isn’t enough.
You don’t have to wake up thinking:
I’m going to protect white supremacy today.
You don’t have to consciously decide:
I’m protecting toxic masculinity.
You don’t even have to believe you’re protecting power.
You can simply follow the norms.
Stay quiet.
Give your friend the benefit of the doubt.
Explain away your colleague’s behavior.
Follow the process.
Protect the institution.
Question the person raising the concern.
Tell yourself you don’t have enough information.
And go home convinced you did nothing wrong.
That’s how systems survive.
Not solely because evil people maintain them.
They survive because ordinary people learn how to function inside them without disrupting them.
So how do we dismantle it?
First, we stop putting the entire burden on the person with the least power.
Courage matters.
But courage cannot be our whole strategy.
Because asking marginalized people, victims, whistle blowers, junior employees, young women, Black employees, or anyone else outside the protection system to repeatedly risk everything in order to expose the system is not accountability.
It’s sacrifice.
I don’t want organizations that require martyrs to prove they’re psychologically safe.
We need structural change.
We create real checks on authority.
No single leader should control someone’s performance narrative, opportunities, compensation, discipline, and career without meaningful oversight.
We examine patterns instead of isolating incidents.
One complaint may look like conflict.
Six complaints may be a pattern.
Who receives PIPs?
Who gets promoted?
Who leaves?
Who gets terminated?
Who gets coached?
Who receives high-potential opportunities?
Disaggregate the data.
Systems reveal themselves through patterns.
We create real appeals.
Employees need somewhere to go when the problem is inside their chain of command.
Independent review matters.
We scrutinize retaliation.
If somebody’s performance was good until they reported misconduct, ask questions.
That doesn’t mean they can never have legitimate performance problems.
It means timing matters.
Consistency matters.
Evidence matters.
We protect witnesses and bystanders.
Don’t just tell people to speak.
Make it safe enough to do so.
We hold powerful people to a higher standard, not a lower one.
Your top salesperson does not get an exemption.
Your rainmaker doesn’t get an exemption.
Your brilliant executive doesn’t get an exemption.
Your board member doesn’t get an exemption.
If your performance comes at the expense of everybody else’s psychological safety, that cost belongs on your performance evaluation too.
Culture is an outcome.
We practice organizational justice.
Procedural justice:
Was the process fair?
Did people have voice?
Was the decision transparent?
Could it be appealed?
Distributive justice:
Were outcomes and consequences applied fairly?
Interactional justice:
Were people treated with dignity and respect?
These are not soft questions.
They’re how people decide whether your organization deserves their trust.
And finally, those of us inside the system have to look in the mirror
This may be the hardest part.
Because dismantling power can’t only be the responsibility of the people harmed by it.
Somebody benefiting from the system has to decide to interrupt it.
Which means the question isn’t only:
Who has harmed someone?
It is also:
What have I protected?
Whose behavior have I explained away?
Who have I believed without needing evidence?
Who have I required to bring me overwhelming evidence before I would believe them?
When somebody challenged the powerful person in the room, did I get curious?
Or did I instinctively defend the person I knew?
Did I say privately, You’re absolutely right, and then remain silent publicly?
Have I called myself an ally while protecting my own access to power?
Have I confused following the process with producing justice?
Have I confused friendship with loyalty?
Have I confused neutrality with courage?
And if the system consistently protects me:
Am I willing to give up some of that protection so somebody else can experience justice?
That’s the real question.
Because I am not neutral about any of this.
I don’t believe these are disconnected incidents.
I see the through lines.
From a fraternity group chat.
To a car leaving a bar in Louisiana.
To a young Black man who never came home from an island in Mississippi.
To Black bodies hanging from trees in the Deep South.
To a high school gym mat.
To a Senate hearing.
To the networks surrounding one of the most notorious sexual predators in modern American history.
To an executive conference room.
To HR.
To the PIP suddenly sitting in someone’s inbox.
The circumstances change.
The stakes change.
The actors change.
But I keep seeing the same fundamental questions:
Who has power?
Who gets protected?
Who is expected to remain silent?
Who pays when someone finally speaks?
And:
Who among us is willing to interrupt the system when doing so might cost us our own protection?
That is where courage lives.
Not after the headline.
Not after the investigation.
Not after everyone agrees something terrible happened.
Earlier.
In the fraternity house.
In the group chat.
In the car.
At the party.
In the boardroom.
In the hallway.
In the Slack channel.
In the meeting where somebody starts rewriting the story.
In the moment when everyone looks around and silently decides who they are going to protect.
That’s the moment.
Because courage without structural protection becomes sacrifice.
And we cannot keep asking the people most vulnerable to the system to sacrifice themselves in order to change it.
The rest of us have work to do too.
The system isn’t broken.
The question is whether we’re willing to stop protecting the parts of it that protect us.
