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Recovering From a “Gut Punch”: Black Women Fired by Trump and Musk Work to Overcome Shame and Self-Blame

Black women working for the federal government did what they were supposed to do. Yet their achievements could not protect them from the political winds.

A demonstrator holds a sign during an American Federation of Government Employees rally for worker’s rights in Washington, DC, on March 29, 2022.

When Sharon Davis opened her e-mail at 5 am on April 1, 2025, she learned that she had been fired from the Food and Drug Administration after 24 years of employment. She felt a mix of emotions: anger, disbelief and—most prominently and undeservedly—shame.

“I was like, ‘What do I do now?’” Davis, 55, told MindSite News. “It was a gut punch. I’ve never been fired before. This is the first time I haven’t had a job in my life.”

Davis had moved steadily up the ranks at the FDA, working for the last five years as associate director for operations and quality management. Then, overnight, she became one of the more than 95,000 Black women who were fired or laid off from the federal government as result of massive job cuts implemented by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the elimination of diversity programs.

Davis says she had been the “go-to person” in her department, and in the initial weeks and months after her job loss she was in denial about her firing, waiting to get called back. She checked her e-mail often, expecting to get questions about where things were and what to do. When she wasn’t asked to return, she questioned her very worth and wondered if her more than two decades of service was of value.

Although she knew intellectually that it wasn’t about her, one refrain kept going through her head: “I didn’t deserve this. Why did this happen to me?”

Pointing the Finger at Ourselves

Davis grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. She enjoyed teen fiction, ran on the high school track team, and was the manager for the girl’s basketball team. Her grandmother, a college professor, was her role model, Davis said.

“I always remember her being very big on education, on being polished, presentable and professional,” Davis said. “When I saw her, I knew I was going to go to college and make her proud.”

FIRED: The DOGE Layoffs Hit Black Woman Hard. A Year Later, Many Are Still Reeling

Recovering From a “Gut Punch”: Black Women Fired by Trump and Musk Work to Overcome Shame and Self-Blame Lottie Joiner

Recovering From a “Gut Punch”: Black Women Fired by Trump and Musk Work to Overcome Shame and Self-Blame

The Unseen Toll: Depression, Anxiety Plague Black Women a Year After Being Fired by DOGE Lottie Joiner

The Unseen Toll: Depression, Anxiety Plague Black Women a Year After Being Fired by DOGE

After graduating from Jackson State University, a historically Black college in Jackson, Mississippi, with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, Davis worked for the state of Mississippi and a nuclear waste facility in Memphis. She moved to Washington, DC, in 2002, where she worked at the FDA until she was blindsided by the mass layoffs in April 2025.

“When you don’t have answers and there’s not a clear thing to point to, we typically point the finger on ourselves, and oftentimes that looks like shame,” said Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed psychologist who founded and hosts the popular podcast, Therapy for Black Girls.“’Maybe I did something to deserve this. Was this about my performance?’ I think any time there’s a layoff or a firing, people assume rightfully or wrongfully that it was a performance issue, and we know that that was not the case here.”

Working for the civilian federal government brought job security and a “path to stability”—especially for more than 200,000 Black people—said Bradford. “You get this job and you never have to worry about it, right?” she said. “So for it to be snatched was incredibly disruptive.”

By September 2025, Black women’s unemployment had surged to 7.5 percent, compared to 4.4 percent of all US workers at that time—a net loss driven entirely by losses in the public sector, mostly in federal jobs, according to labor........

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