To play on a Langston Hughes poem — what happens to a Black founder ousted? Are they forgotten, like words on the tip of one’s tongue? Or revered like a deity and then thrown to the sun?

The topic is often awkward to ponder and layered in its probe since the reasons for a Black founder’s booting are shrouded in unknown intentions:

A Black founder could have messed up severely — but is the retaliation fair? Is it harsher than what their white counterparts would have received?

A Black founder could encounter an accusation — but was it doused in microaggressive anger?

Would things have unfolded in the way they did if the founder was white?

Each time a Black founder is removed from or criticized at their company, apprehension arises around figuring out what happened. This makes such conversations hard.

For example, news broke last week that Kimberly Bryant, the founder of Black Girls Code, was fired from the organization she spent decades building. The reception was mixed. Founders who spoke to TechCrunch agreed that the employees who alleged misconduct by Bryant were right to speak out; they also said the board of BGC was too swift in Bryant’s ousting and denied her proper due process.

“Two things can be true at the same time,” Minda Harts, a consultant on equity and inclusion, told TechCrunch regarding the BGC situation. “All involved deserved better.”

Aside from Bryant, there have been a few high-profile cases of Black founders being ousted from their organizations. Marceau Michel was recently removed from his venture fund Black Founders Matter for matters still publicly undisclosed. Brian Brackeen was shown the door at his company, Kairos, in 2018, with the board citing “willful misconduct.” Other founder situations have flown under the radar; many are still too afraid to speak out.

What is known is that when Black founders are lost, the entire community suffers.

Lauren DeLisa Coleman, the founder of the think tank GameChange, noted that when Black founders are ousted, the community loses success stories to replicate. It also loses potential sources of support, entry points into an industry previously sealed to them, “guidance on how to navigate, and potential mentorship, inspiration, barrier-breakers, and possible source of angel funding down the road,” Coleman told TechCrunch.

Felisha Booker, founder of the music platform Breaker Nation, said when a Black public leader is ousted, it contributes to an energy shift within the whole Black tech space.

“It feels like our spirit is broken right now,” Booker told TechCrunch. “We already have to outwork everyone just to get to the starting line; now, here’s something else we have to worry about. It feels like we’re playing hopscotch and losing.”

The threat of being ousted is one reason why Dawn Dickson, the founder of PopCom, said Black founders need to pay closer attention to their businesses. She almost lost control over her company due to a board disagreement and said Black founders need to craft operational agreements that leave them in power.

“We have seen firsthand multiple times what can happen when the organizational structure of a company is not set up to protect the founder,” Dickson told TechCrunch, adding that founders also need to perform due diligence on investors and prospective board members. “When you have people around you who have your and the company’s best interests in mind, these situations rarely occur. “

Brackeen recommends founders establish a board seat that they can hold forever, replace all board members every three to four years and demand the board’s support in training and coaching when issues arise rather than a prompt replacement.

“Black founders are replaced at the highest rate of all founders,” he told TechCrunch. “Too often boards see the white founder as ‘crucial to the success of the business’ and Black founders as ‘lucky.’ This bias leads to board poor behavior, as we see in the case of Black Girls Code, that always destroys value.”

Vel Mensah, the founder of the event management platform TablePop, said Black entrepreneurs carry “the weight of cultural competence,” adding that there is a level of demoralization knowing that a founder like Adam Neumann is forgiven when someone like Bryant may never be.

“The VC world only forgives white men,” Mensah told TechCrunch. “Giving Black business leaders the same chances to make mistakes entails intentional efforts, but the Black community is impacted when shifts like these happen.”

Kerry Schrader, the co-founder of the networking company Mixtroz, put it another way: “Black founders are over-scrutinized, investigated, second-guessed and taken to task publicly for missteps that pale in comparison to our white peers,” she said, adding that she’s keeping that in mind as she raises her seed round. “We get one out. Others seem to get at least three.”

Analog Teams founder Oladosu Teyibo agreed, saying that as Black founders continue to advance and rise, it is inevitable to see an increase in these sticky situations. He also mentioned Neumann as a reminder of how Black founders are not given the same courtesy as others.

“It is in our best interest to operate with the understanding that our mistakes cost more, hurt more and are rarely forgiven,” Teyibo said, citing Bryant as an example. “The information we have about her leadership style is no different than the well-documented styles of a Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk or a Steve Jobs, yet she was treated with zero respect for the vision she brought to life and the lives she changed.”

Fairly judging an ousted Black founder is hard when the benchmark by which all founders are evaluated remains unequal and there are often attempts to defend the right to fail. The Black community is not judged on an individual-by-individual basis but as a collective, meaning every mishap is perceived as a community fault rather than a character one.

This means defending the reputation of not one but many at one time. It means assessing the good and bad white founders can get away with, and figuring out, until equality is achieved, what founders of color should be able to get away with, too.

It’s not a denial of the wrong but an ask for empathy in the quest to get it right.

There are downsides, however. The constant need to stand together means the conversations about the bad apples are late, missed or avoided. It’s hard to criticize when a Black founder has done something wrong. There is the expectation of silence to play along for the greater good since others could see the bashing and use it as an excuse for further discrimination.

But beneath many allegations is a hint of truth. Perhaps some are just bad founders. Furthermore, workers often experience exacerbated anxieties when dealing with authority figures, and Black women in particular deal with misogynoir — a combination of racism and sexism — especially in workplace settings, which leaves them regarded as more demanding, aggressive and confrontational than their white and even Black male counterparts. Maybe it’s a case of perception.

The conversation will always be nuanced, but what is inevitable is the collective sense of loss felt when a Black founder is ousted. The community commiserates as it can, noting one more lesson as another paragon crashes from the sky.