“It’s not easy for me to admit that I’ve been standing in the same place for 18 years.” — Troy Maxson, played by Denzel Washington, in the Movie “Fences”
I wrote an article in March discussing the concept of “The Sunken Place” as was portrayed in the movie “Get Out.” I referred to The Sunken Place as being a mind control process that conditions Black people to accept a marginalized status and continually choose to go into the back doors of life. Jordan Peele, the film’s director, tweeted in the aftermath of the film that “The Sunken Place means we’re marginalized. No matter how hard we scream, the system silences us.”
This piece will lay out some of the characteristics of a “Frozen Place” that many people find themselves in on their career journeys. The Frozen Place is when a person feels like they are stuck in a certain position or station and unable to progress. They may stay “frozen” for years with little to no upward mobility or growth. In the Frozen Place, career stagnation is the norm. There are those who have not been able to advance despite their hard work and education. They, like Troy in the movie Fences, feel stuck in place.
There are those people who encounter glass doors where they are denied access to positions regardless of their education, experience and credentials. The doors are made of glass because they can see others with equivalent or lower levels of qualifications gaining access to opportunities in institutions and organizations that they could not. For those who do get in the door, there may be a glass ceiling that restricts how high they can climb.
Those individuals who are in the Frozen Place may end up feeling unfulfilled and may seek other, often destructive, ways to fill the void. Their life doesn’t come close to meeting the aspirations and expectations that they once had. Eventually, the disappointment of not meeting their expectations can take a toll on the person. The result is often a perpetually negative attitude and outlook that ends up causing them to sink deeper into a mental abyss.
The Frozen Place makes people feel like they have no upward mobility. Many occupants of this space have stopped trying to live out their ambitions and have settled into an unenthusiastic life of mundanity and mediocrity. They feel that no matter what they do, they’re going nowhere. This may result in a complete loss of enthusiasm for their job. These individuals go into a zombie-like state when they enter their workplaces.
They just go through the motions every day and go home. Their motivation has all but ceased. There is really no career path in the minds of these individuals. They have learned to suppress their ambitions and muffle their dreams. The fire that they may have once had has been extinguished. They are increasingly susceptible to being paralyzed by fear, crushed by roadblocks, and frozen by pessimism.
