Wicked for Good, Part 3: Fighting Alone, Fighting for Home, and Fighting a System That Never Fought for Us
- Vanity Jenkins
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
There’s a moment in Wicked for Good that many people miss, but every woman of color recognizes immediately.
Elphaba asks the animals to stay and fight beside her. She tells them the truth about the Wizard’s tyranny, the danger ahead, and what it will take to defeat him. But the animals refuse. One even calls out her role in giving the monkeys wings, a valid critique, and Elphaba does something rare. She takes accountability. She doesn’t deflect. She doesn’t gaslight. She owns her mistake.
And then she still asks for collective action.
But instead of support…They scatter.
Only the bear her former caretaker pauses long enough to tell her she is strong enough to keep fighting. But she won’t fight with her.
Tell me that’s not the workplace experience of Black women.
Tell me that’s not every DEI practitioner, every director of equity, every woman of color on an executive team.
We say the hard thing in the meeting.
We name the truth everyone feels but no one will say aloud.
We risk our standing, our career, our psychological safety.
And what do we get?
Silence.
The kind of silence that echoes.
Then, after the meeting, the whisper parade begins:
“Thank you for naming that.”
“I’m so glad you said something.”
“You were right, I just didn’t want to say it in front of everyone.”
“I support you… privately.”
But private support doesn’t protect anyone who isn't in Wicked or at work.
If the animals had stood with Elphaba, the Wizard could have been defeated through collective resistance instead of isolating her and making her the sole target.
But when support is withheld, the burden and the backlash fall on one person’s shoulders.
This is exactly how women of color become the “villain” in organizations: not because we’re wrong, but because we’re alone.
Solidarity after the fact is not solidarity.
Support must show up when the truth is spoken, not just when it’s safe.
“No Place Like Home” Fighting For Institutions That Never Fought For Us
Later in the story, Elphaba sings “No Place Like Home,” and the lyrics beautifully capture the disorienting loyalty women of color often feel toward workplaces that have never been loyal to us.
She asks:
“Why do I love this place that’s never loved me?”
That’s the question many women of color ask themselves silently especially those in education, nonprofits, philanthropy, healthcare, and mission-driven organizations.We stay because of purpose.
We stay because of community.
We stay because we see what the place could be, despite what it is.
Elphaba names Oz as “just a place,” but also an idea, a promise.
And she wants to help make that promise real.
That, right there, is the emotional trap of equity work.
Women of color hold a vision for the organization that is often more courageous, more expansive, and more just than the organization has for itself.
We try to redeem systems that never made room for us.
We fight to make the workplace better for everyone, including those who undermine us.
And then the lyric that breaks the heart open:
“When you feel it’s not worth fighting for, compel yourself…Because there’s no place like home.”
This is the tension women of color carry:
Wanting to leave.
Feeling responsible to stay.
Feeling guilty for dreaming of something freer.
Fearing the grief of walking away from a mission we believed in long before anyone else did.
We fight for “home” not because it’s equitable, but because we hope we can make it so.
But here’s the truth: the song doesn’t get to say, sometimes you have to leave home to reclaim yourself.
Glinda and the Soft Harm of White Feminism
Glinda fully steps into the role that white feminism plays in so many workplaces when she tries to get Elphaba to work with the Wizard.
When Elphaba refuses to wait, refuses to compromise, refuses to play nice while people are actively being harmed, Glinda tells her, essentially:
Justice will come… eventually.
You need to work within the system.
Sound familiar?
White feminism loves incrementalism.
It loves decorum.
It loves safety.
It loves “not right now.”
It loves to ask women of color to be patient in systems that are harming us in real time.
Glinda wants Elphaba to soften.
To bend.
To calm down.
To wait.
But waiting has never delivered justice to marginalized communities. Systems don’t magically self-correct because someone asked nicely or chose patience over pressure. Glinda’s version of “support” isn’t support at all — it’s containment dressed up as kindness. And when containment failed, she did what so many white feminists do when the stakes rise: she repositioned herself as the “reasonable one” and cast Elphaba as the problem.
White feminism centers comfort over courage, feelings over freedom, optics over outcomes.
And yet, despite everything, by the end of the movie, Elphaba tells Glinda, “You can go and do all the things I never could.” That line is peak white feminism in action: White women stepping back when things get hard, telling you to wait because “the timing isn’t right,” and then reappearing at the finish line as if they fought beside you the whole time.
Elphaba centers liberation, and that will always disrupt the Glindas of the world.
Why This Matters
Elphaba’s story is a mirror. Women of color are fighting inside institutions that rely on our labor but don’t protect our leadership. We are standing alone in rooms that should be full of allies. We are fighting for “home” in places that have never fought for us. We are being told to be patient by leaders who are not affected by the harm. And yet, we still dare to imagine a world that could be better.
That’s the magic.
That’s the danger.
That’s the story.
Catch Part One: Wicked Truths: How Elphaba’s Story Exposes the Pet-to-Threat Cycle for Women of Color
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