Watching Love & Hip Hop the past couple weeks has brought several questions to mind. As a Black woman in the entertainment industry, I have looked up to Yandy Smith and Mona Scott-Young as positive examples of what it means to be a driven career woman. The lack of women of color in power positions in the entertainment industry is no secret. And while success stories are few and far between, both Smith and Scott-Young have found tremendous success as the driving forces behind the careers of some of your favorite musicians.

And then Yandy threw it all to the wayside with her petty, and somewhat concerning bickering with Jim Jones’s fiancée Chrissy Lampkin. Yandy, who worked as Jones’s manager crossed a serious professional line, allowing her personal feelings about her client’s relationship shade her interactions with Jim Jones and his fiancée. This inability to separate the personal and professional (according to a friend who is also a Black woman in the entertainment industry) is why Black women all have to work so hard to be taken seriously, especially on the business side of the entertainment industry.

I am not so sure that is accurate or fair. Yes, Yandy allowed her emotions to affect her business but who hasn’t? She is just human and she doesn’t work in a vacuum. When you work with a person for so long, and become so involved in their lives, it’s hard to keep the emotion out of the picture. That passion and tenacity is the same thing that has propelled her career to the place it is today. It seems easy to judge her for crossing a line but no one knows the truth about where that line was drawn.

That fire is something that any person who is passionate about their career should carry with them to the office every day.

What do you think? Did Yandy cross a line?