Friday, March 29, 2024

Black Excellence: A Double-Edged Sword?

*Black Excellence, our need to celebrate black achievers, comes as a response to the stereotyping and dehumanization of black folks. In order to counter the narrative that Black people are inherently criminals, we have to shout-out our achievements.

We have to force the mainstream media to acknowledge that we too are capable of greatness. We have to remind people that “The Genius” Ray Charles and “Godfather of Soul” James Brown are from our people. Black Excellence is how we educate the world that Black history isn’t just tied to slavery.

Black Excellence is also a celebration with purpose. When we share news of Beyonce rocking Coachella, Gabby Douglas winning gold at Olympics, Kendrick winning the Pulitzer or Micheal Brown getting into 20 of the best colleges, we share hope for our people. It is an antidote to the poison of systemic racism and violence that we are still encountering in the country till this day. But what happens when the antidote starts to poison us.

In her speech at Tuskegee University in 2015, First Lady Michelle Obama told young Black graduates that the world at large “…won’t know how hard you worked and how much you sacrificed to make it to this day…Instead they will make assumptions about who they think you are, based on their limited notion…” This statement lays bare the immense pressure on Black folks to succeed and how thankless that task can be.

We don’t even have a claim to our humanity unless we are excellent. It is how we view our survival – giving our all to the hustle till we make our way out. Instead of challenging the system that is set against us, we are told to work harder. Nothing less than excellent will do. The framework of Black Excellence isn’t to blame for this. Rather, it is the system within which it exists that should be examined.

We are raised with the belief that we have to be twice as good to get half of ‘they’ get. Even when we do reach Black Excellence, we have to continue enduring pain. Some of the country’s brightest minds and hardest working people are Black and yet we still face crime, poverty, unemployment and incarceration. Instead of just lifting ourselves from the bootstraps, we need to raise our voices against injustices. Otherwise, we will continue to suffer from a system that seems to be set against us.

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