you have a bachelor’s and/or master’s degree (maybe even a Ph.D.), you work at nice companies with good pay and benefits, pay your own bills, don’t live in the “ghetto”, not in a gang, well groomed, dress presentably, have other streams of income, have an investment portfolio, speak proper English, your Mom isn’t on drugs, your Dad isn’t in jail, you don’t have illegitimate kids, you don’t rap, you’re not a basketball or football player, and you’ve traveled in and out the country?! Sh*t. What type of Black Panther, Wakanda born sorcery is this?
Jesse Williams said it best during his 2016 BET Humanitarian Award acceptance speech (which will forever live in infamy), “Just because we’re magic doesn’t mean we’re not real.” Granted, he mesmerized us with such magical words, but just because we’re real doesn’t mean we exist, and Black Excellence does not exist in the face of Whyt Mediocrity.
Just analyze a simple fact of life that’s been passed down generation after generation: you have to work TWICE as hard to be HALF as good. Do we understand the gravity of this school of thought? How psychologically tiring and damaging this reality is? It means you have to work FOUR times as hard to be just AS good. This is life in contemporary America. But here’s the part that helps me sleep a little bit easier at night…I get it. I get exactly why it has to be this way.
Black Excellence is a threat to civil order, blind obedience and the system as we know it. Black Excellence cannot be weighed on even scales because it is the first domino of black dominion. See, Black Excellence is a window to the resiliency of our people. The creativity of our people. The beauty of our people. The uniqueness of our people. The magic of our people. They took a 400-year head start and now we actually have the audacity to try close in with Usain Bolt-like speed, gaining ground with such smooth and elegant strides as we carry an entire people on your back? It’s a frightening feeling to know that an honest black (wo)man is about to beat you in your race and at your own game.
And why shouldn’t it be? We were required to dispel