Surprised by Black Excellence?

Funny. I’ve survived my encounters unscathed.

If high achievement in the Black community- okay, beyond athletics and music- strikes you as fairly rare, this might be a good read. Or not. It depends.

With a polite nod to the masses of folks reaching out to their Token Black Friends (a comment I heard yesterday from a woman who is the definition of Black Excellence) to help them figure out what they could do, I wanted to further filter what I keep hearing from the Black folks who share their comments, time and stories with me. I am also tagging my many Medium peeps who have been thanked as heartfelt allies, for I think you can likely see many of these points.

Kindly, this is a white chick filtering, but it’s done with the utmost respect.

This morning I had an appointment at the Denver VA (I am in Colorado finalizing my house sale, YAY).

The VA allows a few of us in at a time. Here’s why I’m grateful.

With a smaller case load, Dr. Chauncey (that’s her first name) and I were able to speak at length. Dr. C is a Black woman, a talented dermatologist. Residents come and go at our clinics. It’s one place where I have had the delight to be treated by a very diverse group of residents in all manner of specialties, ranging from Vietnamese podiatrists to derms like Dr. C. We had a lively conversation, as she challenged me to pronounce her last name (she married a Romanian, and I nailed it, which made her explode with delighted laughter).

Here, filtered for various expletives, is what she had to say:

Dr. C is constantly bombarded with disbelief that she could be a doctor. (Black women don’t what, go to school?)

Or, “You don’t sound Black.” (Black folks don’t what, come from different countries, backgrounds and cultures same way we do?)

Or, “Can my son touch your skin?” (um, NO.)

Black folks, especially women, understand about the hair and skin.

Dr. C wears a long wig, so happily she isn’t subjected to having her hair stroked without permission or provocation as though she’s the goddamned family Labradoodle.

Speaking of dogs, Dr. C was out walking her dog in her neighborhood, when one of her neighbors asked if she was the dog walker. I have to wonder if that neighbor would have asked her that question if she wasn’t a petite Black woman.

People seeing Black first, then instantly projecting their own idea of what being a Black woman/person means in the world. And folks wonder why Black folks get so damned mad. And yes, it might have been an innocent enough question, but look. Women who walk into a board room to approach their seat at the table get royally offended when the men ask them to make coffee, because, after all, they couldn’t possibly be board members.

Add color to the mix and it’s remarkable they don’t get handed a goddamned mop.

Yah. It’s funny. Unless it isn’t.

My first experience of Dr. C was her humor, combined with her competence.

Before you bark at me for claiming that I am trying to say that I don’t see color, let me kindly disabuse you of the notion.

Of course I see her skin color.

But here’s the point: her skin color does not in any way change my expectations of her competence.

Here was a superb observation from my conversation with Rosennab from yesterday: When she writes, or speaks, or performs, or practices Taekwondo, or interacts in any of the many areas in which she moves in her world, Dr. Bakari would prefer that her Blackness not precede or define her performance.

Kindly, this is how I heard it and these are my words. I hope I am honoring her points properly.

Someone’s color does not automatically either determine or undermine capability. However people’s reactions, such as surprise ( but he’s so articulate) or the like leaks the fact that you and I simply don’t hold the space where Black (or Brown or Red or Yellow, etc) excellence resides with the same normalcy that White excellence does.

When you register color first, unless you are very mindful that you are, then anything that happens next comes through the (s/he’s Black) filter in your upbringing. As a result, that either fits or challenges your Black paradigm. If you’re not accustomed to Black Excellence, variety and richness, then confirmation bias will likely cancel out or most certainly hijack what you’re seeing and hearing. Or, your reaction will indicate that such things don’t exist in your understanding of Black folks.

This is part of the awareness that our Black friends have every right not only to ask us for but to demand of us. Black Excellence isn’t some uber-rare thing you stumble on. You probably come up against it all the time but can’t see it. And that is the whole point. If you don’t expect it, then you don’t often see it.

In case you missed this the first time it came out and when I have linked to it before, please see this by Sharon Hurley Hall:

Listening to Dr. B yesterday was a great opportunity for me to wonder how we got to the point where folks are still surprised that Black people are insulted when told “but you’re not like other Black people.” Or, “You could almost pass for White,” as though, please, that was a compliment. What we’re saying to then us that because we experience them as “less Black” ( whatever that means) they’re closer to excellence.

Black folks are calling those microaggressions out on Medium and elsewhere.

I want to explain what it’s like to be a White person who isn’t surprised by Black Excellence, and how I got there. That might also explain why some of our Token Black Friends keep challenging us about having only one Black friend. How it might be time to color your world, if you will.

I’ve written elsewhere that I had two mothers, one of whom was Black. That’s a long story, but suffice it to say that seeing Black faces all the time normalized color, but through the lens of birth parents committed to civil rights.

One of the lasting memories of growing up in the Sixties south was my mother’s horror and caustic observations about White and Colored fountains and toilets at the local Winn Dixie stores.

My folks had their own limitations around color, but one thing they ingrained was that an educated Black person was not an anomaly. That was to be expected, and respected. Like, respecting my elders in general, and not just White elders. People. Period.

My generation was taught to be respectful. But that often depended on to whom. Color wasn’t a factor in my family when it came to doling out regard. It’s hard to underscore the importance of that messaging. This is just one reason why, along with my military training, I still call people ma’am and sir. Since I’m getting to be an old fart, that increasingly means people younger than I am, which is very easy for me to find these days.

I saw the same range of excellence or lack thereof in Black folks in the Army, which is true of any large group of people, just as I did in corporations. What I didn’t see, and still don’t see, is the widespread expectation of quality, competence and excellence in meeting, befriending and working with Black people. Instead, unless we’re talking about athletics (or kindly, dick size, which is just as or even more moronic when directed at the Black male population), there was general surprise when Black folks showed up smart, committed, capable, resourceful, heroic, educated.

Funny. Same stuff we White folks like to think we are. We do not own the corner on all those characteristics. As if the Black version of all those things was somehow, not quite as good, or as shiny, or as impressive as when White folk show up smart, committed, capable, resourceful, heroic, educated. How, pray tell, does Blackness diminish human characteristics?

Again, look. Nothing I am saying here isn’t said by far better writers than I am (two of their stories are linked in this article). As a white woman I do not possess the conceit to speak for any Black person. Only for my experiences as someone who does not find Black Excellence surprising at all, and after 67 years continue to be disheartened that so many people still do.

I still have one hell of a long way to go.

Eighteen years ago I got invited to speak at the largest annual celebration of newly-minted Black PhDs in the country. Every October since, I have spent three to four days mixing and mingling with hundreds and hundreds of America’s best Black brains, people who are about to take on a restless world that has no idea who they are.

These folks, armed with extraordinary credentials, walk out of their course work and dissertations into the dissenting world that disbelieves their degrees.

Black kids get PhDs? Not in my experience. Must have been through some kind of charity program that kept a more-qualified white kid out of college.

That October weekend is, hands down, the best party of the year for me. I get paid the princely sum of $300 and enough for a few salads to hang out with Black Excellence. There in that crowd are the historians and cancer researchers and epidemiologists and archeologists and college professors and microbiologists who are going to change our world.

One of those folks might well create the Covid-19 vaccine. Their community has reason to hope so.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but that’s pretty goddamned humbling. I have a BS, I get called Dr. Hubbel for three days (they never remember I’m a lowly BS) and I am back only by the students’ request. I cannot tell you how honored I am that I am allowed back in. I work hard to keep my program relevant. They are very eager students but their expectations are through the roof. My kind of audience. You had better be good.

The other thing I have done is travel. Most of my travel is to developing countries, where I am often the only white person on the boat, on the horse, in the hostel, in the market. I cannot tell you how eye-opening that is. Not only that, it’s joyous, freeing, fun and delightful. There is nothing to teach you comfort with color than to get your raggedy ass on the road. Soon as those planes start flying.

Here in America, go join the NAACP. Do more than the selfie at the protest. Get engaged with different activities. You will find yourself tripping all over Black Excellence in all forms, in all expressions. Volunteer for the campaign of a Black candidate. Visit Black churches. You might well have your understanding of the words “family” and “community” completely re-imagined.

That’s a fine thing.

As others have written, who do you read? Who does your kid read? Who do they play with, study with, go out with? How are you normalizing color in your family? Plenty of Black writers on Medium have emphasized these things. This is how we change how we respond. When you raise your kids to expect just as much excellence from Black folks as they do Whites in any context, you teach them to see Black people.

The point should be self-evident by now. When you hang out with Black Excellence, you learn to have the expectation of it. That assumption of value, and intelligence, and the possibility of a damned interesting conversation with a person are what allows a connection to blossom.

And please, not a person who happens to be Black, which sounds like being Black “happened” to them. As though Sven Karlssen walked out his door in Stockholm, Sweden one day, a blue-eyed blonde, and by the time he gets to his car he “happens” to be Black. Can we stop using this phrase as though it has any meaning?

Just a person. Their Blackness does not lead the conversation, nor does it dictate how I hear them, unless they specifically want me to hear it that way. Dr. Bakari’s Blackness isn’t what makes her a speaker, a transformational coach; her skills, stories and competence do. Her Blackness doesn’t make her a Fourth Degree Black Belt in Taekwondo, her years of work and discipline do.

One of the great gifts of spending time with people who are willing to speak their truth, reading Medium articles by people willing to speak their truth, is that you and I can put our automatic BUT I’M NOT LIKE THAT defensiveness on hold. We can hear what’s being said, hold the words in a safe space, and ask the questions of ourselves:

How might I be like that?

Do I do that? Do I do it without knowing it?

What does my defensiveness tell me?

Why am I so invested in denial?

As you and I read articles by people like Sharon and Dr. Bakari and Marley K., the invitation is to sit that part of us down that is so terrified to be called a racist. Just sit it the fuck DOWN. Hear what’s being said. Sit with it. Ask yourself why your circle of friends isn’t more colorful, more diverse. Ask yourself what you might be missing out on (kindly, a lot) by not actively getting to know folks outside your experience and your comfort zone. I cannot tell you how much I have grown in the few months I’ve known Dr. Bakari, as we have expanded our friendship beyond Medium. How much more I’ve grown as I have started seeing new Black writers whose work I follow.

But I grow first because I want to, second because I will hear, question, listen and not be fearful of what I find lacking in myself, and I am eager to keep right on adding friends of quality. Some of them are Black.

They aren’t friends because they are Black, so that I can trot them out to prove I’m not racist.

They are friends because I have come to love and respect them.

I highly recommend the practice. If you want to know one more reason why I am a fan, I’d like to offer one of my favorite pieces by Dr. Bakari:

The best part about Black Excellence is that in the single best possible way, it does indeed rub off on you. That’s only if you seek it out, see it, and embrace it.

To pay homage to the immortal words of the great Maya Angelou, you will indeed rise.