As I scroll through my Instagram popular feed, I see many things. My ‘Girl Crush’ Rihanna strutting the streets in vintage Dior, beautiful women with beat faces that could slay for days, the occasional Kardashian photo op and a smiling photo of a young black person who has either just graduated from a university, gained an insanely large amount of scholarship money to a school that everyone and their momma knows about, or living a glamorous life where they can afford things that I could only dream of (I see you Gucci). All with the hashtag #BlackExcellence underneath the photo. All I could think of after seeing photos of these beautiful black men and women was that I am not black excellence and I am nowhere near that title. I started to doubt and attack myself. I felt worthless because I was not one of these people who went to an Ivy League university, who majored in political science, engineering or biology. I didn’t have dreams of working in a lab, being a doctor or challenging other opinions at a law firm. I started to think, “What If I worked harder in my calculus class last year?” or “What if I had joined more clubs in high school?” The feelings of mediocrity quickly crept back into my mind and all the good energy had left. I was going through a rough patch, a really bad rough patch.
Every time I went to my music class, I questioned why I was there. Campus always looked miserable to me and I started to isolate myself from people that I really liked at school. It took a conversation with one of my favorite professors to snap me out of the rut that I was in. I realized that I should be proud of myself for being in college, and for having dreams like whether I want to own a home, be the first music producer to work at a specific company or write an opera someday.
Although I love the term and page Black excellence, I realized that it was only exclusive to certain people in the black community. Black excellence was only exclusive to college educated, corporate business types, who have exceeded standards in the fields that they work in. While that is beautiful and inspirational, shouldn’t black excellence go to the single mom who is putting all three kids to school and working two full-time jobs to support them? Shouldn’t it go to the young lady who is finally taking the courage to get her G.E.D. after years of saying “I would never succeed?” Shouldn’t we give Black excellence to everyone who has tried to make their dreams come true and failed, to people who live paycheck by paycheck, who are trying to get by in a post-Trump America? I love the term Black excellence and I am here for the posts supporting the young girl who got into all eight ivies with full scholarships and the young lady who just finished medical school and will be doing a stint for Doctors Without Borders – but I’m also here for the single moms and the people who decided that college wasn’t for them. So, when I look in the mirror, I see a beautiful girl with dreams and aspirations. I may not be a Yale student majoring in civil engineering, but I am still a smart kid with dreams and aspirations. I am still Black excellence.
You are Black excellence. We are Black excellence, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
