Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash
So often my privilege makes me feel like I have not suffered enough to be Black. This struggle doesn’t come from an internal confusion, but a void of clear identity that did not take root in my former years. I found my identity to be dictated by the environment I am in.
This realization is a hard and a really large pill to swallow, but hey I’d rather wrestle with it now than let it rob the opportunities of my future. (Okay, self-pep talk is over.)
I have lived in several states and even another country and each time I can remember assuming the identity that would be most acceptable to the people around me. I wanted so badly to belong that I went beyond adaptation and completely changed the person I did not know myself to be.
When I reflect, I realize I was a very impressionable person. The impressionability was grounded in a deep desire to belong. I never really felt a sense of acceptance in the majority of the spaces I was in growing up. Therefore, as a young adult, I did everything in my power not to be the outlier, the anomaly, the “black sheep,” the challenger. Here’s what’s crazy! That is EXACTLY who I am. I was created to be all of those things, but there were some developmental elements that I had not yet possessed to be grounded in who I am. I also had a few chips on my shoulder that made my truest identity show up in the form of aggression. This aggression made others very uncomfortable and me less desirable to be around.
As I developed the practice of grace in my life when engaging with others I stepped more completely into my identity. I am not a status quo kind of person, but because I did not know how to change a system without smashing it (I still think some systems need to be smashed, but we won’t get into that.) I felt rejected everywhere I went.
In the process of thinking about who I am, I have also been reflecting on my privilege. This is connected to identity for me because the things that I am privileged to have often serves as the evidence used against my Black identity.
When I lived in certain places, I was ostracized for the things that I did or had that were not attributed to blackness. Things like my speech, my education, my experiences, my lack of experiences, etc. My very real privilege in life served to be a challenge to my identity as a Black woman and a barrier between myself and the Black people around me. This rejection confused a very real part of my identity and pushed me into the tight space of not being Black enough. As a result, I would sometimes forget how much privilege I didn’t have because even though I was rejected by several Black communities I still was not white. Therefore, letting down my guards and softening my boundaries was not a wise thing to do.
I once was in a professional conversation with a white colleague and a Black friend of mine. After the meeting, my friend corrected my comfortable behaviors reminding me that I did not have enough privilege to pretend that my ally was my friend. I quickly snapped out of the fantasy of comfortability and remembered that my privilege bank doesn’t afford me the ability to be anything more than professionally friendly unless otherwise invited to be. (Even then, I would still need to be cautious.)
This is Marginal Privilege…
I took my privilege into account so much so that I had forgotten that my skin color still limited me in the amount that I could actually have. I lapsed in my judgment enough to believe that I could relax into a place where I would be guaranteed the benefit of the doubt. It does not matter how many degrees I get, where I live, or how well-known I become. The truth of the matter is I have ALWAYS been and will ALWAYS be Black. No matter the choices I made that produced a privilege that should exist as a right, like quality education, I will live the rest of my life in marginal privilege.
With that said, I am not burdened by this realization, but I am empowered by it. I take my stance in the margin to teach others how to thrive in it and use my strength to excavate the foundations for which this tight rope is grounded in. For those of you living in this space, I encourage you to find your leverage and dig with me. The advancement of Black people is produced by those willing to be the outliers, the anomalies, the “black sheep,” and the challengers. We are all catalysts of change no matter what margin or tight space we find ourselves in. The strategies we produce are not to meet the five-year goals of the entities we work for, but to infiltrate future generations with radical seeds of change.
“Ignore the glass ceiling and do your work. If you’re focusing on the glass ceiling, focusing on what you don’t have, focusing on the limitations, then you will be limited.”
- Ava DuVeray -
Comments