Although I’ve led a relatively privileged life, I’ve never been allowed the luxury to forget that I am Black and that this life is Promethean fire, stolen from those who would refuse me such power. From a young age, I was raised with an awareness that the life I enjoyed was hard-won, secured by generations of conscious decisions to undermine institutional inequity, and that it could only be retained and furthered by never seeming too Black, always outworking non-Black peers, and pretending obliviousness to shock at my excellence. I was groomed to live as an exemplar of this rhetorical triangle, persuading the powers of American society not to bar my way to success and perhaps even grant the same opportunities expected by my non-Black peers. At home, I was taught to blend into non-Black America as a successful woman capable of navigating any social register. I grew up the daughter of college-educated professionals in an upper-middle class, predominantly white neighborhood in ...
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