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 an affluent suburb of Dallas. Our household income afforded us the largest house on the block, for which, my mother always assured me, we were silently despised. Therefore, when my parents overextended their means in pursuit of property improvements and had to rent a more modest house in a less wealthy neighborhood, Mom’s certainty that our former neighbors viewed it as just punishment for flying too close to the sun became a scar on my childhood. To this day, I struggle to remember that time in my life without feeling shame—not for our actions, but for how our actions were perceived. Moreover, my parents became even more convicted in their belief that I must be taught to avoid drawing attention to my blackness, to make it easier for others to suspend disbelief and forget that I am, in fact, Black.
Lesson 1:
Ethos: Language is flexible and should be exploited to establish your credibility.
Mom always said that she gave us names that could appear at the top of a resume. She
intentionally shunned the then-emerging trend of bestowing distinctive Black names on us to reduce the ease with which we could be preemptively discriminated against sight unseen. She instilled in me that if I wanted to receive all the benefits language could confer, I must always employ it such that no one would ever question my intelligence, acumen, refinement, and ability to navigate the spectrum of social registers. Growing up, I was not allowed to use slang, especially anything in the Black vernacular, for fear it would invite negative assumptions. Raised the daughter of a Pentocostal minister in segregated Alabama, Mom understood both the compelling influence of impassioned rhetoric and the soft power of being able to “talk like the man on the six o'clock news”🎶; thus, she learned—choosing to lose her accent and training her children to never need to.
In turn, as an educator, I actively avoid underestimating students who struggle to express themselves clearly or eloquently. Complex ideas are hard to voice, and people often don’t have the language to do so at all, let alone well. Therefore, I’ve always tried to craft a nurturing learning environment where denizens see themselves as a community of practice intolerant of prejudice based on how people express themselves. Instead, we work together to equip each other with appropriate academic language and the confidence to use it, understanding that this skill will ease our ways in less inclusive environments.
Lesson 2:
Pathos: Tone is malleable and should be capitalized on to emotionally prime your audience to better receive your message.
In college, I joined a historically black greek letter organization, Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated. One of the organization’s guiding principles is that its members will be community-conscious, action-oriented people. Through my work with Zeta, I’ve participated in programs that empower young women by equipping them with skills that telegraph a tone that will smooth their paths to success, including workshops on dressing for success, college essay writing, and even dining etiquette.
Lesson 3:
Logos: Education is the great equalizer and should be leveraged to neutralize the logic underpinning low expectations of me.
I was taught to love learning and to value critical thinking. The product of a math major and an
English major, I was encouraged to value classical education, the intersection of logic and the humanities. While friends manipulated course schedules to maximize downtime and socialization, I was made to pursue advanced coursework. While friends took computer literacy as their technology requirement, I was expected to take Computer Science and code better than anyone else in class. Upon realizing that my early study of French would leave me just two credits shy of graduating with honors, my parents supported my ambitious honors class barrage to fight a full year’s delay. I’d later defy conventional wisdom and take a French degree while living in Texas, and they accepted my choice because I loved studying the language and, moreover, loved how being a French-speaking Black Texan separated me from the crowd—just as being a Black nerd, an analytical liberal arts major, and vintage glamour technophile do. I loved the intellectual growth and becoming equipped to thwart other’s low expectations based solely on my blackness. Given that my parents were the first generations in their respective families to achieve a university education, they too loved the power that education made accessible.
While my parents taught me to fit in with non-Black America, my peers taught me the importance of being accepted by Black folk. Growing up in the “white part of town” as one of few people of color in my neighborhood schools, pursuing advanced courses even more white-dominated, and attending a predominantly white church, I quickly learned that I wasn’t “Black enough,” that I “sounded white,” and even had “white values.” Strangers taught me that despite my parents’ best efforts, I’d never be fully accepted. Friends taught me how to avoid Black peers’ ire well enough to escape bullying. Intentionally or not, they coached me. “I was smarter than most, and I could choose,” 🎶 so I learned to code-switch, peppering my speech away from home with Black vernacular, and supplanting the classic rock my older brother turned me on to with Top 40 R&B. Consequently, Pat Mora’s poem Legal Alien has always resonated with me strongly; although I’m not bi-racial, I am most assuredly bi-cultural — too visibly Black to be white, but too culturally white to be sufficiently Black.
Recently, I had the honor of working with Girls Rock Austin (GRA), a local nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering girls, women, and transyouth of all backgrounds and abilities through musical education and performance. GRA’s programming recognizes that intersectionality frequently requires these individuals to walk fine lines between their multiple worlds while never being fully accepted by any, and incorporates workshops on topics such as image and identity, healthy relationships, and communication skills to help participants more deftly perform this navigation, all while drawing them together as a chosen community with live instrumentation lessons.
Throughout this entire experience, my most powerful lessons have come from other women: my mother and relations, sorority sisters, and close friends who’ve taken me under their wings and taught me survival skills for this dual life. Thus, in my turn I am passionate about empowering and mentoring other women whose individual struggles—be they rooted in being an ethnic minority, an intellectual outlier, neuroatypical, queer, disabled, transgender, or any of the other numerous reasons they may be targeted for discrimination—are further compounded by gender inequity. Although the work seems Sisyphian, I truly believe that the boulder wears down and we gain strength, if just a little, each time it rolls.
*Edited by Russell E. Taylor, III
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