“The idea that we’ve always got to “prove something” to others is incredibly problematic, because spending all your time proving something to someone else is a huge distraction from fulfilling your personal destiny. If another person knows that you need their blessing to give yourself legitimacy, then this individual can simply change the rules of the game to embarrass you, frustrate you, or maintain dominance over you. The worst thing in the world would be for an abused girlfriend to tell her boyfriend that she only feels beautiful if her boyfriend says she is. It is then that the man realizes he can control his girlfriend’s moods and actions by providing and removing his approval at various points in time.
By feeling that we must “prove to them that we are good enough,” we are not only reflecting the fact that our collective self-esteem is quite low, we are also allowing others to control us with our consistent need for validation. This is compounded by the fact that we are playing someone else’s game by someone else’s rules, and allowing ourselves to be judged by how well we replicate the actions and achievements of our predominantly White colleagues. I figured out a long time ago that I would never be as good at being a White man as White men already are. Therefore, if I try to become a great White scholar rather than a strong Black scholar, I have fundamentally relegated myself to second-class citizenship. Loving yourself is an important part of the equation, but loving yourself requires that you also forgive yourself for not being White. I say this with no disrespect to my Caucasian colleagues.”
This was an excerpt from the forthcoming book “Black American Money”, set to be released July 15, 2009.
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