Reexamining and redefining ‘Black Excellence’

By Zyheim Bell

As someone who spent the majority of my life performing the model of “Black Excellence,” the irony of now calling out the concept is not lost on me.

My own divulsion from the concept of “Black Excellence” came when I started to look at myself and ask what place I wanted to have in the world. Though, based on sociopolitical thoughts I lacked an understanding of at the time, I had three questions I posed to myself.

What did excellence do for not just me, but my community? Whose ideas and dreams of excellence was I adhering myself to? And why did I need to be “the best,” to be in rooms that my non-Black peers were granted access to?

To be Black means to live in an almost constant state of performance. We are taught from an early age about the preconception people will have for us in life and how we have to behave to circumvent those ideas. 

Almost every Black person could talk about the stereotypes — the “angry” Black woman, who finds a problem with everything or the “ghetto” Black man who flunks out of school — within our communities. They are almost cautionary tales for us to avoid, because to be Black means to be observed as a monolith, devoid of your own identity.

This is how concepts of “Black Excellence” gain notoriety. Starting as examples for Black people to look up to and aspire to become, when we see figures like Beyoncé or even when we graduate from a class with a Black valedictorian, it is hard not to feel a connection to that accomplishment — especially when you can understand the amount of extra work taken to get there.

But what have those accomplishments truly meant for the community? Not to diminish the work of representation, but individualized accomplishments will never be the solution to systemic issues. What these role models really do is give a false illusion that the solution to racism is to be “the best.”

Which begs the question: what about those who cannot perform to the same levels of excellence? Do they not deserve to be able to enter a room and be treated with the same amounts of respect and dignity as any other person?

When the idea of excellence becomes a sense of exceptionalism, a class divide is created. By pedestooling those who are high-achieving in such a way we establish them as rarities, or as atypical from the Black experience. However, historically, that has never been the case.

Black people have always been just as capable and competent as their non-Black counterparts, but regardless of that, Black people should not be made to perform to any higher standard to be acknowledged while working within white spaces.

When we throw around the phrase “Black Excellence,” we inadvertently say that it is a choice to not be greater and absolve the real systems of inequality that serve the purpose of oppressing a community.

It is as if Black people have an equal access to education and wealth across the board, or as if the real issue plaguing the Black community is laziness.

When Black people attach to “Black Excellence,” what we really do is adhere to the concept that we have to prove our sense of humanity, that Black people have to be more to achieve personhood — but the truth is we are enough for simply being.

Zyheim Bell is a senior journalism major