Divesting from the Talented Tenth

At one point in my life, I desire to be a member of the elite black. I wanted the luxury lifestyle, exclusive clubs, and the network of upwardly mobile and highly affluent black people on my cell phone. I have always regretted my decision not to attend or apply myself to be excepted to Howard University or Spelman College. To make up for it, I joined a sorority (A black sorority of course,). I began to network and wrapped up my college degree in a jiffy. Although I was able to sustain myself by working in corporate America without a college degree, this is not enough. I wanted the respect of the talented 10th. WB the boy talks about the town to 10 in his long-loved novel “Souls of Black Folk“. This has been a belief with a religious following that 10% of the black population in America will be the only ones to reach or obtain a certain level of status of class, wealth, and respect, in American society. This group of talented 10th was reserved for the well-educated and the property-owning or business people. I just know I did not want to be in the 90% tile of this theory. However, am I the years I have learned that if none of us are free if the slightest among us are not free, none of us are free. The work will always have to be done. The root of human suffering is incessant dissatisfaction and attachments. While the world clings to the belief in white supremacy, I yearn for black liberation. Liberation cannot come through principles that were created as a reaction to white supremacy.

I also learned that the members of this “social class“behave in a way that was toxic and not necessarily beneficial to the overall health and mental improvement of black people in America. It became, this class of wealthy and educated black people was another gate that was kept away from us where we had to work triple times it’s hard to enter.

Now at the age of 31, and budding into my new career, I see no need for the talented 10th. I am intentional but I refuse to allow my desire to be considered talented or elite to be the conductor of my decisions. I am no better than the next and the next is no worse than me.

I truly feel that exceptionalism can be there until the black community. There is no us, there was the only way. If only 10% of us are able to rise up, that leaves 90% of us under the heel of oppression.