Twice as Good/Half as Much

Papa Pope ain't never lied.

On the show Scandal, Olivia Pope's father articulates, "you have to be twice as good as them to get half of what they have." Although Rowan's speech is left intentionally blank of direct racial references, it becomes quite clear that the African American Olivia Pope and her father are the unarticulated "us," and the Caucasian President Fitzgerald Grant represents the omniscient "them." Naturally, Rowan's comment extends far beyond the romantic entanglements of Scandal-- they reflect the ideals held by every upwardly mobile Black parent as they reflect on the sacrifices they made, as well as the irritatingly unchanged obstacles that their children will have to navigate within their society.

When I was very young, my father, a child of the Civil Rights Movement, gave me an eerily similar speech, his words likely existing as part of the standard, compulsory education that all minority parents give their children as a guide for how to survive in an inherently unequal society. I comprehended it as well as I could as I had never, prior to my father and I's conversation, considered my bookishness and interest in doing well in school to be connected to any social limitations that had been placed upon me as a result of my race. How could that be possible anyway, when all people were created equal? In my childhood world, rigid with its notions of moral rights and wrongs, what my father said had to be impossible-- or at least unlikely-- because it was only fair and just that equal work would yield equal results, right?

However, as I grew older, I slowly began to learn that my father's words-- as they always did-- rang agonizingly true. For an academic team, I memorized pages of information about sculptures, paintings, symphonies, and novelists, only to be have my accomplishments negated by someone who didn't believe that "that kind of person would know anything about fine arts." As I studied, scraped, and saved for summer internships, scholarships, and prospective trips to colleges, I knew of other (non-Black) classmates who were consistently given such opportunities, all of which were drawn from family histories steeped in wealth, access to higher education, and privilege. It seemed that nothing I did-- all of my studying, all of my networking, all of my skills-- was enough to distinguish me from or push me ahead of those with privilege. I and others like me were essentially like runners beginning twenty feet behind the starting line with no idea of what the track ahead might hold, whereas there were others who were already at the 100 meter mark and had been practicing this exact race for years.

Yet, what is one to do when issues of power and multi-generational wealth make it seemingly impossible for people of color to stand on equal footing with those who benefit from social privilege? It's simple: you work harder. But you don't just work harder in terms of academics-- that's a given. You're also now responsible for molding your entire identity around pleasing others (specifically White people). Here is where the figure of the Compulsorily Polite Negro is born, as well as its close relatives, the "I Only Speak the King's English" and "I'm Not Like Other ________ (insert minority group here)." Together, this family creates a life that is ultimately an elaborately staged performance, smiling through their nearly imperceptible masks as they fulfill their chosen role on stage, and then swear in anger at the absurdity of it all after the curtain drops. But we cannot fault them too harshly for their chosen roles. We all have been (and sometimes still are) in their positions, working to cope with the stress associated with being the assumed sole representative of your race. Or worse, the shame of struggling to catch up with other students whose lives of privilege (summer trips to Europe, parents who have advanced degrees, and grandparents who have set up trust funds in their name) make yours seem somehow inadequate and unworthy (trust me, it's not).

I am familiar with these minority students who are, out of a combination of coercion and desperation, forced into the vague uncomfortableness of living a double life-- one that allows them to assimilate into the world of the privileged, and one that does not. These are the ones who peruse Wikipedia pages of foreign countries that they can't afford to see in person. Or those who speak one language at home and pretend to speak like a BBC Jane Austen production at school. Or the ones who study more than all of their non-PoC classmates and are still labeled as being "smart for a Black/Latino/Asian/Native American kid". These are the ones who rise and rise and rise, though not solely out of a personal desire to succeed (though that certainly is there). These students know, through no fault of their own, that they have something to prove. They grimace silently beneath the falsely constructed weight of generations of academic underachievement, criminality, and economic depression, the threat of that dreaded, inevitable thing-- the mistake-- looming near above their shoulders.

Because when a minority makes a mistake (and he or she will-- despite the curiosity of melanin differences that divide us, we are all human), it reflects not only on them as an individual, but also upon their entire ethnic group. Every mistake a person of color makes is interpreted as justification for decades of discrimination and an unquestionable fulfillment of every grotesque racial stereotype that has ever existed. When a person of color fails, he or she not only fails themselves, but everyone who ever has or ever will look like them.

It is certainly this fear of failing on such a catastrophic scale that can function as a problematic motivation for people of color to avoid failure at all costs in their professional and academic lives, and I wish there was some sort of pithy phrase I could create to aid others in coping with this system. But that is the issue in itself-- it is a system, which has existed long before we were born, that contributes to the continued existence of the need for people of color to be "twice as good to get half as much." And as long as this system of economic, social, and legal privilege is in place, the only thing we can do is work to disprove and dismantle it.