Black excellence” is exhausting.

On one hand, we know intimately the trap of having to be “twice as good to get half as far”, yet as a community we still have collective vision boards that suggest that being “The First” or “The Only” is the only thing that will save us. Similarly, we know that Black individuals are not afforded the grace to fail upwards, yet anything less than perfection is ruthlessly critiqued by the community at large.

Will we ever get free of the double bind of “success” that capitalism has us stuck inside? Well, according to the author of The Double Tax: How Women (of Colour) Are Overcharged and Underpaid, the first step might be ditching ideas of “Black excellence” all together.