The Weight Of Being A (Young And Successful) Black Male

by Guest Contributor Edward Williams, originally published at Policylink

It was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that most notably stated, “all progress is precarious and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.” I had never contemplated my personal success as precarious progress or that my success to this point could bring any non-materialistic problems, but I now find myself–like many of my fellow successful, young, black men–in a moment of crisis.

Before I dive into what exactly this 21st-century identity crisis is, what it is caused by, and what it ultimately means, I need to get some preliminaries out of the way to open some critical minds. First, this article is not intended to be braggadocious: I will discuss some of my personal success as I explicate this issue, but I will also share the success of several other young black men that I am close with. Neither their stories of success nor mine are expressed from a place of haughtiness but instead from a place of humility. I fear that it is out of concern for being perceived as arrogant or out-of-touch that this side of the young black male’s story is so rarely told.

Next, this article is not intended to complain about success. I recognize that success is usually not a word associated with black men, and I spend most of my article writing time trying to shed light on the crisis in our inner-city schools. It is not lost on me that most young black men will never be in a position to engage in the dialogue that I am about to embark on, because their potential success has been stifled.

Finally, I recognize that much of what I will discuss at length not only applies to successful young black men, but also to successful young black women and young successful minorities generally. I have consciously chosen to focus on the young black male success crisis because I understand it best first hand. It would be disingenuous of me to attempt to articulate the myriad of different pressures that other minorities or women experience as they climb the ladder of success. Therefore, for risk of speaking on that which I know little about, I have chosen not to explore those topics, but I hope that my fellow successful young minority colleagues and female colleagues will soon treat us with their own version of this crisis.

Now that preliminaries are out of the way, let’s get down to the issue; what exactly is the young successful black male’s 21st century identity crisis?

What is the crisis?

The crisis is epitomized by questions like: What am I going to do next? Where should I go from here? What should I aspire to? Do I have to choose between money and my commitment to my community? If I stay where I am in my career, am I settling? What do the people I am surrounded by expect from me? Do I want to meet their expectations? If I do not meet their expectations, have I failed?

At first glance, these seem like the types of questions that every twenty-something-year-old with boundless potential and opportunities are asking themselves. But when coupled with the pressure of constantly being an anomaly, these questions take on a different level of intensity. Young, successful black men in our society are just as easily defined by their accolades as by their status as an outlier.

For me, like many other young, successful black men, the reality of being outside of the mainstream started very early in life. I was no more than nine years old when the path of divergence started. Having transferred from a black Christian private school, where I had been a student from daycare to second grade, to a local public school, I was initially placed in a remedial third grade classroom, despite the fact that my records demonstrated I was doing work several years ahead of my peer group. Because my parents have been and continue to be my strongest advocates, they pressed the administration to put me in a classroom where I would not be bored and the work would actually be challenging. A few weeks into the school year, I was transferred into a more rigorous third grade classroom, where I was still bored and probably not the least talkative student. Again due to my parent’s pressure, I was tested for the school’s gifted program and admitted.

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