Breaking the Chains of “Excellence”: A New Lens on Black Success

I had an epiphany today. Well, it’s been creeping up on me for a while, but today, it finally hit me in full force. And before I go any further, let me say this—this is more of a message to myself. I’m not trying to offend anyone or shake anybody up too much, but sometimes, we have to be real with ourselves before we can be real with the world.

Lately, I’ve been digging into some serious research, looking at the gaps in my own education—specifically, my Africentric education. And when I say gaps, I mean areas that were straight-up neglected or hijacked. We talk a lot about history, but what about the deeper political and economic structures that shaped our people? What systems did we use before we were forced into the ones we operate under today?

As I started peeling back the layers, I realized that we’ve been having the wrong conversations. We talk about white supremacy, but we don’t always dig into the soil that it grows from. That soil is a mixture of politics, economics, and capitalism—all feeding each other, sustaining the very system we claim to be fighting against.

Reevaluating “Black Excellence”

Now, here’s where it gets uncomfortable. For years, working in schools and nonprofit spaces, I’ve been part of this push for “Black Excellence.” It’s everywhere. We push our kids to reach for high expectations. We structure our organizations around ideas of success that mirror the systems we were forced into. But the more I look at it, the more I have to ask: Where does this idea of excellence come from?

A while back, I read (or rather, listened to) The Half Has Never Been Told, and one part stuck with me. The book describes how plantations were managed—how enslaved people weren’t seen as people, but as “hands.” The term wasn’t just symbolic; it was literal. How many “hands” did the master have? How many bodies could be trained, molded, and conditioned to meet his high expectations?

Sound familiar?

See, capitalism was never about fairness. It evolved from feudalism, and its battery—the thing that keeps it charged—is cheap labor. The cheaper, the better. The ultimate form of cheap labor is slavery. And even when slavery was "abolished," the systems of control and management that were perfected on the plantation never went away. They were just repackaged.

And here’s the kicker: many of the management techniques and educational models we use today were developed during slavery. That means, even when we think we’re pushing for our own excellence, we may be reinforcing the same systems that were built to break us.

Are We Still on the Plantation?

This realization hit me hard. When I tell my children, “I have high expectations for you,” what am I really saying? Is it the same thing my ancestors meant when they spoke about excellence? Or have I internalized a definition of success that was never ours to begin with?

The problem is that some of the things we strive for—some of the success markers we chase—aren’t leading us to liberation. They’re just making us more efficient workers for a system that was never meant to serve us. The plantation has just been remodeled, and we’ve been given slightly better conditions, but the same chains remain.

I don’t have all the answers. But I do know this—we need to rethink the way we define success. We need to ask deeper questions about the systems we uphold, even when we think we’re moving forward. Because if we don’t, we might just find ourselves in a fancier version of the same trap.

Just some food for thought.