What Does Work Hard To Succeed Really Means?
I constantly hear people say that in this country if you work hard success is inevitable and this is sometimes perpetuated by people of influential blacks. I am baffled with what working hard means and I believe so are many of you. There are always people including some blacks who believe that they succeeded because of their hard work while others in similar situations may not have done much to achieve success.
Is this really the case that people are lazy that’s why they didn’t succeed or because they didn’t work hard? How many people do we know who are working two to three jobs to just live the bare minimum of a fulfilled life? Isn’t that working hard? I guess ‘Working Hard’ in relation to ‘Success’ has a different interpretation for some.
Some of us are being blinded of the fact that our success is attributed to our “working hard”. Is that really the case, or are we just completing a check mark of diversity and inclusion? Let me also note here that I am not reducing the successful achievements of many Black People in academia, business, and ocher professional lives. I am just saying that most of these successes comes with a cost not propositional to none-blacks. And yes with hard work. It’s confusing to see Black People upholding these colonial sentiments. It doesn’t matter how hard you work, in fact that’s the intention of systemic racism and discrimination for certain groups of people to continually ‘work hard, just as it was with slavery.
Most of the time it’s not about how hard we work as blacks but when and where the system wants us. Why should, people change their names to get a job regardless of their skills and qualifications? Should it not be by the content of our character to quote Martin Luther King Jr. ? The few whom have been privileged assumes it’s their hard work that got them there, yes it might be. If you were a none-black could the experience have been different? The truth is, for those who have ‘succeeded’ like some politicians, they fail to understand that racism has and continues to produce a rigged system that is systematically disadvantaging blacks.
How can a black person of power during Black History Month say that “if you work hard in this country, you will succeed “ yes but how hard should I work to succeed? This makes me think of the house slave versus the field slave character played by Samuel L. Jackson in Django. Have we been conditioned to see ourselves as different, special and thus fight hard to maintain that status? It will be naive for me to assume or expect that all blacks should all think the same way or have similar thoughts about racism or that our experiences are monolithic.
And that’s why when we have the opportunity we shouldn’t think of ourselves but others. Having equal and equitable opportunity is not and should not be a political issue but rather a moral one. We owe this to our generations. What is also important to note is that we are in the minority and whenever and wherever we have the slightest opportunity we should be mindful of not being used to continue marginalization.
At the same time, I want to also caution those of us doing the work of creating a just and inclusive society to also understand the challenges the few successful people amongst us go through in navigating these complexities. As we celebrate Black History Month, let us focus on working as a team against injustice, racism and discrimination. Let us also be aware of what the systems might want us do to ourselves which is using us as tools to further inequity and injustice by dividing us.
2021 is a year of reckoning, a year of change and a year of limitless opportunities for Black People if only we can come together and use our privileges and accesses to open doors to lift up others. As a community of Black People, our chance to survive and thrive depends on us all being mutually supportive of, and building solidarity with, one another.
