It’s fitting to focus on themes of Black Excellence for Black history month. I use the term black excellence especially during the undergraduate chapters of my book Fall Over Blackwords. During the writing process I had to ask myself: “What is black excellence? What does it mean?” The thought was heavily influenced by my experience, my memories and the hard realities of what it means to grow up Black in America. Also, I listened to Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: the Origins of our Discontents as I plowed through my NaNoWriMo first draft. I cannot deny the influence of Wilkerson’s masterpiece on my decision to shift the scope of my memoir beyond my experience in bilingualism to include my experience as a Black American Bilingual. Black is a descriptor inseparable from my identity. It is a source of pride and a celebration of survival. As I listened to Wilkerson rehash the realities of American caste system foundations designed to keep white “have’s” above black “have not’s” I often seethed, cried, and marveled at what my parents, grandparents, and beyond were able to achieve despite odds stacked against them. La Negra answers my question in her piece “Whose Black Excellence is it?”. All too often, we confuse the idea of black excellence with succeeding in “respectable ways”: Ivy League schools, high paying jobs, million dollar homes. But sometimes black excellence is what some might call mundane. Holding down a job, paying your bills, feeding your family.
“Everything black people do is excellent because it’s a near-superhuman feat to live in a world that profits from and necessitates our subjugation . . Excellence isn’t always what we produce or own, but what we did while holding a losing hand. . . Black excellence is inherent — all we needed to do was be black and alive to ever be enough.”
–La Negra, from the article “Who’s Black Excellence is it?”
Bilingual SuperNoVAs 