I am the stereotypical private school black girl and it is in turn both a blessing and a curse. I have always grown up in more affluent areas and attended private schools that cost more than a minimum wage yearly salary. This has always been life as I know it and I hope many of you can imagine that there were not a lot of black faces my school or my community. Although I was black and had wealth, my idea of black wealth was always, and is still, slightly distorted. I did not know many black kids and the few similar faces I did see where in the rare occasions that I visited a neighboring inner city. My senior year I watched a video when working for a hiphop record label, Mass Appeal, that hurt me and it took me a while to understand why. In the video I saw young children of all races stating what they wanted to be when they grew up. Many of the caucasian children stated that they wanted to be doctors, lawyers, dentists even and the black children gave responses like rappers or that they “wanted to go to the league”. It upset me because I realized that the black children wanted to be these professions because that is how the world markets black wealth. Even when I scroll through Instagram and see a verified black man or woman on instagram my mind goes to a pool of professions — none of which particularly require a lot of schooling.
As a college student myself I am often asked both what my major is and what I want to do with my major. When I say that I want to own my own media marketing firm I get surprised faces, even from other black people, as if they expected me to say something lesser. It goes to the idea that being educated is to be white and that blacks who study at the same school as whites are projected to work jobs that are seen as lesser. I am devastated by the pandemic, but am grateful for the unity that it brought to black businesses, black schools and the progression of blacks in the workforce. The Black Lives Matter movement has definitely pushed jobs and schools to incorporate diversity into their curriculum and leadership and I proud to say that this is granting many QUALIFIED black people the chance to showcase their skills. Black wealth is by default new wealth and I am optimistic about the wealth that blacks are creating for generations ahead.