Is upward mobility synonymous with assimilation?
One of the biggest psychological impediments to expansion for Black people who already have a measure of success is guilt. There are still so many Black people who are struggling to make ends meet and it feels like having more is leaving our own behind. We feel guilty for leaving the township and living in the suburbs, we feel guilty when we see how e easier life is for our children compared to those we’ve left behind.
What this guilt does is that it leads us to either over sacrifice for others, dissipate any extra we have or keeping ourselves from expanding financially. We give from the seed, instead of planting and giving from the abundance of the harvest.
For Black girls, education and financial expansion gives them agency, it allows them to have a voice, to make choices. To choose who to marry or not to marry, to choose where to live, what to do with her time and money and to set boundaries.
Those who criticise her choices use words that are effective in stimulating this guilt. Phrases like; you think you are white’ ‘you are leaving our ways of doing things’ ‘you want to be a white woman’
This is an assumption that every thing precolonial was utopian for women, maybe it was for men. That when you remove the impact of colonialism the world is perfect for both men and women.
It also assumes any evolution, advancement and expansion is whyte. That sounds like internalising the whyte supremacy that we are trying to decolonise ourselves from.
Black women need to reflect on this guilt, is seeking to advance to the next level of income, impact and leadership unpatriotic and assimilation to ‘whyteness’? Is upward mobility synonymous with assimilation and seeking proximity to whyteness?
Are you a Black Woman in the Workplace who feels called to the next level of leadership, income and impact?
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