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Recently, for the first time ever, I felt like I couldn’t do something. I’ve had the luxury of being raised in a community that made me feel boundless, beautiful and valuable. Until now, I have derived some of my confidence from a level of Black exceptionalism. I could take ownership of my parents and great aunts and uncles donning Black HBCU alumni status.

However, as I get further from my college days, it’s become far more necessary to rest in who I am as a person rather than who I am when I define myself by diplomas and money spent. I have discovered that life is and will always be a long journey of discovering who this person is. I am happy to say that despite the complexity and pain of being alive, I am on track to living authentically and as happily as I can be.

I am passionate about caring for others. I feel most engaged and alive when I can discover new paths and exchange some level of information to grow and connect. God and all mysticism detached, I believe that my experiences, traumas, accomplishments and sources of joy have ushered my life into this becoming my purpose. It can be accomplished in many ways, but currently what seems most fitting is a path in medicine. I wish to make what has been so intentionally gate-kept and complicated become plain and accessible to those who have been left out of American medicine, used and treated as test subjects in a way of protecting America’s initial racist dream.

I have the privilege of being from a background and living in a time where a path in medicine is attainable, can be planned for and then made real. However, I still face a level of dissolution in which though I see Black faces in medicine, it’s rare for me to feel seen in other than the less superficial ways I define myself.

To be a Black woman in medicine is quite literally a successful act. It readily conjures an image of some Black, cis-gendered person with a smiling face, oftentimes with some Divine Nine affiliation, who is exceptionally intelligent and has an unwavering love for God.

However, what I often find crippling about this singular face of Black success, whether it be in medicine, law or graduate-level education, is the specificity of demeanor and personhood that it requires. I belong to a demographic of Black, queer, seasonally depressed, trauma-informed, oftentimes anxious, loc-donning and bizarrely clothed people. I feel no comfort in speaking in the King’s English, going to church or affiliating with much of any group that requires dues. So at this moment in my life when it’s time for me to define my own success and test my boundlessness, I feel an inability in trying to achieve the image of perfection I described.

Black professionalism in fashion and culture has been a long-standing form of subversive protest in the advancement of Black people. Jason Jules outlines this journey of Black fashion and culture in his 2021 work Black Ivy: a Revolt in Style. The work archives greats such as Robbie Coltrane, Miles Davis and Muhammad Ali donning tweed suits, clean haircuts and other fashion elements traditionally reserved for the white class as a way to suggest that Black people could have access to the same rewards in American society that white people were readily afforded.

Today, I believe that these elements have almost become misinterpreted as a uniform and distracted from the fact that success and community impact are had in action rather than image. Jules states, ”Style is about the freedom to be oneself, to authentically express oneself, and in doing so reject limitations imposed by others."

I have had the luxury of seeing Black physicians. It has made me feel like I can preserve my peace and wellness while being myself. However, there is still so much room to be made in the sphere of what Black care looks like, in what it means and in who can have it.

With such a narrow scope of how aesthetic Black excellence can look, my personhood is oftentimes left out or treated as something that needs to be refined to fit into a mold of what is safe and palatable for those that the healthcare system was designed to serve. Though I want to care for people that look like me and appreciate me, Black white-collar success and academia seem to insist that I placate a demographic that is perpetuating harm to those who I feel closest to.

My joy and adherence to my purpose is entirely a result of how much I intentionally choose to be who I am. My skills in serving others are tied to my experiences in being a queer patient, a Black patient, a patient that can’t always define their pain and someone who speaks African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) rather than medical jargon. To me, to erase any of this veers from my goal of expanding the space for Black people. Black beauty and success have to constantly grow and critique themselves. It must actively decide to protest and protect all of our people and the many faces and backgrounds that make up Blackness.

In a discussion of Black Moderates and Militants with Congressman Bobby Rush, a woman perfectly states “If you’re going to destroy something you ought to have something to put in its place.” It is time for the present monolithic image of Black beauty and success to be replaced with an honoring of failure, imperfection and non-western beauty to ensure our joy and expansion.

Sydney Felder

Writing since August 2021 · 1 story contributed