Necessary and audacious, Mychal Denzel Smith’s assured debut, Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, fuses memoir and cultural criticism to ponder an often-neglected question: How did you learn to be a black man?
The way he scrutinizes the origin of his beliefs about black identity and masculinity is revelatory–and instructive. He mines his personal history as an Obama-era black millennial in the service of a larger vision: social transformation through personal awakening.
As he traces his own education, through family, books, music, comedians and college, he illuminates a way forward for anyone willing to grapple with their own cultural inheritance. He models a process for questioning convention and envisioning a new self and a new world freed from past constraints.
He credits truth-tellers including Malcolm X, Mos Def and Aaron McGruder with raising his black radical awareness. But, just as importantly, interrogating those influences spurred his black liberation imaginings. When you critique your culture, appraise your morals and shatter your worldview, you have a shot at growing up whole, he posits. You have a chance to create something other than the self-hatred, violence and mental illness all around us.
The journey can feel isolating. He learned that most people, even fellow students at the historically black college he attended, don’t share his enthusiasm for fighting black oppression head on. “I expected to engage thousands of other young black budding intellectuals about the politics of racism, and how we might unite and organize to bring down the system, with our struggle-weary professors guiding and cheering us along,” he writes. “Instead I found thousands of mini-Obamas and an administration happy to indulge in their delusions.”
Yet he also found books and people on campus who nudged him forward. A professor suggested that he move beyond the “SAY IT LOUD, I’M BLACK AND I’M PROUD” literature to consider how gender affects power and politics in ways black men often don’t consider. Thus, “And what of ‘the black woman’?” gets added to Smith’s question list and Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez and Toni Morrison eventually join his intellectual universe.
Of this transformed perspective he writes:
These black men were my guides through the minefield of identity when faced with racism. I was attracted to the bravado, to the reclamation of black excellence. I wanted to absorb their performance of black arrogance as a corrective to self-loathing. But what I hadn’t considered was how that ego was gendered. I spent my childhood passively absorbing white supremacist ideas of my invisibility, then unconsciously shrinking myself from the world. Everything I read, listened to, and learned validated my right to existence as a black man in America. But that wasn’t the whole equation. Everything I read, listened to, and learned validated my right to existence as a black man in America, but only within the confines of a patriarchal definition of masculine identity. What went unquestioned were the ways my newfound sense of black manhood contributed to the ongoing marginalization of my mother, her twin sister, my grandmother, my high school guidance counselor, and more than half the student population on Hampton University’s campus. I began to see myself, but only by refusing to see black women.
Smith’s emphasis on questions over answers may frustrate readers seeking a specific cure-all for The Race Problem. But his depth and candor in exploring the making and remaking of his own identity illustrate an important first step: To fight a system of oppression you must understand how pervasive it is and how you are complicit in it.
This review is an excerpt from an interview that can be read in full here.
If this review resonates with you, I bet you’ll enjoy my newsletter. I regularly send bookish news and notes out to more than 1,000 readers. Sign up here.
A particularly moving scene in the film Hidden Figures takes place not at NASA but in the public library of Hampton, Virginia. Mathematician Dorothy Vaughn steers clear of vocal civil rights protests on her way into the library. Yet her visit is cut short when a white librarian warns her: “We don’t want any trouble in here,” as she considers a computer programming text on a shelf. Vaughn’s only seeking knowledge — a book that can’t be found in the colored section — yet she and her young sons are brusquely escorted out by a guard.
The scene distills so many dimensions of the enduring obstacles to equality in America, from restricted access to career-propelling information to the threat of rebuke for daring to challenge the social order. It got me thinking about the incredible barriers to adult education and career advancement that continue to persist, helped by complex systems of discrimination and segregation.
Continue reading “Today’s Hidden Figures”
Wow! For once, I was free to actually follow up on my previously committed commitments. (Well, until the next round of meetings.)
Throughout the meetings, I didn’t volunteer to be the scribe or fill in folks who missed the meeting. I didn’t raise my hand to tie up any loose ends the group discussions created. I didn’t lean in to assume a new leadership role or fill a void or save the day.
Rather, I stayed in my lane—the slow one that I’ve been trying (with difficulty) to glide into since high school, when I first became the queen of over-commitment, juggling sports, band, student council and every other organization under the sun, on top of a fully loaded academic schedule.
Continue reading “What it Looks Like to Commit Without Overcommitting”
Wow! For once, I was free to actually follow up on my previously committed commitments. (Well, until the next round of meetings.)
Throughout the meetings, I didn’t volunteer to be the scribe or fill in folks who missed the meeting. I didn’t raise my hand to tie up any loose ends the group discussions created. I didn’t lean in to assume a new leadership role or fill a void or save the day.
Rather, I stayed in my lane—the slow one that I’ve been trying (with difficulty) to glide into since high school, when I first became the queen of over-commitment, juggling sports, band, student council and every other organization under the sun, on top of a fully loaded academic schedule.
Continue reading “What it Looks Like to Commit Without Overcommitting”
Now, granted, part of this reaction was due to my red lacquer pen with a dragon pattern etched in gold. But these super-organized colleagues were mostly staring at the notes themselves—loopy non sequitur scrawls on unmoored paper. I vowed that when we met again, I’d have my note act together. For appearance’s sake, yes, but more importantly for my own productivity and sanity.
It didn’t take much… this time. A stroll through the office supply store and one simple tool aided a transformation that went much deeper than just appearing to be a neat note taker. In fact, it helped me bolster attentiveness during meetings, improve my follow-through on promised tasks, and make strides in my ongoing quest to commit without overcommitting. The answer? A preprinted spiral-bound notebook specifically designed for meeting notes.
When it comes to meeting notes, I’ve tried it all, from punching them into electronic devices to scribbling longhand on meeting agendas; from color-coded, project-specific binders (arranged reverse-chronologically) to scraps of paper scattered about (rarely to be seen again). Ultimately, they’ve all failed me in one or another way. Usually, by being too elaborate or too isolated.
Continue reading “The Secret to Successful Meeting-hopping (Hint: It’s All in the Notes)”
Now, granted, part of this reaction was due to my red lacquer pen with a dragon pattern etched in gold. But these super-organized colleagues were mostly staring at the notes themselves—loopy non sequitur scrawls on unmoored paper. I vowed that when we met again, I’d have my note act together. For appearance’s sake, yes, but more importantly for my own productivity and sanity.
It didn’t take much… this time. A stroll through the office supply store and one simple tool aided a transformation that went much deeper than just appearing to be a neat note taker. In fact, it helped me bolster attentiveness during meetings, improve my follow-through on promised tasks, and make strides in my ongoing quest to commit without overcommitting. The answer? A preprinted spiral-bound notebook specifically designed for meeting notes.
When it comes to meeting notes, I’ve tried it all, from punching them into electronic devices to scribbling longhand on meeting agendas; from color-coded, project-specific binders (arranged reverse-chronologically) to scraps of paper scattered about (rarely to be seen again). Ultimately, they’ve all failed me in one or another way. Usually, by being too elaborate or too isolated.
Continue reading “The Secret to Successful Meeting-hopping (Hint: It’s All in the Notes)”
Dear Maya,
I delegate a hundred little things in a week. How can I make sure every single one of them got done? Should I go through my sent mail once a week to see what’s still out there?
Sincerely,
Outbox Checker
Dear Outbox Checker,
I feel you. Delegating is among the hardest skills we must master to succeed. Whether at home or at work, we have to get a significant number of tasks off our plates in order to devote enough time to our high-priority, high-value activities.
Successful delegating requires three things: competent people to delegate to, clear instructions and expectations for the work we’re dispatching, and fail-safe systems for reviewing delegated work at well-timed intervals. Luckily, two of the three are totally within our control and we can heavily influence the third.
As a culture, we’ve come to view email as a kind of Swiss Army Knife of digital productivity and inevitably many assignments are issued through this medium. But email is just email. It’s simply a correspondence tool. We are the multi-tool that can scale fish, drive screws or lift caps (metaphorically speaking). We are the ones with the power to make an email a suggestion, an order or a reminder.
If you are delegating to great, experienced workers during a great week, you won’t have to revisit your sent box to remind you of outstanding tasks. They will work steadily and communicate updates regularly so the dialogue remains open. But in the real world, we’re often delegating to less-than-great or inexperienced workers during less-than-great weeks and some fail-safes are required.
The clarity of the instructions and expectations that you set in your initial email can help. Embed updates in the assignment to impose regular communication from people who might not take the initiative to provide it. That is, ask your correspondents to reply confirming they’ve received the messages and to send updates when they hit certain milestones. This way, you’re really assigning two things for them to do: perform specific tasks and communicate progress as they go. As confidence and competence develop over time, you can ease up the communication requirement.
“Trust, but verify” is an axiom to live by in management (and journalism, incidentally). Even when delegating to the best of the best, you’ll still need a personal system for tracking progress. Below are some suggestions for specific systems. But first, you need to think about what type of task you’re assigning to determine the kind of follow-up it requires.
There are two kinds of tasks people delegate: Those that are ends in themselves and those that are steps in a process. The former include things like adding a photo to a blog post or sending a retirement card to a former employee. They must be done (if not, why delegate?), but failure to do them isn’t preventing someone else from doing their job.
By contrast, the latter category of tasks has a direct impact on the next person in line. If someone doesn’t report payroll, the bank can’t transfer the money to employees’ accounts and the workers can’t pay their bills. If someone doesn’t conduct the research, the analyst can’t write the report and the manager can’t make an informed decision or argument.
Tasks in either category can be urgent or not, important or not. But you must consider the distinction when determining the urgency and frequency of your progress reviews. It’s not enough to check your sent box weekly if something needs to be done tomorrow or should have been done yesterday to keep other work on track.
The goal is to review a select number of things when you need to. That means considering each task individually, making a call about how aggressively you want to follow up, and scheduling a reminder or recurring reminders if necessary.
Here are a few ideas on how to use technology to help you:
Note it.
Create a “Waiting For” list as David Allen advises in “Getting Things Done” and keep a running list of what you have requested from others. I recommend doing this in an online task manager like Wunderlist so that you can schedule reminders. Tying a deadline or reminder to the pending items ensures that they will rise to your attention (your Today list) when you want them to.
The wisdom in such a system is that you don’t have to wade into the muck of your email account to see who needs to be pushed, prodded or encouraged. If you dive into your task list first thing, as opposed to your email inbox, you’re taking control of your workday and are less likely to get pulled off track.
Of course, if any of your tasks require emailing someone a follow-up note, you’re back in the inbox and susceptible to distraction all over again. But this is the answer less often than you think. Often, you can do said pushing, prodding or encouraging by phone or (gasp) face-to-face. Sometimes the medium is the message.
Boomerang it.
Now, if it’s a one-off thing that you don’t want to trouble your to-do list with, using an email resend service like Boomerang, which works with Gmail and Outlook, is a viable (but not ideal) solution. Once installed you simply hit a Boomerang button to schedule the message to return to you at a specific day and time. Envision yourself flinging messages into cyber obscurity, only for them to return a day, a week or whatever timeframe you choose later. That way, you can reply within the same email chain to request an update. All without having to sort through your sent box.
The problem with this approach is that it increases email volume and dependency. Now you’re checking emails from others and from yourself. But it’s slightly better than scouring your outbox. Baby steps.
File it.
Another option for the email-dependent is just to create a specific label or folder within your email program for items that require follow-up. The relevant messages are segregated, which saves you time sifting through all of your sent mail. You can review them easily on a weekly basis as you originally suggested. Once the task is complete, you can remove the label or re-file the message.
Again, this works, but we can do better. With the filing method, you still have to remind yourself to check the label or file on a consistent basis. Technology is ready to help you achieve just-in-time notification as described above in the Wunderlist example. It’s just smart to use it to your advantage.
How do you stay on top of the things you’ve delegated to other people? What technology, processes or other tools are you using to close the loop on outsourced tasks?
We knew the goal was ambitious, particularly because the heart of the campaign involved engaging hundreds of supporters to raise thousands of dollars through the sale of t-shirts on Bonfire Funds, a new online fundraising platform. But the shirts were crucial to the campaign’s vision. We wanted to dramatically raise name recognition of the little-known local organization.
This holiday season, I am grateful to the Greater Richmond area for hearing our appeal, buying and selling shirts, making and soliciting donations, and all of the other things you’ve done to support the wonderful children whose potential is nurtured by FRIENDS. Since November 1, more than 800 individuals have supported the campaign by purchasing shirts or making donations to FRIENDS. As of December 25, we’ve raised $24,536 and sold 1,672 t-shirts through Bonfire. That’s incredible.
But that’s not all. Some very generous companies and philanthropists made end-of-the-year pledges to ensure that we reached our six-figure goal. We’ve also received in-kind donations, inquiries from prospective volunteers and offers of support services for FRIENDS families. And we’re beginning to receive awesome photographs like those featured here of supporters rocking their FRIENDS RVA shirts. Together, all of these things provide ample illustration that FRIENDS has been embraced by a broader, more diverse group of ambassadors than ever before.
If you haven’t gotten your shirt yet, there’s still time to join the movement. Visit bonfirefunds.com/friendsrva before the campaign ends December 31.
It was Phil Robertson’s sincerity that got me. The sense that he really believed what he was saying. That as self-described white trash, he felt a kinship with black farm laborers. That he couldn’t fathom the enormity of the distance between them.
The mere fact that he could sit atop a multimillion-dollar Duck Dynasty was evidence enough of the divide, to me anyway. You see I had taken enough African American studies courses at Harvard to know that the public faces black people showed whites during Jim Crow disguised centuries worth of pain and distrust.
And if that wasn’t enough, I had an 88-year-old grandmother sitting in a Cleveland, Ohio, duplex still shuddering from the memories of her own cotton-picking past who could personally attest to that truth. The truth in which black people were brutalized in the south in ways that aren’t easily resolved—or ignored—even with the passage of time. Ways that can send you running and still haunt you 70 odd years later. Continue reading “On Singing the Blues”
It was Phil Robertson’s sincerity that got me. The sense that he really believed what he was saying. That as self-described white trash, he felt a kinship with black farm laborers. That he couldn’t fathom the enormity of the distance between them.
The mere fact that he could sit atop a multimillion-dollar Duck Dynasty was evidence enough of the divide, to me anyway. You see I had taken enough African American studies courses at Harvard to know that the public faces black people showed whites during Jim Crow disguised centuries worth of pain and distrust.
And if that wasn’t enough, I had an 88-year-old grandmother sitting in a Cleveland, Ohio, duplex still shuddering from the memories of her own cotton-picking past who could personally attest to that truth. The truth in which black people were brutalized in the south in ways that aren’t easily resolved—or ignored—even with the passage of time. Ways that can send you running and still haunt you 70 odd years later. Continue reading “On Singing the Blues”
The bed won’t stay made. The clear counter will inevitably yield to an onslaught of dishes, ingredients and mail. But at least once a day for a brief interval–let’s call it a Martha Moment–I will set things right and experience a bit of peace and quiet in an otherwise hectic day.
An empty email inbox is by far the trickiest of the three to pull off daily, but it’s possible. Productivity gurus will tout the wisdom of folders and filters. They’ll tell you to prioritize and offer tips on scanning to separate the important from the junk. They’ll lobby for regular email-checking time blocks and warn of the perils of checking messages too early in the morning or too late at night.
These email-centric tactics are all well and good. But the things that made the biggest difference in my personal quest for inbox zero happened outside the box—in my attitude and on my to-do list. If you’re ready to take charge of your inbox, follow my lead.
Continue reading “How to Vanquish Email Overload Once and For All”
The bed won’t stay made. The clear counter will inevitably yield to an onslaught of dishes, ingredients and mail. But at least once a day for a brief interval–let’s call it a Martha Moment–I will set things right and experience a bit of peace and quiet in an otherwise hectic day.
An empty email inbox is by far the trickiest of the three to pull off daily, but it’s possible. Productivity gurus will tout the wisdom of folders and filters. They’ll tell you to prioritize and offer tips on scanning to separate the important from the junk. They’ll lobby for regular email-checking time blocks and warn of the perils of checking messages too early in the morning or too late at night.
These email-centric tactics are all well and good. But the things that made the biggest difference in my personal quest for inbox zero happened outside the box—in my attitude and on my to-do list. If you’re ready to take charge of your inbox, follow my lead.
Continue reading “How to Vanquish Email Overload Once and For All”
The choice of Janet Echelman’s work to illustrate the Harvard Business Review article “Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers” opens up a much larger—and to me, more inspiring—debate about how women become true leaders.
Echelman’s work hints at the inner vision, that needs to happen for us to lead in any context. In this debate, rethinking the corporate workspace is no longer central; instead, it’s about freeing ourselves from traditional paths to seek out and pursue our own creative potential, guided by a grand vision. Continue reading “Leadership: The Echelman Way”
The choice of Janet Echelman’s work to illustrate the Harvard Business Review article “Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers” opens up a much larger—and to me, more inspiring—debate about how women become true leaders.
Echelman’s work hints at the inner vision, that needs to happen for us to lead in any context. In this debate, rethinking the corporate workspace is no longer central; instead, it’s about freeing ourselves from traditional paths to seek out and pursue our own creative potential, guided by a grand vision. Continue reading “Leadership: The Echelman Way”
Dear Maya,
I received a bunch of gift cards this holiday season and I still haven’t spent the ones I received last year. I’m trying to keep my spending under control and I worry that by walking into some of these stores I would be setting myself up to overspend. At the same time, I feel bad about wasting the cards that friends, family and co-workers bought with their hard-earned money.
Sincerely,
Gift-Card Worrier
Continue reading “The Gift Card Conundrum: How to Spend without Overspending”
Dear Maya,
I received a bunch of gift cards this holiday season and I still haven’t spent the ones I received last year. I’m trying to keep my spending under control and I worry that by walking into some of these stores I would be setting myself up to overspend. At the same time, I feel bad about wasting the cards that friends, family and co-workers bought with their hard-earned money.
Sincerely,
Gift-Card Worrier
Continue reading “The Gift Card Conundrum: How to Spend without Overspending”
