Don’t Run

Don’t run.

I remember being told this as a child. “If you run” my parents said “someone might think you’re running from something.”

Who tells a kid not to run? Black parents.

They correctly believed that implicit bias made me a target of heightened scrutiny. That misperception might cost me my life. Maybe someone would think I was a thief, a suspect; maybe I’d “fit the description” and be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and catch a police bullet in the back.

I ran anyway.

As an adult I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told the metaphorical equivalent of “don’t run.” I want too much, too fast. You’re not ready. You don’t have the experience. Wait your turn. Now’s not the time. Don’t be so cocky.

The only thing worse than the fear you might inspire by running from something, is the fear you do inspire by running towards something. A goal. A dream. Civil liberties. Financial independence.

I scared people as a child; not because I was smart, but because I knew I was smart. I tend to terrify these same kind of people as an adult. Not because I want to or try to; I’m just unwilling to accept the external limitations placed on me. I know every that time I was hired on the Director level in corporate America, I was the only person of color in the building to hold the title; in some instances, the history of the company. I know that in each instance, none of my employees had ever had report to someone who didn’t look like them.

When I walked away from corporate life I didn’t realize (at the time) I’d be the only black person in the country (at the time) to hold a license to make liquor. That I’d meet with hundreds of sales and distributor reps, restaurant and bar owners, retail shop owners, who’d never seen a black owner. That my endeavors would earn an invitation to The Big Boys Table. That I’d walk into boardrooms to negotiate deals, sitting in the actual Room Where It Happens, knowing no one that looks like me had been in these spaces.

I’ve lost count of the times that me being me (in these places) has made me the subject of heightened scrutiny. The hackles that have risen on the back of my neck; the familiar feelings (that you know are true but no one will admit to) of implicit bias creeping in, as my intelligence, trustworthiness, and my ethics are called into question. I realize that these fears have less to do with me, and more to do with what I represent: a shift in power, an inevitable ascension, a movement across time. I’ve grown to expect resistance, obstacles, road blocks. Still, I’ve tried to not let any of that get in the way, as did my parents and grandparents and all my forbearers, because that is what we do.

We press forward. We push the envelope. We move the needle. We bend time and space and perception, not because we’re trying to alter reality; we’re just trying to earn respect and remuneration commensurate with our abilities. We’re just trying to eat. And we are fucking hungry.

Don’t run? Fuck that. Run faster. Run like your life depends on it.