The Exceptional Negro: Racism, White Privilege and the Lie of Respectability Politics

By Traci D O'Neal

Lawyer. Mother. Elected Official. Target. Traci O’Neal was thrust into the national spotlight in 2017 when local threats grew into a national racist outcry after a former GOP Presidential candidate singled her out on social media.  What followed was a deeply disturbing and widespread campaign of hatred and egregiously racist atta

• Language: English
• Publisher: iCart Media LLC
• Release date: May 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9781732031517

Traci D O'Neal

An award-winning fierce, unwavering social justice advocate, Traci D. O'Neal is a frequent speaker on race, law and politics, as well as equity and leadership. Traci earned her Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the School of Business & Industry at Florida A&M University and a Juris Doctor degree from The Ohio State University College of Law. Visit www.theexceptionalnegro.com for more information.

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Dedications

To my dad, Ronald D. O’Neal: I miss our chats. I miss your loving guidance. I miss your wisdom. I miss hearing, Traci Dee, Traci Dee, what it be, what it be? I miss you. Thank you for being the father every girl deserves. RIP.

To my mom, Dr. Carolyn F. O’Neal: I thank God that He chose you for me. Thank you for being my cheerleader, counselor, wise advisor and for setting the standard for motherhood.

To my husband, Rick Ellis: I thank you for your unwavering support of me as I labored over this book. You always have encouraged me to speak truth to power and had my back when doing so brought repercussions. I am forever grateful for your encouragement and support.

To my sons, Skyler and Jalen, my grandsons, Cameron and Christian, and my nieces and nephews, Jasmine, Roy, Nina, Sasha, Beckett and Brooks: May you always know that your mom, your Graci, your aunt and your Missy fought to make this world a better place for you.

To my siblings, Ronald and Amber: The three of us are simply remixed versions of each other. I see myself in each of you, and each of you in me. Thank you for always telling me the truth, whether I want to hear it or not, and for always being present for me, whether near or far.

Foreword

You’ve made a reputation of yourself. Whatever the circumstances, you are an exceptional nigger, Platt. But I fear no good will come of it.

– 12 Years A Slave (McQueen, 2013)

Chapter 1

What Is An Exceptional Negro?

Let me unpack this concept for you so that we can address the white elephant in the room. I recognize that the word Negro was an acceptable term for white people to reference black people at one time. But that time has long since passed.

Today, it is wholly unacceptable, invokes memories of a time of the extreme subjugation and marginalization of black people and is only slightly less insulting than the word nigger.

It is derogatory.

It is demeaning.

It is disgusting.

It is egregious.

It is painful.

And still, it accurately reflects how black people are often viewed by certain others. Its dismissive, derogatory and insulting meaning is still expressed as features embedded in our institutions.

Overwhelmingly, black folks have close encounters on a regular basis with being marginalized, insulted, dismissed and discriminated against. It is the natural consequence of still being considered little more than a Negro in this country. Especially for the Exceptional Negroes.

I use this term to mean exactly what I think Master Ford meant when he called Platt an exceptional nigger – though I have upgraded the term to Negro to account for more contemporary white sensibilities – that is to say, a black person who to white people seems unlike other black people they use as a reference point.

Exceptional Negroes are often well-educated, always articulate, cultured, and able to move seemingly effortlessly in white business, political and social circles.

Exceptional Negroes do not fit the stereotypical criminal, thug, welfare queen, baby mama, baby daddy, and myriad other negative labels usually associated with black folks. Hence, we are deemed exceptional.

But, as we will see, the truth is that even with our exceptionalism, we are still just Negroes to white America and in case we forget that, they will swiftly remind us.

MyStory

I was born in Centralia, a sleepy Southern Illinois town, in the early 1960s. The town was small, dusty, and by and large, segregated. My neighborhood was overwhelmingly black. The only white person I knew in my community was a little girl named Mary Jane, who lived around the corner from me.

I never went to school with Mary Jane or her siblings because the neighborhood school I attended was exclusively black. And I mean ALL black. Every student, every teacher, every staff person: the principal, the lunchroom workers, and the janitor, were all black. In fact, the janitor was my mother’s uncle. My maternal grandmother doubled as a lunchroom worker, office worker, and substitute teacher on an as-needed basis.

My grandparents on both sides lived there and my parents, aunts, uncles and many of my cousins were also born in my hometown. It often felt like half the town was related to me.

When I was eight, we moved to a large town near Chicago to support my father’s transition to his role as the first black principal in the local school district. My mother secured a teaching position at one of the schools in that district as well.

It was 1970, and the first time I was exposed to white students and teachers at school. Although I did not have the language capacity to explain how I felt at the time, looking back, I clearly was in the midst of a culture shock.

There were so many white people and so few black people in town. I didn’t recognize the games the students were playing, and if I recognized a game’s name, these white students played the game very differently than the black community I had left behind.

Very few people looked like me at school. I do not recall there being any other black families in my entire neighborhood. Not one. A new town. A new school. A new culture. My parents and my little brother were the inoculation for culture shock in this new community.

The culture shock was a great deal to emotionally manage in my youth. However, I had always been outgoing and assertive, which made it easier for me to make friends at school. Given the demographics, my friendship pool was almost exclusively white, which even at the tender age of eight proved challenging.

Although I had heard the word nigger before, a number of times in fact, it was only when I was called a nigger by a white person that I understood it in a different context.

In southern Illinois, I had heard black folks use the term before, in a (seemingly) harmless way. Yet it was in this new, predominantly white town that I first heard the word nigger used in a different way.

I could not articulate the difference in the usage of the term in this new community, but I knew it was not being used harmlessly. In fact, I was certain that their use of the term was as an insult and that the third-grade classmate who hurled it at me did not intend on becoming my friend.

Again, I was only eight years old when this incident occurred, and it was the first time I experienced overt racism. The safety of my southern Illinois cocoon was gone, and I didn’t know how to process this fact. In fact, at eight, I didn’t even realize what this was, or that there was anything to do at all about it.

Chapter 2

Are You Awake?

If you are black and reading this book, you will likely be conscious of what I plan to discuss here. However, there may be some brothers and sisters who have been indifferent to the black experience in America, or perhaps unwilling to dwell on or parse through their own experiences with enough depth to become challenged out of complacency about the black experience.

This is not to say that black folks are a monolithic group with one exact set of circumstances, but rather, that as a people, there are some undeniable, distinguishing systemic features about blackness in America. It is those experiences on which I focus.

This book is a forthright discussion on the intersectionality of race, law and politics, which for me means discussing white privilege, white supremacy, white terrorism, interpersonal prejudice, institutional racism, mass incarceration, policing of black bodies, black patriotism and other taboo, uncomfortable conversations.

My goal with this book is to increase racial consciousness, to affirm black people and other people of color in their racial experiences, and to challenge white people into discomfort with ignoring and/or denying these issues any longer.

Ultimately, I seek to foster action by the Exceptional Negroes among us that can begin to bring some hope to the communities of black folks who lack the admission ticket we carry, and by white people who will acknowledge and use their white privilege in ways that challenge their people into undertaking work that is theirs exclusively. In other words, we each can do work in our own communities that can improve us all.

I have not always been inclined to social justice activism. I would not say that I never cared about racism, poverty or the inherent racial bias and persistent inequities in the United States. I will admit, however, that I was somewhat indifferent about these inequities beyond my own personal experience.

I was aware that these issues were bigger than me, but I was too busy parenting and navigating my own personal race experiences in order to carefully manage my career as an attorney to truly engage in efforts to fully acknowledge and address them publicly and in a collective fashion.

I was busy trying to survive in the legal field where white men rule. In fact, I often proclaimed that my contribution to addressing society’s inequities was to raise my two sons to be productive, contributing, Godly men who would break stereotypes and (unwittingly to me at the time) become Exceptional Negroes.

Since my husband and I raised two black sons, I believed then that such a contribution to society was meaningful, given that black men have been targeted for destruction since the first slave ships sailed.

It was meaningful, yet hardly enough. My busy life as a working wife and mom, coupled with my demanding, professional career as an attorney, as well as the demands of being an active church member, all conspired with one additional key factor to divert my call to activism.

That additional factor was comfort. I was comfortably and solidly middle class, and my husband and I lived very well in an upscale Atlanta suburb. I did exactly what white America conveyed must be done to achieve the American Dream. I did what my parents taught me to do in order to mitigate racism.

I was born to poor, struggling, college student parents who worked hard and did what they had to do to attain their education. My parents obtained master’s degrees and ultimately my mother went on to receive a doctoral degree. We were the quintessential middle-class black American family and my siblings and I were raised to preserve that status by working hard and valuing education.

However, even highly educated individuals like my parents knew that a strong GPA, an elite college degree, and an impressive resume would not serve as the ticket to the American Dream where black folks have equal opportunities for jobs and the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness that the Declaration of Independence boldly proclaims.

Indeed, my parents knew that if their black children were to have a real shot at that Dream in black America, we could not merely be competitive academically, we had to be twice as good to get half as far professionally as our white counterparts. That was the mantra in black households at the time.

As a result, my siblings and I became exceptional. We not only earned strong grades, we also learned to play musical instruments, traveled abroad, studied foreign languages, gained an appreciation for art and culture, mastered English diction and articulation, were accepted into top universities in the United States, including law schools, and graduated on the Dean’s List and/or with honors. In short, we learned to consistently strive for excellence.

That hard work eventually paid off, if measured by outward appearances. I have maintained a successful career in law, corporate America, higher education and government. At one point, I ran my own law firm for over ten years before I completely exited private practice.

And, as is required of Exceptional Negroes, I avoided thinking too deeply about the cognitive dissonance I wrestled with between being exceptional and yet, still being a Negro; of having experiences of being called a nigger both literally and figuratively, yet moving, seemingly with ease, through the right circles; of having access, but rarely full acceptance.

I compartmentalized the racism I experienced, relying increasingly on my exceptionalism to surely bail me out. I pursued ignorance, if you will, until the cognitive dissonance was so great that I could not deny the reality any longer.

The realization that I was raised to be exceptional was understood. But accepting that I would still be treated like a Negro became intolerable.

Those ten years were really the years of my maturation and the active embrace of my life as a black woman. During those years, I lost balance and comfort, but gained a sense of black consciousness.

There was no single, defining moment that contributed to this shift in consciousness. But my eyes were finally wide open – it hit me like a ton of bricks – and I realized I had been living in a state of cognitive dissonance about my Exceptional Negro status.

Believing that we as black people could be safe from discrimination was a delusion I believed in for too long. Ignoring the racism I saw and experienced made me an enabler.

Dictionary.com defines exceptional as forming an exception or rare instance; unusual; extraordinary; unusually excellent; superior.

But if you are a person of color in America, especially a highly educated and/or accomplished black person, your exceptionalism does not exempt you from racial profiling, blatant racism and the subtle (and not so subtle) psychological stress of systemic oppression and microaggressions. Your exceptionalism is inconsequential to your one immediately defining physical characteristic – your blackness.

As my sons got older, my concern became less that they become exceptional, and more that they come home alive. That is because being black in America is often a life or death proposition.

So, even years after we elected our first black president, the lynch mob is still on assignment, assassinating young black people –