A fellow young writer advised me never to look to accomplished black writers as ideal mentors because some of them still have the "crab in a barrel complex". "If you write better than them," she says, "they'll either try to cut you down, snob you, or discourage you". She went on to say how she had to fight to get her MFA thesis read and critiqued by an author of color who was busy trying to make a name for herself.This story my friend told me not only caught me off-guard, but strangely seemed like deja vu. Had I dreamed that she told me this already before it happened? Funny enough, the memory resonated like the stench of vomit on hot concrete. It all made sense why I would remember such thing as though I too had gone through it. I had reached out to mentors of color (not writers) in this way a long time ago. Other students had gasped when I told them this. "You should never ever do that!" A friend in undergrad had exclaimed to me once when I told him I wanted to be mentored by a professor in the Africana department. One would think I had confided to my friend that I had kissed the Queen of England on her left cheek and left a spit mark. I was confused and astonished by my friend's reaction. "Why?" I asked. "Is there a rule?" Another friend shook his head, still covering his mouth and glancing over his shoulders as though the professor, who was also an author of six Africana books would sneak up behind him and strangle him with a wordy metaphor absent of any punctuation. "She's not that nice. They're never that nice." The scowl on my face then was so deep that I felt the invisible indelible lines that I would probably discover one day in my late sixties. How dare him for bursting my bubble, for making me feel even more embarrassed for reaching out to this person....for telling me the truth. Like a bitter taste resistant to the efforts to get rid of it, such reality lingers, a memory forms, tainting even the sweetest experiences that come afterward.
In my tenure as a student, I've come across many distressed students of color in my undergraduate and graduate years who confided how hard it was to work with a faculty member of color who they had expected would nurture them, help them to graduate, write their recommendations. Even if the faculty member of color were to bitch slap them in the middle of a lecture, those students of color would see this act as "tough love". The excuses in the professor's defense would come out sounding like the excuse of a battered woman in a police station: "Professor Y is just being hard on me because she knows I can do a lot better that the other students," or "Professor X didn't read my thesis until the end of July because you know,*sniff* he's going up for tenure and how many tenured Black professors do you see?" Or "Professor Y and I sat and stared at each other for the first five minutes of office hours because she forgot to read my manuscript and put me in her calendar."I went to an Ivy-League university for undergrad where the ratio of black to white professors was 1:9 (it may have changed). Therefore these faculty members of color were held in high esteem by students of color only because they happened to look like us. I will admit that I was one of those students who had wished for Black professors and Black mentors only because I thought, stupidly, that we would connect, that we shared a common experience of being dark specs on beige walls of the ivory tower. Unlike the other professors I had, the professors of color would take the magnanimous form of a reincarnated Christ figure. And boy, was I wrong. Sometimes not even eye contact would be afforded to anyone who dared to go up to them and say hello. This reality was even more heart-wrenching in graduate school. Now at the beginning of my career in writing, I've begun to get those same ominous warnings of doom every time I see a black author I admire. "Be careful, she's a snob", or "Be careful, don't let him read your work. He's Caribbean too, and competitive" or "Avoid submitting to Black journals...you never know."
At first, I thought I recognized this social awkwardness that some Black professionals put up as a shield. In their aspirations to move up the ladder, they avoid any opportunity to take anyone with them (even if it happen to be wide-eyed ambitious students who may be even be more skilled than them); they would rather study you from a far, at arms length hoping that you will never get "too fresh", reach over and steal their crown, snatch their limelight. They will try their hardest to let you know "your place" by being the most discouraging. After all, some Black folks like to be the only ones in charge of their domain. Another ambitious Black person is a threat to them. In fact, they would rather remain unapproachable in case the charm they reserve for White folks rub off on you or rather, fear that with you around, they'll no longer be the "exotic" or the "unique" one.
I know it hurts when you want someone to show you the ropes how they got to where you'd like to go and they end up not being supportive; but I like to look for the good in every situation (perhaps I do have that battered woman complex I described earlier). I like to tell myself that if they did it, I can do it too; that the reason they're so distant is because they want me to do the hard-work they did so that I won't take success for granted; that the reason they give me the other side of their heads is to show me how one's head can easily float off one's neck and remain in the clouds.
What I learn: While there are Black mentors who are genuinely nice people who have your best interest at heart, it should not be assumed that all Blacks in certain positions would be the same way. Race should never matter when choosing mentors. Be careful when choosing a mentor to not only look at the person's credentials, color, and fame, but ask other students about them, observe them if possible in a class setting, schedule informal interviews with them to get a gist of their personalities, pay attention to how soon they email you back (was it an assistant that sent it? did it take a month? If so, then it's a bad sign); pay attention to how they treat you in a public setting as opposed to a private setting. Genuine mentors have a tendency to take you under their wings, publicly introduce you as their mentee/student/apprentice, ask you questions about your future, listen to you, and take the time to mentor you.To hell with name dropping.
If you are one of those people who like to brag that you've worked with "SO and SO", then you're doomed. You should concentrate at getting better at what you do. If Joe-Somebody can help you more than Mr. Pulitzier-Prize-winning-novelist-journalist-MBA-MD-JD-PhD, then for Christ-sake, go with Joe-Somebody. You should never have to chase your mentor around campus or continents to have a meeting. That's a red flag.
Last but not least, pay attention to how you feel having this person as a mentor. If your body tenses and your breathing increases every time you think about meeting with them, then perhaps you're being nudged by the best adviser/mentor you'll ever have, your intuition.
Nicole © 2011
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