BLACK MAGIC

How the Black American experience nurtures abilities that lead to career success.

Sanders, a writer, director, and actor, assembles a cast of African American “high achievers” to demonstrate how power can be derived from the “trauma and suffering” involved in navigating Whiteness in the U.S. Illuminating the “magic” he has acquired as a Black man in America—abilities “that cannot be taught or bought”—the author augments his personal narrative with interviews with successful Black executives, journalists, activists, and others who also share their magic. Deray McKesson, one of the early leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement, is buoyed by a “conviction in his belief that Black people deserve equality as a human right,” a belief he developed attending school in Baltimore County as a child and watching the pronounced racial inequality around him (“the first time I understood both Blackness and whiteness as cultural elements and not simply as skin tones”). Other relevant topics include Black duality, “to be palatable and included, especially in corporate worlds” and the trauma associated with hearing colleagues or even friends use the N-word. For example, Grayson Brown, vice president of finance and strategy at a tech startup, discusses how he was expelled from college after defending himself against a fraternity brother’s use of the racial slur. The varied origin stories of the contributors are fascinating and informative. Sanders concludes that surviving Blackness in this world summons “presence of mind, empathy, independent thinking, conviction, comfort in isolation, work ethic, resourcefulness, bravery, focus, leadership, perseverance, community, detachment, charisma, problem solving, and faith.” Even that magic won’t make racial inequity disappear—and the past four years, especially, have demonstrated the persistence of both White hostility and fragility—but these conversations offer fruitful avenues to pursue.

An engaging record of how Black pain and endurance can lead to Black excellence.