In the first episode of Season 3 on ABC’s hit TV show Scandal, Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) gets an epic lecture from her father, Rowan (played by the brilliant Joe Morton). By this time in the fictional world created by writer Shonda Rhimes, the country knows what viewers have known since early in Season 1, that Olivia Pope is the mistress of the president of the United States. Rowan knows that the successful, overachieving daughter he raised is about to experience hell—not only for being outed as the woman who is sleeping with the married Republican president but also, or perhaps especially, because she is a black woman. As he addresses his soon-to-be-disgraced daughter, he reminds her of a lesson he taught her throughout her childhood: that she, as a black person, has to be twice as good as them (meaning white people) to get half as much as what they have.
The show about politics and scandal in Washington, which ended its seven season run this April, was wildly unrealistic in so many ways—though in today’s political climate, the fictional world of Scandal seems way more normal and saner than our current reality. However, this particular scene and what Rowan was attempting to impart to Olivia is a concrete reality for many black people of a certain age who heard the exact same thing from our own parents.
Right after the episode, writer Neil Drumming penned an article for Salon in which he noted the same thing. Drumming writes that, for many black viewers, the idea of having to outperform our white peers is all too familiar.
More than simply a family motto, the sentiment is one with which almost every African-American of my generation and before is all too familiar. Notice the them and the they -- that's white folks. The you is every black kid who has ever brought home a bad grade or failed to study hard enough for a test being told by their concerned parents that they might never succeed if they don't work harder and smarter than their white peers.
As a black woman, I’ve been reflecting on this notion of having to work smarter and harder than white folk for my entire adult life. It’s likely why I ended up with hundreds of thousands of dollars in school debt to earn a bachelor’s degree, then a master’s and, finally, a doctorate from some of the best schools in the country—because I knew that formal education and letters behind my name were things I had to have in order to simply be let in the door of certain organizations. And I wasn’t wrong. Data shows that, not only do black women and men make less than their white counterparts across the board, but that even when we have degrees, we are often underemployed, underpaid and are less wealthy than whites.
To that end, education is only a small fix for the racial gaps that exist when it comes to economics and career opportunities for blacks in the United States. Without actual system change, hard work and determination will only get one so far and those individual successes will not translate into uplifting black people as a group. In other words, blacks will continue to struggle. Still, many of us understand that in a country where most resources are controlled by whites, the nature of racism and white supremacy demand that we must be stellar even when many of our white peers are mediocre at best.
For the past year and a half, the idea of black folk having to be “twice as good as white people to get half as much” has been on full display as we watch Donald Trump make a complete mockery of both the presidency and the United States. Trump isn’t even mediocre—to say that he is would grossly overstate his level of competence and intellect. Trump is subpar in every way. A complete narcissist, racist and sexist who has an insatiable need to remind the world again and again that he beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, he has done almost nothing of significance during his time in office other than harm marginalized people and damage the nation’s credibility around the world.
He lies as easily as most people breathe and will say one thing and turn around and do the exact opposite. He is not a well-read or learned man. He doesn’t understand how government works nor understand the powers of the presidency and what he can and can’t do. He rambles and fumbles through his speeches and press conferences, often going off-script and sounding incoherent. And yet his approval rating remains around 40-45 percent. Among Republicans, he has a 90 percent approval rating.
This week, Trump took being a sub-par white man to a new low. He met with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and threw the United States under the bus—admitting that he believes the Russian government when it says that it did not meddle in our elections over the entire U.S. intelligence community. He blamed our past leaders for poor diplomatic relations with Russia, citing that they’ve never ever been so bad before, while also claiming that he had singlehandedly fixed it in a two-hour closed door meeting with Putin. He also managed to successfully divert our attention from the pressing issue of thousands of migrant children forcibly separated from their parents at the border, a Supreme Court nominee that could possibly be the vote that overturns Roe v. Wade, a Muslim travel ban upheld by the Supreme Court as well as a recent decision that impacts public sector workers’ ability to organize and join unions.
You’d think that Trump’s performance in Helsinki would, at the very least, give Republicans a reason to critique their president. But, it turns out that even treason is perfectly okay if you are a white male, subpar president. No matter what, Republicans are standing by their man. As Axios reports, Trump firmly has a grip on his party. A new Axios/Survey Monkey poll reveals that an astonishing 79 percent of Republicans approve of Trump’s handling of Putin at their joint press conference while 85 percent of them think the Russia investigation is a distraction.
Meanwhile, let’s think back to the black man who held the office of president for the eight years prior to Donald Trump. I write this reluctantly, because it is so obvious, it really needn’t be said. And it’s beyond tiresome to play the comparison game when anyone with sense should be able to see how race and white supremacy are at work in how Trump not only was elected to office, but remains beloved by so many in his party. But just for fun, let’s go ahead and say these things anyway. Whether you liked him or not or even agreed with his policies, one must admit that Barack Obama is not a subpar or even mediocre man. Nor was he a subpar or mediocre president. He is incredibly thoughtful and bright. As far as education goes, he went to the best universities in the country. He was a community organizer who went on to become a respected law professor then state senator, U.S. senator and finally president of the United States.
Though he had a team of speechwriters, he was known to often rewrite entire sections of his speeches himself. He is an incredibly skilled orator—who more than once has brought crowds to tears with his combination of passion and truth, fiery inflection and conviction. The theme of his first campaign for president got it absolutely right. Hope is what Barack Obama inspired in millions of people. Obama would have never been elected if he’d been anything other than twice as good. There most certainly would have been calls for and hearings about impeachment had he done the things that Trump is doing. Further, his being twice as good did not sit well with lots of people in this country who consciously and unconsciously believe in black inferiority. Like many of us who get taught that we have to be twice as good, Obama also had to prepare himself for the white backlash that inevitably comes with racial progress.
Being twice as good isn’t easy. It also isn’t consequence free. While it may mean social, economic, educational and career gains for individual black folk, it also means facing all the insidious ways and outright lengths that white people will go to exert control, power and influence. Nature teaches us that certain mammals react to intense stress and fear with a defensive response. Humans also have this innate defense mechanism. What we saw in reaction to Barack Obama’s presidency and his twice-as-goodness was large swaths of white people defending their place in the hierarchy of our society—whether they were cognizant of it or not. Endless think-pieces have tried to convince us that race wasn’t the motivating factor in Trump’s win. And though many will disagree with this statement, it wasn’t necessary for all white Trump voters to be outright racist to vote for him (though it’s impossible to ignore the fact that their vote certainly co-signed his racism). They simply needed to feel as if he would return the social order to what we have come to know and expect—straight white men on top, no matter their ability or talent.
It is perfectly normal for us to see white men in charge. And we especially give every advantage and leg up to rich white men like Trump—while simultaneously creating a false narrative that they are self-made “stable geniuses.” It is rarely discussed that these very men and those who came before them have built their legacies on the backs of and by exploiting women, people of color and other marginalized people for centuries. And so it was that we reverted back to the default social order on Nov. 8, 2016. As we now realize, this has proven catastrophic for the nation and the world. But, sadly, it’s not enough to make the majority of Republicans think that we need a change.
It is the dream of many black parents that their children will possess the twice-as-goodness of Barack Obama. In contrast, Donald Trump and his subparness is the very reason that black parents warn their children about the need to overachieve in the first place. It is because they know full well that not only does race matter in America, it matters so much that wholly unqualified, unintelligent, dangerous and underachieving white men like Trump can ascend to the presidency, fuck it up time and time again and still be regarded as competent and doing a good job.
Years after Trump’s time in office has come to an end (if he hasn’t completely unraveled our democracy by then), I wonder what black parents will tell their children about needing to be twice as good. What unnecessary burdens and expectations will we place on black children about needing to be stellar as a result of Trump’s ability to be completely subpar and still become president? I also wonder if there will ever come a time that white people, as a group, will realize that the sense of superiority and hierarchy in the social order instilled in them as a result of white supremacy has dangerous consequences for themselves and others. We want to believe that we are all created equal and have equal opportunity. Our Constitution and numerous laws proclaim it to be true. But we’ll never get there if white mediocrity and subparness continue to be an acceptable default. At our current rate, though parents continue to push it, twice as good or even thrice as good for black people or anyone else of color will never be enough.
Lastly, I wonder how fiction and shows like Scandal will reflect the reality of this moment, just as accurately as they captured the truth of black achievement in that notable Season 3 episode. The opportunity is certainly there. In fact, in the series finale, Rowan Pope gives one last profound speech about race—this time in a Senate committee hearing. He is testifying about the covert government agency he ran for years which murdered, tortured and sinned on behalf of protecting the American republic. While justifying his actions, Rowan says he was making American great and keeping it afloat. He did so in spite of the kind of men like the ones on the committee he is testifying before—“white men whose complacency, privilege, left this country, this republic in a state of neglect.” Though Scandal was a fictional soap opera-like drama, truer words have never been spoken. Our country is in disarray because of the privilege and below average capacity of the white man who now sits in the Oval Office.The only question now is what state will the republic be left in when Donald Trump is through with it?