{"id":9779,"date":"2019-02-19T09:05:21","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T14:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/?p=9779"},"modified":"2019-02-09T15:06:17","modified_gmt":"2019-02-09T20:06:17","slug":"to-the-black-professional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/2019\/02\/19\/to-the-black-professional\/","title":{"rendered":"To the Black Professional"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Courtesy of Shutterstock.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’m trying to run the world. That’s what I tell myself. My philosophy is: If I aim to run the world, I have to start, at the very least, by running my\u00a0<\/i>world. I have to take control of my life and make decisions that ALWAYS benefit me and my cause. I take advantage of every opportunity I can, and once I commit I give 100 percent because I understand the value of impressions. But if I can be real, the harder I work, the less people I see that look like me.<\/span><\/p>\n

At first, it was discouraging. I\u2019m busting my behind and all of the people I see who pull strings look nothing like me. I felt doomed. It didn’t help that the first few successful African-American supervisors I had were the ones who taught me the least. I can\u2019t say I don\u2019t understand why. They probably had to work as hard as I did, if not harder, to get to their place in life, so perhaps that\u2019s why they don\u2019t want to help too much because they want me to figure it out. But my creative shell was the toughest to crack in those black-owned offices because I didn\u2019t feel valued enough. If I showed initiative if I shared a great idea, how would it be received? It\u2019s insane how impressionable I still was at the time. The woman I am now would never hide in the corners of a space where I\u2019m supposed to learn. But I was not always that way. My dreams were big but my gut was not. It shook my confidence. How are you supposed to run the world when you can\u2019t even run this desk job?<\/span><\/p>\n

At this point, it became motivation for me. Samaria, you are going to be great and you are going to help other little black girls and boys struggling to be themselves and be great too. I met Liv Lewis at the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) National Conference in Austin, Texas. She is the vice president of\u00a0<\/span>Egami Group<\/a><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span><\/u>a company most known for Procter & Gamble\u2019s \u201cMy Black is Beautiful \u2018<\/span>The Talk<\/a><\/span>\u2019\u201d campaign. If you don\u2019t know about it, I encourage you to look at the link above. She is a communications and marketing expert and she made such an impact in the world talking about being black while being black. We connected, and she gave me the best advice I ever heard. <\/span><\/p>\n

We tend to code-switch. You know, turn on our \u201cwhite voice\u201d and smile through a whole conversation. But there is a difference between doing that and just being professional. All you HAVE to do is be professional, and that\u2019s for a few reasons. Liv Lewis was right when she said you don\u2019t want to be anywhere that doesn’t welcome you, for you. At that point it\u2019s both uncomfortable and exhausting to keep up with that persona. Second, she said her creativity flourished as soon as she let go of that girl. How could you think out of the box when your energy is focused on staying in that box the entire time you\u2019re on the clock?<\/span><\/p>\n

Now that I\u2019m done venting, I\u2019ll get off of my little soapbox and tell you what I\u2019ve learned from all of this.<\/span><\/p>\n

1) I am impressionable. <\/b>My idea of the business world, heck, any world, comes from the people around me. What I need to do about it is make sure I understand that and don\u2019t take anything too personally. Just find the lesson in my situation and let it move me in my favor.<\/span><\/p>\n

2) Run your world.\u00a0<\/b>Walk with your head held high, wear what you feel the most confident in and be who you are to your core. If it looks, swims and quacks like a duck, it\u2019s probably a duck, right? Well, look, swim and quack like a boss. Every. Single. Day.<\/span><\/p>\n

3) It\u2019s not always intentional.\u00a0<\/b>You\u2019ll find some people trying to relate in ways that make you uncomfortable. Racism is no perfect science. For example, I was at a photo shoot one time with my natural hair and the photographer complimented me by saying she has a wig at home like my hair. I realized she was flustered after mentioning it so I responded, \u201cI have a wig at home that looks like your hair, too.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Being black and being in the business aren\u2019t mutually exclusive. You can do both, and it won\u2019t be easy because it\u2019s not. But it\u2019s up to us black people to change that transition for the generation after us. We have to make our environments learning spaces, and in the words of my professor, <\/span>Stephanie Cooke<\/a><\/span>, \u201cDon\u2019t drill holes in my boat,\u201d or anyone else\u2019s for that matter. We don\u2019t have to fight each other to the top, and it\u2019s time to put real value to the energy we release into the world. I have learned a lot in these last few years about both myself and my profession, and I am extremely blessed for my opportunities. I thank those from all different backgrounds for contributing to my future success.<\/span><\/p>\n

–<\/span><\/p>\n

This piece was written by Samaria Bingham.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m trying to run the world. That’s what I tell myself. My philosophy is: If I aim to run the world, I have to start, at the very least, by running my\u00a0world. I have to take control of my life and make decisions that ALWAYS benefit me and my cause. I take advantage of every opportunity I can, and once […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":9789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2893],"tags":[2962,703,2993,119,2060,2935],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9779"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9779"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9790,"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9779\/revisions\/9790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/progressions.prsa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}