John Henryism

 Sharing this guest post from Renton Technical College VPI Dr. Stephanie Delaney's February 12th newsletter, with her permission. You can find her at www.linkedin.com/in/stephaniedelaney 

Do you remember the legend of John Henry? He tried to out hammer a steam powered machine and he succeed! Unfortunately, he later dropped dead of exhaustion. I remember watching the Disney cartoon about John Henry when I was a kid (this isn't, of course, a link to the cartoon, but gives you the idea).

"Successful Black people tend to die much earlier than their white colleagues."

A couple of years ago I was at a conference where they talked about John Henryism, a term I had never heard of before. It referred to a situation where Black people worked incredibly hard to succeed in this white world. And they often did succeed. But at what cost? Mortality. Successful Black people tend to die much earlier than their white colleagues.

Being Black in the white workplace is really stressful and stress can be lethal. When we have conversations about white privilege and some white people say they don't have any privilege, they are not thinking about not bearing this incredible burden - the burden of simply being Black. You can think of being white as being the steam engine and Black as trying to do the same work with two hammers instead of steam power.

When we succeed, it is not accurate to say, "See, there is no racism because Black people hold positions of power or experience success." It is accurate to say that success can happen in spite of the racism in the workplace . . . or the college. And at what cost? Poor health outcomes? Early death?

We often celebrate when people succeed despite the odds against them (think every commencement ceremony you've been to). We need to change that narrative. There is no glory in suffering.

Trying to reduce and eliminate that pointless suffering is one of the key reasons our college needs to be laser focused on dismantling the systems of racism - the policies, procedures, and negotiated agreements that keep barriers in place that are designed to hold people back. Rather than celebrate when people manage, against all odds to succeed, let's get rid of the barriers and celebrate that instead.