Plantation Theory: The Black Professional's Struggle Between Freedom and Security

which forbade freed Blacks from assembling in groups in the day or the night. Here’s an example of the vagrancy law:

I’m writing this with the highest aspiration that my lived experiences and the lived experiences of those who look like me provide perspective and purpose. I want the humanity of being Black in a space that America designed with our inclusion far from mind to shine through.

I can’t help

The sheer Caucacity to suggest that I’m unwilling to consider other people’s paths towards change when my people have had to accommodate white’s comfort ever since we were integrated into their broader society. She hadn’t considered that I am only four generations removed from slavery and only two generations removed from Jim Crow segregation.

I encourage you to sit with yourselves in reflective meditation as you consider the ways you will cede some of your power, privilege, and status to create equitable companies that live up to the aims of the commitments they make to the world.

reject the premise of the American Dream, and instead define a new Black American reality of ownership, excellence, and communal obligation.

Essentially, if you had time to gather in a group, you must not have a job, and therefore, you’d be deemed a criminal.

May you hold yourselves accountable by asking, “Who gets fired if the most marginalized aren’t experiencing the intended benefits

Interestingly the misdirection was hidden in plain sight. It’s called a dream for a reason. We were not given the exposure to self-sufficiency, entrepreneurialism, or leadership, but instead, we were shown how to obey, follow, and comply.

The buffer class resisted the notion that we were all equal in the eyes of this democracy in conflicts too numerous to count throughout the timeline of the grand experiment that is America.