And You’re Never Really Sure What You Do It For
SPOILER WARNING FOR SUITS!
I first fell in love with “Smoke and Mirrors” by Gotye when the second season of Suits premiered. It’s the first scene of the season. Mike walks into the office, and is terrified at the prospect of Jessica figuring out that he’s not actually a lawyer, that he’s been practicing law without a degree, and that it’ll mean the end of his time at Pearson Hardman. I watched that episode a hundred times just to watch that scene. It’s one of my favorite scenes in the series. I couldn’t, at the time, quite put into words exactly why I loved that scene so much, and why I connected so much with “Smoke and Mirrors” until last month or so.
I’ll be honest and say that I almost abandoned writing this piece because I both couldn’t find a way into it, and because I didn’t think that I was capable enough to write about impostor syndrome among people of color. But then last week I went to Volunteer Park Pride in Seattle, and Sassyblack made a comment about how she and other people of color experience impostor syndrome, and it relit my interest in the subject. And then I downloaded “Smoke and Mirrors,” and have been listening to it obsessively ever since.
What sparked my interest in writing this was listening to a friend’s podcast — What’s The T w/ Delmar D — and on the latest episode, around the 29 minute mark, he made a comment about women and people of color deal with impostor syndrome in a way that men, especially white men, don’t have to. It struck me instantly because it’s notably one of the first times I’ve heard someone mention impostor syndrome plus racism and sexism.
We live in a world that constantly belittles people of color, their art, and their accomplishments. There are countless stories about students being attacked by their white, and sometimes non-black, peers and teachers for “taking up space where they don’t belong” — you know, affirmative action and all. Art by people of color are often judged more harshly than that of white people (see also: how people judge rap harshly and blame it for all social ills vs. basically any other genre of music). There’s also how AAVE is seen as inherently less intelligent and unworthy of being taken seriously (I can’t even begin to tell you about all the years I spent trying to “talk normal” because it became ingrained in me that I would never be taken seriously unless I spoke “the right way” (aka Dominant American English)). And then there’s just the fact of being a person of color in the world, and having to contend with the fact many places in the world weren’t designed or were rewritten to make being a person of color, especially a dark-skinned person of color, somewhat inhospitable.
There are countless ways that, as a person of color, we’re reminded that we don’t belong and no matter what we do, it’s still “not enough.” So it’s not hard to realize that there are many PoC who deal with impostor syndrome.
For most of my life, I’ve always felt like a fraud. Like, I’ve been playing at being intelligent and competent, and, at some point, someone will rip off the mask and expose me for the incompetent, inept person that I am. And it’s harder on social media because I know so many white and white-passing people who have studied and read Karl Marx, and know a lot about economic and philosophy, and politics and academia in general, and I feel like I’m just playing at whatever scraps of intelligent thought I thought I had in my head.
And then there’s the consistent self-doubt that comes with it.
It’s not something that’s easy to just get over. It’s not even really something that’s talked about either-like, we talk about how the world discredits people of color all the time, but we don’t talk much about how it makes us sometimes feel like impostors. And this isn’t even mentioning all the stereotypes of PoC that we fail to live up to that makes us feel like we’re not at home in our own skins.
In the second verse of “Smoke And Mirrors,” he finishes it up by saying:
You’re desperate to deliver
Anything that could give you
A sense of reassurance
When you look in the mirror
And I think that perfectly encapsulates what I’ve felt like most of my life.
I hope that in my lifetime, or at least before the world succumbs to climate change, that we can let people of color breathe and be people. Life is already too much to deal with without having to live up to these impossible expectations that crush PoC daily.
Originally published at https://medium.com on June 26, 2019.
