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-- By BrandonNesfield - 19 Feb 2016 | |
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< | The clinic was a plain building, a patchwork of cinderblock and cement. It stood out compared to its neighbors, crude assortments of cardboard and corrugated iron that stretched to the horizon in the township of Khayelitsha, South Africa. Inside the two-room structure an electric fan droned endlessly, adding to the strange concert of sounds that included the groaning of tiled floor and the pitter-patter of the doctor’s pen against his clipboard. The first patient was a plump, swarthy woman who muttered nervously to herself in Xhosa as she entered the room; her toddler was nestled in the folds of a waist-drawn, pink blanket. A ride-along volunteer, I eagerly took a seat as the medical students placed the child on the exam table. When they removed the blanket my cheery excitement was suddenly extinguished—something icy flooded my stomach in its place. Red and yellow burns spanned the child’s back, and he bawled as the doctor examined his gnarled skin, its waxy texture set ablaze under the light. Suddenly the room was awash with action: the medical students bounced diagnoses between one another rapidly as the child’s mother let out agonizing cries of explanation. “Stove” was the only discernible word, but it was easy to draw the inference. | >
> | The clinic was a plain building, a patchwork of cinderblock and cement. It stood out amongst its neighbors, crude assortments of cardboard and corrugated iron that stretched to the horizon in the township of Khayelitsha, South Africa. The first patient was a plump, swarthy woman who muttered nervously to herself in Xhosa as she entered the room; her toddler was nestled in the folds of a waist-drawn, pink blanket. The medical students removed the blanket, revealing reddish yellow burns that spanned the child’s back. He bawled as the doctor examined his gnarled skin, its waxy texture set ablaze under the light. The students shouted competing diagnoses as the child’s mother let out agonizing cries of explanation. “Stove” was the only discernible word, but it was easy to draw the inference. | | | | |
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> | These were the sort of experiences that propelled me toward law school. A part of me always knew I would pursue a legal career. But that knowledge was influenced by years of recommendations from others who, after hearing a polished quip or an impassioned argument, would proclaim my future success as a lawyer. After working in South Africa, I was convinced a J.D. would empower me to change the world. When the summer ended, I returned to the familiarity and comfort of life at Duke. The more time passed, the more my interest in the public good withered away. Surrounded by friends heading excitedly to jobs in the financial sector, I found myself fascinated by an equally lucrative, glossy career track. The image of the wretched child was replaced by visions of life as a corporate attorney, wheeling and dealing from a city high-rise. Talk of “burning the midnight oil” in the “trenches” with future colleagues aroused an intoxicating sense of machismo within me, silencing the inner voice that had once motivated me. | | | | |
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< | The medical students had declared a heated stove as the causal factor in the child’s case. I knew that that the efforts of community healthcare initiatives could cure but a fraction of the ills born in the townships. It was almost voyeuristic, peering stupidly into a hellish world that no National Geographic exposé could capture. I couldn’t shake the image of the burnt child, spread-eagle on the exam table. I wanted to help, but my words had always been more skilled than my hands. I had toyed with the prospects of a career in law before, as I was accustomed to the enthusiastic recommendations of friends who, after hearing a polished quip or an impassioned argument, would proclaim my future success as a lawyer. But it was the moment in the little Khayelitsha-bound clinic, coupled with my experiential schooling in South African history that breathed life into the idea of a legal education and career. The study and knowledge of the law would serve as both springboard and anchor for my idealistic ambitions—and I would be able to talk, write, and persuade the whole way there. | >
> | My youth provides a few insights on my shift in perspective. My large, Caribbean family has always seen professional success as binary: you become a doctor or a lawyer. While the concept of doctors and lawyers as the exemplars of American society is largely outmoded, it persevered within my immigrant household. Uninterested in the indulgences of the suburban petite bourgeoisie, my parents used their resources to fund the modalities of an upper class upbringing. Ski trips, swim teams, and piano lessons supplemented the private schooling that would prepare me for higher achievement. I knew that black men occupied two stations in the American imagination: thug or exception. I was constantly afraid of being classified as the former, yet despised being told I was the latter. My teenage friends would exclaim with a smirk: “you’re hardly black” or “you’re like an Oreo, but it’s cool”, as if my ‘spiritual whiteness’ was a compliment. I hated the constant reminders of my difference, yet I couldn’t disentangle success and whiteness in my mind. My sense of self became racialized and marked by internal conflict. I knew I would always be black—but if success could assuage the feeling of being lesser, how could I not pursue it, even on white terms? I didn’t want the clichéd retail assistant following me around the store, I wanted her to know that I was intellectual and thoughtful and kind—that striking a conversation with me may even brighten her day. These thoughts raged on in my adolescent mind, quietly shaping who I was and who I wanted to be. Even as a college student, my aspirations to serve the the have-nots couldn’t compete with my deeper-seated desire to join the ranks of the haves. | | | | |
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> | I pursued my lily-white fantasy as a summer at Cravath, where my expectations clashed with reality. I believed that such a prestigious firm would provide me with deep satisfaction, along with excellent future career prospects and a comfy paycheck. While my summer delivered on the latter, I couldn’t have felt less satisfied. The firm was the epitome of sleek professionalism: Cravath attorneys discussed cases of clients responsible for gross human atrocities without blinking an eye; business was business and either way, the scallops at Marea weren’t going to pay for themselves. I grappled with the idea that growing up entailed abandoning childish notions of my ‘rightful place in the world’ and accepting that financial stability was the basis for a happy life. Ultimately, I couldn’t reconcile this idea with the mechanistic tasks in service of faceless clients that I completed every day. Surely life as a partner would be cozy and self-affirming, but I’d likely lose myself in the process. | | | | |
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< | When the summer ended, I returned to the warm familiarity of my life at Duke. The more time that passed, the more my aspirations of a career in the legal public interest withered away. Surrounded by my friends, most of whom were finance and economics majors to whom a career in investment banking or private equity was as much a birthright as it was their ideal path, I found myself fascinated with idea of a career in law that was equally lucrative and sleekly professional. The unshakeable images of South African poverty and structural deprivation were replaced by visions of life in the ivory tower, a mélange of scenes from Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street and every corporate law drama onto which I projected myself. I was neither bothered nor concerned with unpacking the sudden change of perspective. In fact, I felt smug and self-satisfied, especially when I was given the opportunity to captivate friends or family with the details of my lily-white future in the law, replete with speculations about starting salaries, bonus increases, and exit options in finance. There was a certain sense of machismo that welled up within me every time I vocalized my desire to ‘burn the midnight oil’ in the ‘trenches’ with my future colleagues. And I was sure to use such expressions at every chance I got.
I've tried to find out how a brilliantly burning dream could be extinguished so quickly, and replaced with a cool flame, one of prideful anticipation of life as an immaculately dressed corporate masochist. The answer came to me only once I was ready to admit it: I was afraid of the risk. Ironically, the undergraduate banker friends (many of them profligate sports gamblers by the time we were juniors) that I found myself unconsciously trying to mirror were the the ones who were going into the industry that embodies and glorifies risk on its seesaw with reward. I come from a very large, Caribbean immigrant family that sees professional success as binary: you either become a lawyer or a doctor. Finance was immoral, teaching was noble but low-reaching, scientific professions were too aloof. Today, the concept of doctors and lawyers as the exemplars of American society feels outmoded, a stubborn vestige of 1950’s suburbia. Yet to my immigrant family, it persisted without question, perhaps the result of being racial and national “others”. When societal integration and cultural assimilation are the high watermark for the successful immigrant experience, risk and creativity play second fiddle to safety and security. While the perception of the security of the legal profession has recently wavered in the American imagination, the perception of the legal profession in minority and immigrant communities remains overwhelmingly positive. After all, lawyers are ostensibly educated, polished professionals who interact with non-legal people on a daily basis and have an impressive command over a body of law otherwise inaccessible and unintelligible to the common man.
I can’t attribute with any certainty the extent to which nature, rather than nurture, or vice versa, influenced the risk aversion that pushes me toward a corporate career that I must rationalize or justify with talk of “financial stability” and the thoughts of satiating my licentious appetites while developing new ones. The cold fire that fuels one’s dissent into safety and security at the expense of creativity and risk still burns within me—it would be disingenuous to suggest otherwise. I’d like to think that I can rediscover the type of passion that emboldens the career frontiersman who eschews the warmth of security blankets to brave the cold, empty, and infinite fields of possibility.
This seems to have been a good draft for clearing the building
site. You've explained an ambivalence, documented an internal
conflict. But even though the pronoun most in use is "I," the
draft in the end has as its subject what the sociologist David
Riesman famously called "other-direction," in his book
The Lonely Crowd. We see that others' attitudes (about work, about
money, about "licentiousness") are defining an identity in which
life choices are presented as outcomes of a process you do not
fully inhabit, and which is "yours" only in the sense that others
have created it in you. The next draft of the essay is the one
in which, having allowed those voices their way, the
"inner-directed" person who is engaged in learning about the
world and himself speaks not about an "I" manufactured from the
views, preferences, and obsessions of others, but from the
interior uncertainties those powers usually silence.
Your writing here is capable, but too complex to be forceful.
Simplify next time around. Use shorter sentences. Avoid
"experiential schooling in South African history," "brilliantly
burning dreams" and so on. You saw a burned child and wanted to
help the wretched of the earth. You went back to Duke and
reassumed the identity and values of pampered rich people whose
consumption is more important to them than others' misery. You
confronted status anxiety, and it was stronger than you were.
These are good things to write about, but the more simply the
more effectively. This is merely prologue: you need to reserve
deeper words for the deeper process of forgetting all that and
listening intently to who you are inside these days.
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> | There are so many things I would like to do. Most of them don’t gel with the looking-glass self I’ve served so faithfully, but I am gaining the courage to start listening to the inner voices that have stayed quiet for so long. I want to continue traveling—for me—and help people along the way where my skills can. I’d like to get back to reading, writing, and drawing: my creative instincts have been stifled by my own perception of them as weak and unfit for professional life. I’m still a law student. I’m still young. I’ve spent years pursuing a life shaped the expectations and realities of others, steered by the idea that black male success only comes in business formal. I fixate on how I am perceived, in turn dictating how I perceive myself. The process of abandoning this fixation won’t be simple. It is a part of my being, responsible a great deal of my successes. I don’t want the next generation of me’s to fight the exact same racial and social convictions I did. The very first good that I can do for this world is serving as an example of an individual who rose above the competing voices to listen to my own. But ultimately, I’m going to start listening to me, for me. I will never get satisfaction from living a life for others. |
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