Reese’s Thesis II: The price of being excellent
By Jamila Reese
JA West Coast Correspondent
We were raised to believe excellence was protection.
Get the degree.
Speak properly.
Work twice as hard.
Do not embarrass the family.
Do not give them a reason.
For many of us, excellence was not about ambition. It was about safety. It was armor. It was insurance against the stereotypes that trailed us into classrooms, offices, courtrooms, and boardrooms.
And to be clear, excellence works. It opens doors. It earns titles. It secures salaries. It builds résumés that our grandparents could not have imagined. We now sit in rooms our ancestors were locked out of entirely.
But here is the question we do not ask out loud.
If excellence is protection, why are we still bracing ourselves?
Across industries, Black professionals are over credentialed and under empowered. We are the most educated generation in our family histories. We have mastered systems that were never designed with us in mind. We understand compliance, policy, corporate governance, federal regulations, and institutional language.
Yet many of us still feel like guests in buildings we help sustain.
We are present, but not centered.
Included, but not influential.
Promoted, but not always protected.
Excellence gets us in the door. It does not guarantee control over what happens inside.
Somewhere along the way, we confused performance with power.
We perform professionalism flawlessly. We adjust tone. We manage perception. We swallow reactions. We calculate risk before we speak. We become experts at navigating spaces that require constant calibration.
That labor has a cost.
The cost is exhaustion.
The cost is hyper awareness.
The cost is knowing that one mistake is not simply a mistake, but a confirmation of someone else’s doubt.
We tell our children to be exceptional. And they are. But we do not always tell them that excellence will not exempt them from bias. It will not dismantle ceilings. It will not automatically translate into ownership.
Ownership is different.
Ownership is equity.
Ownership is policy influence.
Ownership is controlling budgets, not just balancing them.
Ownership is shaping culture, not just adapting to it.
There is nothing wrong with excellence. It is necessary. It is powerful. It is honorable.
But excellence alone does not shift systems.
We must move from proving ourselves to positioning ourselves. From surviving institutions to understanding how they actually function. From seeking validation to securing leverage.
Because a community that only strives to be excellent can still be managed.
A community that understands power can no longer be quietly contained.
The thesis is simple.
Excellence is the entry fee.
Power is the objective.
From Jackson to the Pacific, the thesis remains the same. Know the system. Know yourself.
In honor of my father and the original Reese’s Thesis.
