Very deep in the Earth, in a layer known as the mantle, diamonds are formed. Under 2,000- degree heat and overwhelming pressure that exceeds 725,000 pounds per square inch.
The intense heat and pressure together create a crystalline carbon, which then forms a hexagonal sheet pattern into a triangular shape, resulting in none other than diamonds. For us non-scientists, it sounds crazy, but that’s how it works!
What started out as regular graphite becomes beautiful, highly valuable diamonds. All because of the pressure.
People really aren’t much different.
As a Jew, people ask me quite regularly why we are so few in number, yet we count among us the likes of Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Justice Louis Brandeis, Elie Wiesel and Harry Houdini. How did we end up with Irving Berlin, Philip Roth, Jerry Seinfeld, Judy Blume, Marc Chagall, Bob Dylan, Henry Heimlich, Stan Lee, Levi Strauss and Carl Sagan?
Side note. There were numerous non-white Jews who also made their significant mark, although most of us don’t know their names because they suffered the double-whammy of being Jewish and non-white. People like world philosopher Maimonides. Algerian-born economist Jacques Attali.
Tunisian fashion icon Max Azria and his fellow countryman Alain Boublil, who wrote the lyrics for “Les Misérables.” Albert Bourla, the Greek-Jewish CEO of Pfizer. Of Spanish descent, Emma Lazarus, author of the poem engraved on the Statue of Liberty. Joseph Nakash, the founder of Jordache.
Individual Jews invented or made the television remote control, agricultural drip-irrigation technology, color photography, lasers, vaccines for bubonic plague and hepatitis, cell phones, pacemakers and countless other products, cures and scientific breakthroughs.
To be clear, though, it’s not because Jews are better.
We can debate spirituality until the cows come home, but one thing’s a matter of historical record. Jews had to endure severe adversity over the past 3,000 years. The Jewish origin story starts in adversity. Back-breaking slavery in Egypt, and it hasn’t stopped since. From the Crusades to the Romans to the Muslim Conquest to the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions to pogroms in Russia and of course the Holocaust genocide less than a century ago. Exclusion from clubs, universities and certain jobs in the United States, mostly until the 1970s.
This adversity created its share of horrific results. Mass deaths. Forced conversion. Poverty for so many over the centuries. And lots of stomach problems for Jews.
But over those same centuries the maddening pressure helped create people who were determined to overcome adversity and make their mark in this world. Jews had said enough is enough and no matter what roadblocks were put in their way, they would have none of it.
The intense pressure of adversity created diamonds among them.
We see this same thing happening in the Black community.
There’s no denying that ever since the idea of racial hierarchy took hold with European colonization of most of Africa and then the enslavement of Africans, Black people from Africa to Brazil to the United States have suffered horrific adversity. That adversity didn’t stop with the end of colonization or slavery.
The stripping of Black Africans of their culture, religion and language to help build America with the slave trade, and the murder of countless others, was nothing short of Holocaust-style adversity.
If that weren’t enough, Jim Crow laws, mass incarceration, and systemic racism in education, housing, health care and virtually every other aspect of society caused Black people in America to confront and suffer through another level of pressure most of us can’t even comprehend. All while they got to watch the rest of us go through life without those same roadblocks.
But there’s an untold part of the story that continues to develop as we speak.
The achievement of Black Americans.
Today, Black Americans as a group still suffer the effects of pervasive and systemic racism and years of painful policies that make it so too many Black boys and girls are born into the most challenging circumstances.
Yet the drive for success and achievement among Black folks has been on the move for a while and it’s rapidly on the rise again. The pressure cooker in which most live is driving Black men and women to achieve at unprecedented paces.
There are about 50,000 Black doctors in the United States now. There were about 1,500 in 1900. And while the percentage of Black doctors has risen from only 1.3% to 5.4% during that time (of an overall Black population of 13% of the country), Black achievement remains on the move.
There are over 30,000 members of the National Society of Black Engineers. Up from six in 1971. Thousands more are not even members. While Black men and women still remain underrepresented in STEM fields, it doesn’t take away from the amazing Black engineers and scientists doing great things.
One would think that given all the adversity, it would be near impossible for Black people to still achieve. Who among us could withstand the onslaught of pay gaps, educational gaps, police profiling, incarceration, housing segregation, health care disparities and so much more, and still become giants in fields like science and law?
Yet instead, that adversity has helped produce an endless number of Black rock stars.
People like Percy Lavon Julian (1899–1975), who achieved extraordinary success developing innovative drugs and chemicals out of soybeans. Otis Boykin (1920–1982), who saved countless lives with his improvement of the pacemaker. George Carruthers (1939–2020), who helped invent the Far Ultraviolet Camera/Spectrograph. Emmett Chappelle (1925–2019), who made invaluable contributions in medicine, food science and astrochemistry.
They and so many others achieved no matter what obstacles America put in their way.
This isn’t a lesson for white folks to say, “See, racism isn’t in your way.”
Nor is any of this inspiring excellence here to suggest we should search for high-pressure situations. That we should be happy about injustice. Or that we should stop working toward a nation free of systemic abuse and inequities. The lesson is not to stop fighting wide pay gaps like the ones Black MBA grads from Harvard face compared to their white peers. The lesson is not to stop working so companies make sure Black hires are given the same opportunities to excel to the next level. Or to stop demanding Black people are included in important meetings.
But what we should pause to recognize and appreciate is that those obstacles are the same obstacles that created a Barack Obama, a Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Michael Jordan and aerospace engineer Dr. Christine Darden.
This is the same adversity that gave us the beautiful words of Langston Hughes. The advocacy of Sojourner Truth and Frantz Fanon. The philosophy of Alain Leroy Locke. The perspective of Bell Hooks.
In 2022, the list of future Obamas, Hughes and Boykins is being developed as we speak.
Forty year-old Dr. Ryan Ross rose from the challenges of teen gang life to earn a PhD and become a world class educator, speaker, author, mentor and leadership trainer. Rosalind Brewer was the COO of Starbucks and is now the CEO of Walgreens. Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett is the 35-year- old Black female scientist who led the efforts to create the Moderna vaccine for COVID-19. Chris Christmas is a dynamic artist, designer and fashion creator. Victor Glover’s a 44-year-old Black astronaut with masters’ degrees in systems engineering and flight test engineering who worked on the international space station. And there’s Amanda Gorman, who at 22 became the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history. There’s Rashida Jones who runs MSNBC. And Alicia Boler Davis, an executive on Amazon’s most prestigious internal team.
Be on the lookout for what’s next, too, for Black American Nicholas Johnson, Princeton’s Class of 2020 valedictorian.
It’s nothing short of a miracle that so many of our Black brothers and sisters have given the middle finger to personal and systemic racism to achieve greatness.
Let’s stand in awe of these Black diamond achievements under the pressure of extreme heat. This is only the beginning.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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