1 in 1,000
Sometimes I have to stop and pause and consider my place in the world, and it would be beneficial for most of us to do so on occasion as well.
Last week, I got an unexpected piece of mail explaining that my dissertation had been officially copyrighted with the federal government, with a tracking number and everything. Now, I finished my dissertation more than fifteen months ago, so this wasn’t exactly an efficient bureaucratic process, but, as much as I can claim to be someone who doesn’t like hierarchies and so forth, it did make me realize it was something I ought to appreciate. No matter what happens in the future, I really did earn that degree, and that’s something not everyone can say.
Receiving this notification made me realized I needed to finally get my diploma framed. It had been sitting in my safe in my closet for a year, and as we consider moving next spring, I’ve been thinking about where I want to keep it. Ultimately, I realized I wanted to take it to my office and use it to help motivate me when I need confidence, so I took it into Manhattan and got it framed.
When the frame store told me it was finished today, I picked it up and dropped it back off at my desk before I left, planning to hang it up on my cubicle wall next week (probably not a good idea to hammer holes into walls I don’t actually own). But it got me thinking about the rarity of my achievement, which I have barely stopped to appreciate, because I don’t actually have the ability to, you know, stop.
I sit here in my living room at home looking at a framed image of an area (Tarrant County) in South Carolina where my ancestors were (very likely) owned. A few years ago, I found the census records showing that all the Geralds back then were recorded as “illiterate” and “laborer.” But I refuse to believe I’m all that different from anyone I’m related to — my ancestors just never got the chance to be anything other than what they were forced to be. I bet some of them had ADHD too, and I can’t imagine how tough that would have been on top of being Black in the 19th century.
I looked up some stats out of curiosity after I picked up my diploma. According to fairly recent data, 7ish percent of people awarded doctorates in the US in 2019 were Black, which is obviously disproportionately low but frankly better than I assumed. However, given how hard it has always been for us to gain access to these programs, if you had to guess what the Black percentage of all living American doctorate holders is, it’s definitely lower than 7.
About 2% of American adults have doctorates, so if you put those together, you end up with .0014, or 14/10,000. And considering that that 7% is recent awardees, I’m comfortable saying it’s basically 1 in 1,000, at most.
I write this not to brag about my prowess (though I’m not denigrating my skills either). I am saying that I have to remind myself how rare it is to have been given these opportunities, and that I have to respect this great responsibility I have to produce valuable thought. Part of the reason I bothered with a terminal degree was so people would take my ideas seriously, so, here you go Justin, now you better make those ideas worth people’s time.
I joke, but when I insist on including my title on my business card and in other professional places (eg LinkedIn), I sometimes feel like I’m being silly, but I realize that, to far too many people, without the Dr., I’m still just an illiterate laborer, so to speak, even though my voice was valid and valuable before I added these letters to my name. It’s the way of the world, though, so if I have to remind people I’m Dr. Gerald to get them to listen, then that’s what I’ll do, and hopefully, my work will continue to matter, not just for me, but for Ezel, forthe people who come after him, and for the many people who came before me who never got the chance to be what they could have been.
