For many Black professionals, the feeling is familiar and unwelcome. You walk into a boardroom, a faculty meeting, a prestigious university classroom, or a corporate C-suite, and a quiet voice whispers: Do I really belong here?
That voice has a name—Imposter Syndrome. And for Blackfolk, it shows up with alarming frequency, even among those with impeccable credentials, decades of experience, and achievements that speak loudly for themselves.
But here’s the truth that often goes unspoken: Most Black professionals are not underqualified. If anything, we are overqualified for the positions we hold. Meanwhile, the loudest voices dismissing us as “DEI hires” are frequently the very people proving—daily—that they are the ones who don’t measure up.
The psychological damage of centuries
To understand why so many Black people wrestle with feelings of inadequacy despite clear evidence of competence, psychologist Dr. Joy DeGruy offers an important framework. In her work on Post-Traumatic Slavery Syndrome, DeGruy explains that centuries of enslavement, racial terror, and systemic oppression inflicted deep psychological wounds on Black people—wounds that didn’t disappear with emancipation or civil rights legislation.
Those wounds shape how many Black people see themselves. After generations of being told we are inferior, incapable, or intellectually deficient, some of those lies inevitably seep into the subconscious. The result is a lingering doubt about our worth, even when our accomplishments prove otherwise.
DeGruy argues that this psychological damage requires healing. And the need for that healing is evident whenever a highly accomplished Black person wonders if they belong in spaces they have more than earned the right to occupy.
But long before DeGruy gave this phenomenon a modern psychological framework, Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr.—the Detroit minister widely regarded as the father of Black Liberation Theology—was diagnosing the same problem.
Beginning in the late 1960s, Cleage argued that Black people had been systematically “niggerized.” By that, he meant that white narcissism had conditioned Black people to accept the myth of their own inferiority.
Cleage described two stages of this conditioning. First came what he called the Declaration of Black Inferiority (DBI)—the centuries-long proclamation by white America that all Black people were inherently inferior. But the more dangerous stage, Cleage said, was ABI: the Acceptance of the Myth of Black Inferiority.
In other words, people can call you whatever they want, but it’s what you answer to that matters most.
That belief can distort a person’s self-perception so profoundly that, regardless of intelligence, education, or achievement, they still feel like they don’t measure up. They feel like impostors in rooms where they may actually be the most qualified people present.
Cleage argued that overcoming this psychological conditioning requires a process he called “deniggerization”—a deliberate reclaiming of Black dignity, identity, and self-confidence.
Unexpected MAGA assist
That process is still necessary today. But in an unexpected twist, Blackfolk are currently receiving a dramatic assist in shedding Imposter Syndrome; surprisingly, from the Trump White House and the MAGA political universe.
Ironically, many of the loudest opponents of diversity, equity, and inclusion—people who loudly insist that DEI programs promote incompetence—have spent the past several years putting on a spectacular public display of something else entirely: White Entitled Incompetence (WEI), a phrase often used by political commentator Lurie Daniel Favors.
And if recent political headlines are any indication, if the WEI glove fits, they need to quit.
The ‘meritocracy’ myth
Consider the parade of controversial appointments and actions that have dominated the national conversation. The replacement of respected retired Army General Lloyd Austin with media personality Pete Hegseth, whose own mama publicly called him out for abusing women, living 24/7 “under the influence,” and being a low-life. His own mama!
Then there are the controversies surrounding figures like Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Stephen Miller, JD Vance, Kash Patel, and others whose decisions, investigations, and public statements have repeatedly sparked legal, political, and ethical backlash.
Meanwhile, international crises—including the escalating conflict with Iran—have exposed glaring gaps in planning and leadership. In one widely reported moment of political scrambling, officials reportedly engaged in a brainstorming session on how to lower gas prices… in the middle of a geopolitical confrontation; an issue DEI policymakers would have game-planned before-the-fact.
Old-school question
Which brings us back to a 1950s TV classic.
On the popular game show To Tell the Truth, a celebrity panel tried to identify the real person among three contestants claiming the same identity. Two were impostors; one was the “real one.”
At the end of every episode, the host would deliver the dramatic line: “Will the real [person] please stand up?”
In today’s political climate, many of the “real ones”—seasoned professionals, experienced public servants, subject experts, scholars, and administrators who had to be twice as good to get half as far—have been kicked to the curb.
And in their place, too often, sit people whose performance raises an obvious question.
If these individuals represent the best that the anti-DEI world has to offer, then why on God’s Red, Black & Green earth are Blackfolk still feeling unworthy?
The real impostors
The ongoing spectacle of political mismanagement is not a substitute for the deep healing that thinkers like DeGruy and Cleage insist Blackfolk need. Centuries of psychological conditioning cannot be undone overnight.
But the daily evidence unfolding on the national stage should at least remind every overqualified Black professional who has ever doubted themselves that the problem was never their competence.
It’s those anti-DEI blowhards who are the real impostors. And to them, I’m sure the late Defender Sports Editor legend, Max Edison, would tell them: “Go sit down.”
