Degrees

Degrees Don’t Always Break Chains

I’ve worked with a lot of women.

Black women. Smart women. Women with degrees on their walls and letters after their names. Women who, by man’s standards, are “educated.”

But school doesn’t always teach you how to be free.

There’s a thing I call the black slave mentality. And I’ve seen it in women who graduated magna cum laude. I’ve seen it in women running departments, leading meetings, quoting bell hooks and Audre Lorde. Education on paper. But the mentality? Still shackled.

What do I mean by “slave mentality”?

I mean thinking you have to ask permission to exist.

I mean shrinking so others feel bigger.

I mean choosing a man, a job, a church, a political party and defending it even when it’s breaking you — because loyalty was beaten into us as survival.

I mean mistaking struggle for virtue. Mistaking suffering for strength.

I mean tearing down other Black women in the room because you were taught there’s only one seat at the table.

I mean equating your worth with how much you can endure, how much you can produce, how well you can perform “professional” for white folks and “respectable” for our own.

I’ve worked with Black women who had master’s degrees and still couldn’t say no to a boss who disrespected them. Who had PhDs and still thought a man cheating was her fault for not “keeping him.” Who were VPs and still whispered gossip to keep the heat off themselves. That’s not education. That’s conditioning.

You can go to school and still be uneducated in freedom.

You can memorize textbooks and still not know your own mind.

You can be credentialed and still be colonized in your thinking.

The difference was never the diploma.

The difference was whether they believed they were allowed to take up space without apology.

A man’s standard of education says: “Did you graduate? What’s your GPA? What’s your title?”

But that standard never asked if we unlearned the lie that we’re only valuable when we’re serving, suffering, or silent.

I’ve met Black women with GEDs who were more free than women with doctorates. Because they stopped performing. They stopped waiting for someone to promote them into personhood. They stopped calling trauma “culture” and codependence “loyalty.” They decided that being educated meant knowing themselves — not just knowing books.

I’m not saying education doesn’t matter. I’m in a PhD program. I believe in school. I believe in books. But I also believe a degree can become another plantation if you’re not careful. Another place where you work, smile, obey, and call it success.

The slave mentality isn’t about chains on your wrists. It’s about chains on your mind.

And no university can break those for you.

You break them when you stop asking, “What do they want from me?”

And you start asking, “What was I made for?”

That’s education.

The rest is just paperwork.

Cathrynmharris