How Do We Measure Success Now?
How do we measure success now? For generations, Black Americans pursued success with a clear understanding of the obstacles before us.
We fought for the right to vote, the right to learn, the right to work, the right to own property, and the right to participate fully in American life. Every gain was hard won. Every opportunity was expanded through sacrifice, organizing, advocacy, and persistence.
Success often meant overcoming barriers.
It meant becoming the first.
The first hired.
The first promoted.
The first admitted.
The first elected.
It meant proving that we belonged in rooms where we had long been excluded.
But what happens when those gains begin to feel uncertain?
What happens when programs designed to increase opportunity are challenged, histories are debated, and pathways that once seemed open appear to narrow?
How do we measure success now?
Perhaps the answer cannot be found solely in access.
Access matters. Representation matters. Opportunity matters.
But if our definition of success depends entirely on acceptance by institutions beyond our control, then our sense of progress becomes vulnerable to every political shift, every policy change, and every changing social climate.
Maybe we need a broader measure.
What Needs to Shift in Us?
Perhaps we must move from validation to self-definition.
For generations, many of us were taught—directly or indirectly—that success meant being accepted by institutions that had historically excluded us. There was power in breaking barriers. There still is.
But acceptance is not the same as freedom.
If someone else determines our worth, they can also attempt to diminish it.
What if success begins with defining ourselves before anyone else does?
Perhaps we must move from consumption to creation.
Not only asking what opportunities exist for us, but what opportunities we are creating for others.
Not only participating in systems, but building institutions, businesses, archives, schools, artistic traditions, and communities that reflect our values.
Perhaps we must move from representation alone to stewardship.
Being seen matters.
But what happens after we’re seen?
Do we preserve what we’ve built?
Do we mentor others?
Do we leave behind structures that can outlast us?
Perhaps we must move from scarcity to continuity.
Scarcity asks:
“How do I get mine?”
Continuity asks:
“How do we ensure there is something here for the next generation?”
And perhaps most importantly, we must move from reaction to intention.
A society in conflict can keep us focused on what is being taken away. There are times when that fight is necessary.
But we cannot spend all our energy reacting.
We also have to ask:
What are we building?
What are we preserving?
What are we teaching?
What are we imagining?
What will exist because we were here?
Success Beyond Access
Access remains important.
The struggle for equal opportunity is not over, and we should never abandon efforts to create a more just and equitable society.
But perhaps success is not only about what doors are opened for us.
Perhaps it is also about what we build for ourselves.
Success may be measured by the businesses we sustain, the stories we preserve, the communities we nurture, and the cultural memory we protect.
It may be measured by whether our children know who they are.
It may be measured by whether our elders are honored.
It may be measured by whether our art, our history, and our contributions remain visible despite efforts to erase or diminish them.
For generations, Black communities built schools when schools were denied, businesses when opportunities were limited, newspapers when our stories were ignored, and institutions when existing ones refused to serve us.
They understood something important:
Success is not only participation.
Success is creation.
Success is stewardship.
Success is continuity.
The question before us today is not whether we should continue seeking opportunity and equity. We should.
The question is whether we are also building the relationships, institutions, archives, businesses, and communities that can endure regardless of who occupies positions of power.
Maybe the question isn’t simply how we measure success now.
Maybe the question is:
Can we build a definition of success that no election, policy change, or administration can take away?
That definition would have to live in our homes, our communities, our relationships, our businesses, our art, and our willingness to build for people we may never meet.
That’s a much harder measure of success.
But it is also a much more durable one.
Perhaps success today is measured not by how fully we are included in someone else’s vision of the future, but by how intentionally we create our own.
The challenges before us are real.
So is our history of resilience.
The work continues.
The question is no longer simply, “Have we arrived?”
The question may be:
“What are we leaving behind for those who come next?”
And perhaps that is how we measure success now.
