The taste of success: how to live and thrive as black scholars in inequitable and racialized professional contexts

Successful black or nonwhite healthcare scholars represent ideal role models for young, aspiring, and underrepresented healthcare professionals. Unfortunately, their successes are often celebrated by many who do not have a proper understanding of the rough journey they went through, to get to the positions they attained. Most black healthcare professionals, if asked, would share that the secret behind their success is working twice as hard as their white peers. Based on the author’s lived experience, a recent academic promotion triggered some personal reflections that resulted in a teachable case story presented in this article. Unlike most conversations that focus on the career challenges of black healthcare physicians and scholars, this discourse uses an empowering context to highlight how scholars can excel within inequitable professional contexts. The author uses this case to describe the 3Rs of resilience, which is a construct that can help black scholars thrive in inequitable and racialized professional contexts.