This book is absolutely powerful. A compilation of interviews and personal memoirs that describe the success of Blacks in America by way of Black Magic. Chad weaves his own millennial experience with those of Black leaders in various industries to describe the Black experience. It's vulnerable, has given me a lot to think about, and has reminded me to constantly be aware of and focus on perspectives other than my own.

This should be a required read for all. This book is indeed magic. For anyone that needs inspiration, this is the book. Yes, it is based on the workforce, but it can also be inspiring in a lot of areas. Why do I say this? I will tell you why. This book throughout the pages gives on hope. Read this book. You are doing yourself an injustice if you don’t. Thanks to Netgalley, the author and the publisher for the arc of this book in return for my honest review. Receiving this book in this manner had no bearing on this review.

Black Magic is an attitude that successful American Blacks all seem to have in profusion and variations. According to Chad Sanders in Black Magic, it can be many different things, from drive to perseverance to empathy to connections. In his delightful and wide-ranging collection of interviews and personal memoirs, Sanders develops the concept of Black Magic into a very real strategy that make the difference in Black careers. It is a fascinating and most worthwhile investment to make –for them and for readers.

Growing up Black in America can be torture. Good parents find they must teach their children to twist themselves into numerous contortions to avoid trouble, from beatings to arrests to death. Blacks have to be extra careful, extra aware, and extra vigilant. They must instantly evaluate every word and gesture from whites, and find a way to dress and speak that works in their particular situations. It’s a crazy way to live, but if they can master all the necessary tricks, they can develop tools that leverage their own talents. They have turned their blackness into a concrete advantage. That is the magic, and it is different for everyone.

It starts with freedom: independence. Sanders quotes Maya Angelou: “You can’t be free if you feel you belong someplace. You can only be free when you realize you belong no place – you belong every place.” This unleashes all kinds of potential and opens the mind to all kinds of possibilities.

A number of Sanders’ interviewees cite their exceptionalism. They are often the only Black on the team. While this might be taken as tokenism, the smart ones leverage it. Brian Shields says everyone, but everyone, knows who he is at his finance firm, because he’s the only one who fits his physical description. He stands out in any gathering, any meeting. He gets to talk to people he wouldn’t normally be able to approach. He is constantly under scrutiny, and it has forced him to excel, far beyond his peers. He also says it makes networking really easy. Tokenism can be a form of Black Magic.

There is also Black Solidarity, in which American Blacks help each other up the ladder. They all know how hard it was to get just this far, and how isolated so many feel. So mentoring is very big part of Black Magic for a number of successful Blacks. In Sanders’ own case, a chance coffeeshop meeting with the director Spike Lee led to Lee taking him to several production studios in Los Angeles to try to sell his tv pilot. Lee and Sanders had gone to the same black college, where solidarity is a way of student life. Sanders was too insecure to send his script to Lee, but a professor of his did. From being days away from his last dollar, Sanders became an overnight success thanks to the combination of connections, mentoring, and perseverance ie. Black Magic.

Sanders had a successful career twisting himself into shapes and sizes acceptable to Google, where he learned the ropes of working with whites, and racked up valuable experience in various offices around the country and the world. (It was also key to meeting most of the interviewees in the book.)He describes how conscious he was of being sufficiently “googly”, the measure of every employee. But it was too much to ask: “My voice as a writer comes from being alone for so many years with my own thoughts, squished and compressed by all-encompassing, suffocating whiteness. Nearly all the business leaders and entrepreneurs featured in this book talked about this feeling.“ So he listened to his muse and struck out on his own.

The book is peppered with his reminiscences of discrimination, insults and micro-aggressions, many of which are unintentional (ignorant insensitivity), but which change relationships forever. Sanders interviews about as many women as men, from backgrounds dirt poor to solidly middle class and privileged.

There can be a sameness to some the success stories. People can be generous once successful, and evaluating their own successes and talents can be a bit suspect. And while all the successful Blacks he interviews claim to be constantly on their guard and conscious of their Blackness, the facts are that co-workers salute the office as much as the occupant, ensuring and enshrining their positions of power.

A number of instances in the book reminded me of my own experience, only my attributions were different. For example, DeRay McKesson remembers that in sixth grade, his teacher wrote something incorrect on the board. This was a life-altering shock to him, because whites were always right. They never made mistakes. I had the same experience, a couple of grades earlier, but my evaluation wasn’t about whites but about teachers, who until that point I assumed were infallible (which is after all, what they wanted us all to believe). It wasn’t that teachers were women or white, but powerful people in charge of me five days a week. It was interesting to read that the same situation played out so differently for a Black American. (McKesson also points out that the education system is not broken, it was designed this way. Fixing it is the wrong term. It needs to start over completely.)

Similarly, my own corporate experience led me to be very wary of others and be self-aware. I was forever observing others, trying to read higher-ups, weighing the words I used and trying not to stand out for the wrong reasons. Never did find that career-boosting mentor that so many of Sanders’ profiles both exhibit and benefited from. I think most ambitious people take this approach to some extent. It is not special to Black Americans.

There is a great deal of angst over skin color in the book, and those with lighter shades had to worry – and prove – they were Black enough. “Passing” as white allowed some to be able to evaluate both sides and learn how to succeed both because of and in spite of their color. (I wish Sanders had put images of them atop their sections, if only because he asks them so much about it.) Their heightened sensitivities are impossible for solidly whites to understand as a way of life. They chose to identify as Black and made it work for them rather than against them. This is a special class of success stories.

One of the most poignant interviews is with Quincy Avery, who trains Black quarterbacks. On his own. He seeks out talented players, right down to high schools and works with them to succeed. It’s a different path than for whites, because Blacks must not only be far better quarterbacks, they have to be far better people and citizens, able to deal with the slurs and slanders, the discrimination and the prejudice, the double standards and the lack of encouragement or respect. For Avery himself, it has been a long slow path to success, but he can quantify it now: “Things that are debilitating can be used as a bonus. It can give you the extra push. There is an advantage in every disadvantage if you just learn how to use it correctly and learn how to push through it and see the good in it. I learned how to communicate with a bunch of people in different ways and use all the things that other people might have used against me.” I liked his story best.

Sanders split the book into chapters on aspects not of business but of life: family, school, college, work, and church. The table of contents lists key quotes from his interviews in each chapter. Some people get mentions in more than one chapter, but Sanders has been careful not to be repetitious – or pedantic. It is a fascinating rollercoaster ride through the minefield, executed with a smooth style that is constantly inviting.

One final shot: Sanders acknowledges that Blacks have traditionally gotten in, when they could at all, via the back door. In his book, he looks at success not as the back door but the Black door, AKA Black Magic. It’s mostly an intriguingly different way to tackle an age-old issue. And a delightful kick in the teeth to American racism.

David Wineberg