Amaya tries out a new look in this week’s episode of Black Enough, “Talented Tenth.” In the last three episodes, viewers became accustomed to Amaya’s casual look, either clad in yellow shirts and dresses or decked out in her dancer gear. Lena picks at her for buying a whole new outfit to hang out with an old flame (?) in a new context, but in the end, Amaya arrives to play spades with the Weston Crown Scholars in a dashiki and earrings in the shape of the continent.

The Weston Crown Scholars are varying degrees of welcoming to Amaya. Once the game starts, the conversation turns to Barack Obama, the first Black president. The debate is lively, and revealing: Dre questions whether Obama did enough, Ember defends him and his policies, while Vaughn lands on the side believing his very presence in the White House was a political statement in and of itself. Dre accuses Vaughn of engaging in “respectability politics,” when she states that “Black Excellence” has to account for something. Eventually, they ask Amaya to weigh in and she carefully notes his introduction of ObamaCare. When the conversation spins out even further, she cites her Diaspora Studies class as the basis for her interpretation of Blackness as subjective– a move that causes Vaughn to lash out.

After Vaughn’s verbal dressing down, things move on smoothly…until Amaya reneges.

How many of y’all play spades? If you do, and even if you don’t, you probably know that reneging is one of the most telling signs you don’t know how to play. In Amaya’s case, the example is that she played a spade when she had a heart she could have played.

Yikes.

The Weston Crown Scholars are unforgiving, particularly Vaughn and, surprisingly, Tryston. What should have been just a game turned into yet another moment in which Amaya felt as if she did not belong.

She runs out crying, only to be discovered by Jaheem as he walks home from work. He consoles her with music: back to back, they listen to music in a shot that draws directly from the original cinematic love letter to hip-hop, Brown Sugar (2002).

In a beautiful moment, deepened by “Loveyou” by KAT ft. Deja, Jaheem reaches for Amaya and tells her, “You good.” And in that moment, in the space between beats, we believe Amaya is safe.

While it would be easy to attribute that safety to Jaheem, I want to complicate that notion and consider that it’s the music, hip-hop, that throws Amaya the life line. Amaya is a dancer– music is the backdrop of her entire life. Music is dance’s soul sister, so it follows that with this song Jaheem is able to speak Amaya’s language. For once, she’s not worried about being “enough” in any capacity. Instead, she’s whole.

This is what hip-hop can do for us.

Further Reading:

“The Talented Tenth,” W. E. B. Du Bois (1903)

“My President Was Black,” Ta-Nehisi Coates (2017)

Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women, Brittney C. Cooper (2017)

“Brown Sugar Is Still A Love Letter to the Golden Age of Hip-Hop,” Tari Ngangura (2018)