My Thoughts As A Mensan

I was about to order a Mensa pin,  modest but personally meaningful bling for my plain black bags. 

While I was mulling it over, I looked up whether Mensa membership is actually prestigious and what recruiters think when they see it on a resume.  

I think listing it on a resume asks for trouble in the sense that coworkers may think they can leave you without support because they know you’re in Mensa.  They either think you don’t need support or they think you are self-aggrandizing and want to see you dressed down. 

I haven’t met any Mensans who cause me to put on my Raybans when encountering their brilliance.  Likewise, my own membership may surprise many.  I admit it surprised me to be invited to join.  Although many Mensans are quite accomplished, many more did not have much opportunity to climb the same ladder to any great height.  Whether privileged or not, most truly brilliant people don’t need to bother to draw further attention to their intellect anyway – it is often firing nonstop and needs no virgins with baskets of rose petals leaping ahead of it . . . and certainly not the pin I was ogling.  

In fact, it has been my observation throughout my secretarial career that ambitious women from hardscrabble backgrounds are generally  the sharpest knives in the drawer - and not just the secretarial drawer.  In a more fair world, they would have been snapped up and groomed for greater things.  You cannot buy their backbone and agility, and certifying their gifts seems insipid.  I never counted myself among them.  I don't know if anyone else ever did.

Membership provides one indispensable value to someone like me: Mensa membership is the only recognition I’ve received where I’m pretty certain the race card cannot be played.  I can never be certain that most of my grades in school or reviews at work were not puffed up (or downgraded) merely because the reviewer had a certain opinion of my race that my comportment quelled or failed to quell.  

As for advertising Mensa membership, at least one journalist nailed it:  if you’re all that brilliant, you probably don’t need to say so BUT if the company needs a brilliant outlier for its particular goals, advertising your Mensa membership could be helpful to set you apart.  Otherwise, you mostly look either arrogant or insecure.  

At various times in my life, I've surely come off as both.

So, I might ultimately grab a pin because, while you must prove membership to obtain it, it is not expensive; I am entitled to wear it, and being self-conscious about my lack of academic credentials and high-status professional chops, I enjoy the little boost of self regard I get from wearing it.  But like any charm, it doesn’t really need to be obvious . . . I suppose it can be placed in such a way as to serve as a conversational icebreaker if noticed rather than to draw attention in a prominent location.  I don't really have plans to discuss the pin, beyond this post. Its greatest utility, beyond my vanity, is to quietly convey the passive message my generation has largely been indoctrinated to carry that there’s nothing wrong with being black and, so, yes, there are black people in Mensa, as in all walks of life.