“You Got Book Smarts, But You Ain’t Got No Common Sense.”

A closer look at the favorite insult of the insecure, the unhealed, and the anti-intellectual, especially when it comes from your own people.

black person reading

“You’re book smart, but you ain’t got good common sense.”

“If common sense were ink, you wouldn’t be able to make a period.”

My adoptive mother used to say this shit to me, like it was scripture. This was a woman who didn’t finish sixth grade, went to church at least four days a week, and still had to flip over the damn flashcards to figure out 3 + 5. She could barely read or write, had to drag her finger across the Bible just to keep her place, and thought teaching math meant hitting me with a belt when I didn’t get the answer fast enough.

She was the kind of adult who couldn’t teach me to solve for x, but had no problem trying to beat the why out of me. Couldn’t hold an intelligent conversation beyond church gossip or who was “acting funny” that week or whose child was gonna end up a pregnant teen or in prison soon.

And yet she looked me dead in the face, with the unwavering confidence of someone who thought Genesis was a science textbook, and told me my intelligence didn’t count. As if everything I had learned, built, and would become could be canceled out by her suspicion and a switch.

Flash forward.

I’m grown now. Got degrees on degrees. I write books anshit. I teach college students. I open minds. I use big words correctly. And here comes the same dusty-ass chorus from people who look like me:

“Dr. Patton ain’t got common sense.”

“All them degrees don’t mean nothing if you don’t got common sense.”

“You just an educated fool.”

“She’s only educated on paper.”

Let’s talk about it.

Because when I was a kid, hearing that felt like punishment for thinking too much. Like every big word I learned was a brick in the wall between me and love. Like my curiosity made me disloyal. Like the more I knew, the less I’d be held. I learned to tuck my brilliance behind my back like contraband—because in that house, knowing things was dangerous.

But when I got my PhD, I winced when people called me “Dr.” The instinct to flinch was already muscle memory. Not because I wasn’t proud. But because I knew what that title sounded like to people who were raised to think my excellence was a threat:
Who does she think she is?

I didn’t want people to think I thought I was better than them. I had been trained by some family members, by church folks, by every sideways glance to shrink my light just enough to stay relatable. To not outgrow the room. I learned early that being too smart, too articulate, too clear could get you labeled arrogant, uppity, or ungrateful.

So when I finally earned the title, I wore it like a loose coat, never too snug, never too loud, because I knew what people heard wasn’t “Doctor.” They heard: “I’m above you.” And I was still trying to be loved. And I was still trying not to lose anyone by becoming myself.

The fact is, highly educated Black folks, especially women, are hated just as much as the ones they stereotype as lazy or ignorant. Ironically, even by the ones who told us over and over again that we had to be “twice as good.”

These are the same folks who chant the gospel of “get your education” like a mantra, who threaten their kids with homelessness if they bring home a C, who say “education is the key” until you actually unlock the door. And then suddenly, it’s: “Who you think you are?” “You trying to be better than everybody?” “You forget where you come from.” “You got all that education, but no common sense.”

TF!

But here’s the real function of that phrase: it ain’t about “sense” at all. It’s about power, control, and ego. It’s what small-minded, unhealed people say when they can’t match your intellect, so they try to shrink you down to size.

They can’t outthink you, outwork you, or outgrow you so they reach for the only tool they’ve got: condescension wrapped in cliché. It’s emotional smoke-and-mirrors, a verbal sleight of hand meant to make you doubt yourself so they don’t have to sit with their own inadequacy.

For real, nobody secure in themselves is out here throwing “you ain’t got no common sense” at people who are just smarter, clearer, or more evolved. That’s a psychological defense mechanism. A Hail Mary from folks who’ve built their whole identity around being the “realest in the room” but feel deeply threatened when someone walks in with language, knowledge, and receipts

.They weaponize “common sense” because it’s vague, unmeasurable, and conveniently subjective. It can mean anything and nothing at the same time. It’s what people throw at you when your literacy, your analysis, your clarity makes them feel exposed. It’s projection wrapped in folksy shade.

Real talk, the phrase “you ain’t got common sense” is almost always thrown at people who actually do have sense. It’s just not the kind that makes other people feel comfortable. It’s used to humble you. To “put you back in your place.” To imply that being educated is somehow incompatible with being grounded.

But what they’re really saying is: “I don’t understand you, and that makes me insecure.” “You left and went into the world, and I’m still sitting by the shadows.” “You reflect back to me everything I didn’t get to become, and I don’t know what to do with that.”

That’s not “common sense.” That’s common insecurity.

And if the kind of “sense” that’s considered common keeps Black folks punishing each other for evolving, then maybe it’s time we stop aspiring to be common.

We call out ableism, elitism, classism—rightfully so. But what almost never gets named is the reverse: the hostility, resentment, and subtle punishment directed at Black folks who excel. Who are brilliant, articulate, educated, healed, or just whole.

We don’t talk about the shame thrown at the child who reads too well. The side-eyes at the adult who uses big words. The jokes made at the expense of someone who enunciates, analyzes, or simply dares to have a thought that isn’t soaked in struggle. We’ve made room, rightfully, for calling out systems that exclude or demean the most vulnerable. But we rarely examine how some of those same systems train us to resent those who rise.

There’s a real social cost to being a Black person who surpasses expectations, especially in your own community. Not because you’ve abandoned anyone, but because your success becomes a mirror. And instead of inspiration, it triggers all the unhealed wounds. All the fears of not being enough. All the generational messages that told us brilliance = betrayal.

Maybe, just maybe, we need more people who make others uncomfortable by refusing to shrink. Who make the room shift when they speak. Who choose learning, growth, and liberation, even when it costs them approval.

Because if being smart, principled, and free means I don’t have “common sense,” then fuck it, I’ll stay uncommon then.

And y’all can keep your damn flashcards.

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