What Is the Measure of Our Success

The other day I was at Waffle House and an elder Black gentleman pulled up in a Rolls Royce, equipped with fur coat and cane. While he may have personified a stereotypical pimp, what truly bothered me was the response of the various White people in the restaurant. Anyway, as he proceeded to sit down and eat his food, an old White man kept clearing his throat to get his attention, and once he did, he gave him a thumbs up. Now at first, I paid it no mind, but as the man proceeded to give the man a thumbs up and as other people in the restaurant asked him question such as 'did it ride good,' 'what year is it' and 'where did it come from,' I began to wonder, did these people feel that this man needed their approval to obtain his success? I might have overreacted, but to me it seemed to me that they were giving him a "you done good boy," attitude and that did not sit well with me. Do we as Black people insist on achieving material wealth to in a sense prove that we have arrived and are not the worthless, no good coloreds that we have been made to believe that we were? Do we as a people feel that we must compete within our society and tear down each other so that we can prove our worth to White America? It seems to me that our society has learned how to get and has forgotten how to be. Part of me wonders, are we so willing to wear our work on our backs to prove that we have achieved, that we have arrived that we have actually forgotten what it is that we were supposed to achieve? There's nothing wrong with material success, but when that comes at the expense of our dignity and at the cost of our respect as a people, is our success truly worth it?