Lessons From Great Minds of The Past
And the Perils of the Present-Day Black Activist Culture
Recently, I had a conversation with a friend about a conversation that he had with a lawyer friend of his in the US about successful Black people thinking of moving to Canada or the UK because they feel they could be “victimized” under the coming Trump administration. It is amazing what unnecessary stresses and imaginative anxieties people can generate that can lead to delusional and ill-considered decisions. First of all, racism and discrimination against Black people are universal, just different shades of grey. But that’s beside the point; this is an educated person who went to law school, has a good law practice, has thrived through the first Trump administration and will continue to do so into the future, irrespective of who is president.
There is no link between “Trump” and your success as a Black person. Don’t let it be a distraction; “Trump’s America” existed way before Trump did and so too long after he’s gone. So, if you create hyperbolic thoughts and make things a bigger deal than they are, you also create imaginary barriers and expend time, resources and energy in solving problems that don’t exist. Manifesting misery with fears and anxieties for endless self-inflicted suffering. These are the perils of the Black activist-victimhood culture.
Suffering is a choice we make based on our thinking and the decisions we make. Life and happiness are not the absence of challenges but having challenges and managing through them — this is life!
Stoicism teaches us that we should worry less about what we cannot control and focus more on what we can control. Most of the worries are created from our own imagination…which usually never comes to pass. Our outcomes, therefore, are more about the real actions we take than what we imagine, think or talk about.
In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius, a Stoic philosopher, wrote that the most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what people can and cannot change. Writing that the suffering we experience is not due to the thing itself but to one’s estimate of it.
We must understand how the real world works, what drives it and its people, and human nature, which is fundamental to satisfy the human conditions need for security, which is underpinned by the characteristics, events, and experiences that make up the human experience. All of which requires money to achieve!
All cultures are universal for parents pushing kids to education and entrepreneurship because it’s the most proven path to security for the human condition, to strive for shelter and sustenance, security, and wealth. All of that comes through the economics we create for ourselves and family. The human condition knows, a priori, the fundamentals of the sophistication of self-preservation in the physical world.
Black activist-victimhood culture can be counterproductive to Black people’s lives because it goes against the productive nature of economic self-interest. Adopting a monolithic activist culture and blanketing an entire people under it serves to suffocate our innate sophistication of self-preservation, brilliance and diversity within our people. It’s supportive of wrongly creating a Black identity as one of victimhood when it’s really one of strength, perseverance and resilience. The woke-victim identity goes against the nature of how humans have always survived and thrived in the physical world for thousands of years. It’s a losing mentality! It goes against human biology, the natural selection of things — adaptation to harsh environments that form our natural intelligence and sophistication to compete and survive and pass on the DNA genes of success intergenerationally.
So, when it comes to prosperity and power, many in the Black community don’t grasp the reality of nature in the 21st century. Many continue to be misguided and engaged in a 20th-century activism politics culture, but it simply doesn’t work and is counterproductive to proven intelligent strategies and tactics for winning.
If we continuously air our aspirations in emotionally driven convoluted ideas about prosperity and power, we give those who want to stop us the time and tools to put up barriers. So, “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt,” said Sun Tzu, The Art of War.
DEI, for example, although well intended, has become self-defeating — a manifesting barrier. How has DEI worked out? Where are all the companies that promoted DEI and racial equity? They’ve long been quietly shutting down those programs. Where are all the “Allies” now? They are back to putting their self-interest and privileges first — human nature — the sophistication of self-preservation. It was all a distraction of epic proportion, an unnecessary setback because people let emotion override their cerebral, rational minds.
Not understanding the economic nature of things or how the world really works can lead many to put superfluous efforts into fleeting activities. The post-George Floyd “racial equity” narratives and initiatives that popped up all over the place, creating nice salaries for its creators, only created more problems to solve.
Equity is not given away, i.e., everyone gets a medal. In the real world, only the winners get rewarded. Stop with the woke fantasies, that’s not how the world works. No one is going to share their wealth, opportunities or privileges with you. Ill-gotten or not, no one is coming to save you. It is up to you to build wealth yourself through education, entrepreneurship and investing in each other’s entrepreneurship in community prosperity. This is how other groups have done it, so there is no other way or experimental alternative universe.
The Black community lacks authentic leadership and courage…like many Black leaders of the past had. Two of those types of leaders come from the late 19th and 20th centuries, W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. Many believe these two were on opposite sides of the success equation relative to the strategies they proposed for Black social and economic progress. However, if you read the many writings written for yourself and not the cursory reviews and opinions of others, both men are effectively saying the same thing about Black progress but led by their own experiences.
Booker T. Washington was an educator, reformer, and the most influential Black leader of his era (1856–1915) who preached a philosophy of self-help and racial solidarity. Like the Stoics, he urged Blacks to accept the reality of their existence, racism and the discrimination that comes with it, but by “acceptance,” he didn’t mean giving in to it. Just the opposite. He believed you couldn’t change the hearts and minds of people who engage in hate and racial supremacy, so it was futile to put any energy into it. It will only exhaust and burn you out.
Instead, Booker T. Washington urged Black people to concentrate on elevating themselves through hard work and material prosperity. He believed that education in the crafts, industrial and farming skills and cultivation of the virtues of patience, enterprise, and thrift would ultimately put Black people in a position to succeed over the long run. Controlling their own destiny regardless of the discriminatory environment. Washington wrote that the pursuit of our economics is the most practical, logical, and proven human path to take.
W.E.B. Du Bois, a towering black intellectual, scholar and political thinker (1868–1963), his strategic angle said that social change could be accomplished by developing a small group of college-educated blacks he called “the Talented Tenth:” “The Negro Race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education then, among Negroes, must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth. It is the problem of developing the best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the worst.” Du Bois preached the development of leadership through education because leadership is significantly important to a group’s progress and prosperity. So, although there may appear to be differences between the two men, there really weren’t any. The only is that of tactics, effectively, both preached the same strategy.
Marcus Garvey (1817–1940) said, “Never forget that intelligence rules the world and ignorance carries the burden. Therefore, remove yourself as far as possible from ignorance and seek as far as possible to be intelligent.” Intelligence is created by knowledge, and applying knowledge intelligently to those value-creating tasks leads to ingenuity and enterprise, which leads to wealth and prosperity for the ambitious. And this is where you find the political power.
So, for two long, Black people have accepted the burden of ignorance by not applying their intelligence to economics and shifting their mindset away from the pursuit of an activist-political culture…to an enterprising, knowledge-based entrepreneurial one.
The President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, said a couple of years ago that African countries should stop “begging” from the West to earn global respect and change poor perceptions about the continent. “If we stop being beggars and spend African money inside the continent, Africa will not need to ask for respect from anyone; we will get the respect we deserve. If we make it prosperous as it should be, respect will follow,” Mr. Akufo-Addo made the remarks during the opening of the US-Africa Leaders’ Summit in Washington DC.
The message can be taken to the Caribbean, Black Americans, Black Canadians too, etc., we have to stop looking to others to do for us what we must do for ourselves. We must invest in our economics: entrepreneurship, education, and leadership and stop looking at government programs, DEI, or whatever else that can be conveniently concocted in reactionary times.
Change requires long-term thinking and investment in self, education and skills in other entrepreneurs within our own community, and it requires a mindset shift. Power is a long-term play; it doesn’t happen overnight; communities must generate wealth to attain power because the world is run on power. Powerful networks of wealthy people who influence institutions and organizations to their self-interests and that of their networks.
Politics is not, never has been, and never will be the path to power and prosperity; economics is! Du Bois and Washington are together on that, and so too are Garvey, Fredrick Douglass, and Malcolm X. You just have to read their writings and think for yourself to understand.
Education expands the mind to think more critically and formulate those good ideas that can help your entrepreneurship; you too can “Think And Grow Rich.” Mindset is everything! It creates your economics and, in turn, your political power. Not the other way around. Economics, therefore, has never been a morality play; it’s a power play! So, unless we make genuine efforts to understand how power is cultivated in the real world and then intelligently and effectively apply our knowledge strategically, prosperity will remain elusive for Black communities.
Power rests at the very center of the universe; it’s the force that moves and makes things happen, without it, you can have no meaningful movement and will remain in the abyss — at the bottom of the proverbial wealth curve.
Black communities are not monolithic; individuals must think critically and think for themselves. Don’t suffer wilful ignorance and be misguided. Stay away from inauthentic and incapable leaders and the woke industry. It’s up to you to lead yourself, take personal responsibility, read more and do your own research. Don’t become stupefied by the ignorance and nonsense on social media. Be the arbiter of your own life.
The world is not fair, so the economics you create dictates your outcomes and your created fairness. Stop wasting precious time with emotions and political activism, your time here on earth is infinitesimal. Focus on economics, the long-term and inter-generationally. Take action because if we don’t build an economic foundation for future opportunities for the next generations, nothing will change. That’s a legacy I don’t want. Wealth and privilege are created through economics, that’s the bottom line, so let’s strive to create our own “Black Privilege” because it’s in our human nature to do so!
