Winter is Coming, the Peril of the Black North
When Nicolaus Copernican said that the earth circled the sun and not the sun that circled the earth, at the time this was considered revolutionary. A dramatic change because the perception had always been that the Earth, not the sun, was at the centre of the cosmos. However, the Copernican revolution was no revolution at all but just the nature of reality. The point is, that although some things may seem a certain way or something appears to be a good idea, the reality can be completely different. We often rely on our past experiences, traumas, and the perceptions we form to shape our decisions. Neuroscientist, Anil Seth, in his best selling book, Being You says that “our brain is the organ of experience…of uncontrolled perceptions…is indeed a form of controlled hallucination.” Therefore, our human challenge remains to make good decisions based on adequate information within the context of our experience-based brains. Never easy because our predictive experience minds, more often than not, lead us to constant errors in judgment based on poor emotionally-charged decision-making.
Aristotle told us over 2000 years ago that the universe can’t be anything other than what it is, so the laws of nature…human nature…our existence in the metaphysical world, are about self-preservation. Hence, human behaviour, how we perceive ourselves, is not about knowing ourselves but about controlling ourselves — how we stay alive. Fundamentally, life is about survival, economic conflict, and scarce resources. So how we choose to organize ourselves in this systemic environment will determine the level at which we can thrive. As Canadians of African descent, unless we understand the nature of our survival, the potential to thrive in nature will be one of trivialities at the bottom rungs of the universe. So, it is important how we perceive things and ourselves because that is fundamental to our trajectory.
Adam Smith in the 18th century described the nature of human behaviour in his seminal work The Wealth of Nations. A book not about “capitalism” as many have wrongly come to believe, but a book that inherently explains human behaviour in the context of economic decision-making. How life revolves around self-preservation for individual gain, in a conflict-driven world. From our evolution from hunter-gathers to sedentary societies everywhere, the universal truth is that humans have always organized successfully around self-preservation instincts: self-interest, and the interests inherent to theirs and their tribe’s survival. Smith explained how individual self-interest in seeking personal gain is good, benefits the group, and plays out through the sophistication of innovation and entrepreneurship. In short, wealth creation is the natural instinctive path to security as it satisfies the most fundamental needs of the human condition: self-preservation, sustenance, reproduction, safety, belonging, and society. So, naturally, if you don’t fight intelligently to control the factors of production, others will control it for you, and your life and your sense of security will be wanting and anxious. So, profit, wealth, power, and privilege will forever be elusive to you if you do not know how to compete effectively in the universe.
Therefore, economics is not a morality play, it’s a power play, and like the Copernican revolution, you might have perceived things differently before, but the reality of the universe has never changed, whether you know it or not.
Wilful ignorance about nature can lead to perceiving things other than what they are, making life more difficult than it is. So, we can often fall for unread, ego-driven leadership with good stories to tell, because it’s easy to understand and soothes us in the short term. And the fact is people are just too lazy to engage in critical thinking because it’s hard to do, hard to take control of their own lives — “sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed” said Friedrich Nietzsche.
Leadership matters and adherence to reality matters a whole lot more! So, organizations like the Black North Initiative (BNI) have emerged onto the scene in the wake of the George Floyd event, and have become distractive hindrances to real progress for Black Canadians. BNI’s primary modus operandi is engaging in high emotionally-led offering solutions about how Black people must close the wealth gap. BNI has built an advocacy organization by exploiting the emotions of both Black and White people. But, the big fundamental error it makes is not understanding that change seeking decisions, based on a singular event, that occurs at a particular point in time, is not optimal for good outcomes. In reality, decision making is a process fraught with many contributing dependent and independent variables. Therefore, when putting forward solutions, we must recognize that they are essentially theoretical arguments and must be evaluated through the application of scientific values, values based on cognitive rationality. Plainly stated, offered up solutions must be logically coherent and empirically warrantable.
Good leaders, who can recognize and appreciate the complexity of decision-making, can go on to make far better decisions than those who make event-driven decisions based on the emotional intrinsic nature of intuition.
The poor leaders often view decision-making as a contest, creating solutions through their perception of themselves. They do not see things as they are, they see them as they are, and how they want others to perceive them. They present information selectively, withholding relevant conflicting data or not bothering to pay attention to data and quantitative analysis at all. Things become highly subjective, with no objective truth-finding processes to be found. However, proper advocacy leadership requires objectivity, careful attention must be paid to identifying those critical factors involved, including constructive management of one’s ego, and making sure good analysis and relevant viewpoints are heard and “cleaned” through iteration. Therefore, advocacy strategies, in general, can’t be built on one’s idiosyncratic view of the universe. So let’s not be naive. BNI leadership provides no framework for analysis and decisioning optimization, it remains a personality play at its core. Your heart can be the catalyst for your actions, but leadership must come quickly to recognize and come around to account for dealing with reality.
Non-adherence to reality, willful ignorance of the systemic environment; simply not knowing that the sun is at the centre of the universe, make BNI a threat to Black Canadians’ intelligent economic ambitions. Whites have also gotten drawn into poor emotional decisioning by supporting organizations like BNI. They go along with bad solutions and policy, primarily out of fear of being seen or called racist if they resist. Effectively, both, White and Black, begin the slide down the slippery slope of wokeness culture where Blacks behave like victims, and Whites have guilty feelings. In the end, many poor decisions happen and we regress as a Canadian society. Winter is coming, and this is the great peril of the Black North Initiative!
Black, Columbia University Professor of Linguistics, John McWhorter in his most recent book, Woke Racism, How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America; McWhorter points out that “the antiracism we’re being sold isn’t the path to a more just and equitable world for all. It’s a barrier.” So, through evidence and analysis, McWhorter makes the strong case that the prevailing conversation now is about being born White automatically confers privilege even if you’re poor; while being Black marks you as a victim even if you don’t feel like one. According to John McWhorter, the problem is that a well-meaning but pernicious form of antiracism has become not a progressive ideology at all but a new religion — “one that’s illogical, unreachable, and unintentionally divisive.” Like delusional attention-seeking evangelicals — these preachers and false prophets come along as the newly emerging leaders of this new religion, engaging in a controlled hallucination and applying it to dismantle the racist structures that are harming Black people. But instead, are infantilizing Black people and setting up Black youth for fragile states of existence. Embedding subconscious states of inferiority, non-resilience, and fragility into their minds. So, “antiracism” agendas, like BNI’s, are counterintuitive and counterproductive as intelligent and workable strategies. It’s a top-down dogma of racial essentialism that becomes indistinguishable from racist arguments of the past.
Too often, Black communities continue to live in past traumas, and these highly charged emotional states of existence can be triggered by traumatic events, like George Floyd. Pushing people to act out of pure emotion and falling for anyone who can concoct a good story about how they can deliver change to those desperate for it. Judgments are based on the storytellers’ perceptions and intuitions instead of careful analysis and facts, intellectualism gets voided, decisions are emotional, quick, and not made in consciousness. But the opposite is required — attention to the effortful mental activities that demand complex computations, slow, calculating, analytical conscious thought.
So, with that as the backdrop, business owner and corporate insider Mr Wes Hall came along in the wake of George Floyd with a good story to tell — an initiative “to end anti-Black systemic racism throughout all aspects of our lives by utilizing a business-first mindset.” Naive, but a good story nonetheless, based on his controlled hallucination of how he perceives himself and wants others to perceive him. So, subconsciously and subjectively the story becomes all about him. And as we know, the record for successful businessmen coming along, acting on hubris, and claiming they can fix complex socioeconomic problems, by applying their business acumen, is an old, tired, unsuccessful, retread story. So, when someone is bringing you down a dark path, a visually restricted ally, where you can’t see or identify the signs, intuitive survival skills and basic common sense should kick in, telling you that no good can come out of this. But many follow anyway, afraid to speak up for themselves, afraid to challenge or embarrass the self-anointed person leading. Instead of switching on self-preservation instincts, turning and running in the other direction, like sheep, people continue illogically, they become delusional themselves about the pending reality.
BNI is leading Black Canadians straight into peril. Facts, analysis and intelligence must prevail, create a pause, and get off this perilous Black North Road to future disappointment and despair, and setbacks.
Having said that, and for the record, there are good Canadian organizations out there, with clear and sensible agendas that also sprouted up after George Floyd. Organizations that continue to do well-defined work where impact can be reasonably measured.They are not perfect of course but these organizations’ fundamentals are sound and genuine. They are building in challenging times but on solid ground no less. Firstly, the main cornerstone characteristic is that they have authentic founders, leaders, and even from the same Bay St. executive ranks as Mr Hall. They display authentic leadership, intellectual consideration and weight, with practicality, sincerity, and empathy. they are not led by ego, and, so far, have not made it all about themselves. You don’t even know who these founders are, but they are the type of authentic leaders necessary to ensure the organization always keeps it real! No superficial attention-seeking announcements are being made all the time, mainly to draw attention to the profile of the organization’s leaders. It’s not all about the show for them, it’s about the purposeful work to be done based on their core beliefs, it’s about the people they aspire to help. The Black community knows exactly who these leaders are, so I don’t need to say more, besides talk-doh-cook-rice.
The BNI on the other hand is an ill-conceived emotional reaction, separated from reality, and lacking sophistication. It relies solely on one man’s hubris — and we know from our good friend William Shakespeare that excessive pride and self-confidence, in matters where you have no experience can often lead to tragic downfalls. But in this case, the tragedy will be felt by the members of the Black community. This is not about questioning what’s in Mr Hall’s heart, I of course have no idea and make no assumptions about that. However, from what we see and can evaluate, Mr Hall has made himself a very public “advocate” speaking on important issues that affect our community. So we must put the critical lens of analysis onto BNI and examine its solutions for efficacy and impact.
But despite claiming the business-minded approach as the BNI mission statement says, the BNI founder went straight into wokeness culture — with the “I am George Floyd” T-shirt and all. All this is based on high in-the-moment emotional responses which usually lead to ineffective or sub-optimal future outcomes.
BNI rests on its flagship CEO Pledge; signed by Canadian CEOs to address systemic anti-Black racism and increase diversity and inclusion in Canadian businesses and boardrooms. A noble thing to pursue but the initiative has failed to launch. In short, you can’t “mandate” charity tinted, top-down policy theories into the private sector. Nevertheless, in the context of the George Floyd event, emotions were running high at the time, and Canadian CEOs let their emotions and fear get the better of them, signing a nothing pledge. As advertised more than 300 Canadian organizations signed the “BlackNorth’s Pledge.” Suffice to say, that “legislatively” boosting diversity usually only results in token gestures, never transformative. Mr Hall was naive, willfully ignorant, uninformed, displaying laziness in critical thinking, not even bothering to do the necessary critical analysis associated with good decision-making, and strong leadership. Also, Canadian CEOs were disingenuous and took advantage of an unsophisticated and eager Mr Hall, who perceives himself as “the most successful Black man on Bay Street.” That may be true, but the universe doesn’t care, facts remain stubborn.
Mr Hall was conveniently played by Bay St. CEOs, looking to get an easy ESG win; and without having to do anything but sign a meaningless pledge, CEOs were handed a “Hall” pass that could get them nicely passed the George Floyd event. They get a little PR, then get back to doing nothing on diversity. The whole thing was disingenuous and embarrassing, for all involved.
Fast forward to today, we cannot find any evidence of any meaningful change in Canadian executive suites and boardrooms. The Globe and Mail continue to write stories asking questions on the failure of initiatives like BNI, and other similar programs like the Federal government’s Black Entrepreneurship Program, another ill-conceived controlled hallucination scheme but that’s for another piece.
BNI and many of those who know Mr Hall are not surprised by this outcome. Because the “whole thing was disingenuous, to begin with, and he is just riding a wave only for himself,” as one Black tech entrepreneur told me recently. Another one said, that “honestly…he’s purely driven by ego and show…just building his corporate profile in support of his own business interests.” Anyhow, always best to judge for yourself…go directly to the BNI website (blacknorth.ca) and also do your research on the matter, and come to your informed conclusions.
Actions always speak louder than words and to judge someone’s performance fairly we must ultimately focus on what they do versus what they say. Accordingly, Mr Hall’s business achievements, particularly in an industry dominated by white males are outstanding! He should be well credited as an example of the sophistication of self-preservation — through his impressive entrepreneurship. Mr Hall, by all measure, is a Canadian success story, and that can never be taken away from him. However, with his position, influence and power, and in the advocacy realm, he has to do better. Authenticity, responsibility, and accountability must be the standard! We should never be desperate nor settle for anything less. We need to be more discerning, greater care and responsibility are required from anyone who seeks to lead people.
Mr Hall states that his mission is to be an “antiracism” fighter; to assist in advancing Black people economically, but in the same breath, he then goes out and announces on social media that he’s invested in “Aisle 24 Market” an automated cashless convenience store. A good opportunity for him I’m sure, but he publicly announces investing in Asian entrepreneurs/founders while being at the head of a Black economic advancement organization?
How in good conscience can you be the head of a Black advocacy group and then go out and announce investment in Asian entrepreneurs? How does that square? I have no problem with him investing where he wants to, being the leader of a Black organization shouldn’t disqualify anyone from building a good diverse investment portfolio. But leaders have to behave responsibly, like leaders, and make good judgments to maintain credibility and respect. Do you think any leader of a similar, Asian or Jews economic-advancement organization, as a comparison, would do something so unmindful? Of course not, they exist in the real world, in the reality of self-preservation, representing the interests of their “tribe.” At a minimum, Mr Hall shows incredibly poor judgment and a lack of sensitivity, actions that throw significant shade on his authenticity, and cognitive leadership competence.
Mr Hall has pursued and landed a chair on the hit TV show Dragon’s Den. Good for him! But he’ll mostly now be investing in non-black entrepreneurs. Wouldn’t it have made more sense, as the leader of BNI, to use his influence, network, wealth, power, to start a venture fund or something like that, for Black entrepreneurs?
I have no problem with his self-promotion, as a Black man in a white male-dominated Bay St., he must promote himself, as no one else is going to do it for him. I respect him for that, for his relentless ambition! It’s a beautiful thing, and what is required to win. However, I have an enormous problem with anyone using a major social justice issue for their own self-aggrandizement; this reflects very poorly. Furthermore, the evidence is there, what BNI is doing has long been proven a failure in ‘development’ and inequality discourse around the world. Therefore, evidence and efficacy must prevail and always be applied when developing “change” solutions.
The fact remains, that upon examination of the CEO Pledge initiative, and beyond the hype and the headlines, and in the final analysis, there is nothing of any substance to be shown about this CEO Pledge. All that BNI has done is create the perception in Canadian society that Blacks are not capable, they’re charity cases, and the general public is getting tired of hearing that same old tune. Always complaining but doing nothing to help themselves. People are now contrasting the Black community with other ethnic groups that have immigrated to Canada and have been able to survive and thrive, irrespective of the challenges. What about the Jews? Have you taken the time to read their Canadian history? Have you read about the many racist challenges Jews have faced and had to overcome in Canada over the last 100-years or so? Even our Canadian government had anti-Semitic policies in the past— sending back ships of Jewish refugees from Europe during the second world war? What about the Christie Pits Part Riot in 1933 right here in Toronto? Where hate-filled anti-Semitic voices and discrimination filled the air. What about Asian Canadians? World War Two internment camps for Japanese Canadians? Take a trip to the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre in Toronto, and you’ll see that suffering is not unique to Black people in Canadian history.
So maybe we should pause for a moment with all the new religion, look inward and at ourselves more before we look to others, or blame others. Yes, the legacy of slavery was devastating and enduring, but so was the Holocaust. Slavery was not our fault, however, its legacy is still our problem, ours to deal with, and no one else is going to take on our problems for us. Not government, the private sector, or non-profits — we must straighten our backs, lead ourselves, and stand and deliver for our children. Stop being naive and stop falling for nice romanticized stories of wokeness — delusional antiracism theories and agendas. In the end, it’s always up to us! No one is coming to save us.
So, some may ask why I’m writing this piece? Simple, it’s because I don’t talk behind people’s back, and what’s happening now is wrong. We must not just complain, we must present our views and solutions too, and not get trapped in this belief about Blacks must be monolithic; diversity of individual thought benefits the whole. Other voices must make themselves heard to fight the overrun of the backwardness of the new religion. Also, to think effectively and drive change, you can’t be bothered by being afraid to offend people.
Thomas Sowell once said: “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
To fight back with the truth, firstly, we need to adjust our mindset to understand the world for what it is — what is true and what is not true about nature. We must understand self-interest and gain — that the first rule is to survive before you can thrive. Secondly, recognize that rigorous dissemination of fact-based information must be at the very core of our decisioning processes. We must weaponize our intellectualism in our self-interest, and leave emotion at the door. Strategy and tactics are required to win — emotion is for losing. Therefore, if you have made real efforts to understand the universe, then you can’t reasonably believe that others would be willing to share their wealth and privilege with you?
Would it not have been the more genuine, the leadership calibre type thing to do for Mr Hall, to use his position and influence to create a fund to invest in up-and-coming Black founders? To also make private equity investments in Black businesses looking to digital transformation, to effectively compete in a hyper globalized 21st-century world? Technology-based investment and entrepreneurship are what we need, not token Black executives; that’s how how you close the wealth gap, by actually creating wealth — intergenerationally!
Let’s stop being naive, you can’t make real change by trying to change the hearts and minds of people, the universe is about power, and without power, there can be no energy, no forces to drive change. The bottom-up relentless pursuit of power through the sophistication of self-preservation/ entrepreneurship is what we should be teaching young Black people today. Not the woke culture teachings that tell them that they are inherently disadvantaged. My three kids who grew up in a middle-class home in Toronto, and have all gone on to the very top universities in Canada, are not disadvantaged. Tell that to your own kids if you like, but not mine. I tell mine that they have all the advantages in the world, so take advantage of your advantage, because in this family, non-performance is not an option.
So, to have a realistic chance at closing the wealth gap we need to go back to the first principles, we need lots of wealthy Black people — families, we need entrepreneurs, founders…Black millionaires and billionaires. Just like in the real world. Salaried employment and token corporate positions do not create wealth. Once you have the wealth, then you can go and get any amount of board seats you like — equity is the name of the game. That’s how the universe works, and that’s the objective truth. Black people must open their eyes wide, and keep them open; find and invest in promising Black entrepreneurs in the early stages. You have to take risks, there’s no way around that fact, there is no wealth without adventure and risk!
A Black Billionaire I once worked for here in Canada, always talked about finding a role model. So, if Mr Hall is looking for a good role model, I can recommend Black American Billionaire and technology investor, Chairman & CEO of Vista Equity Partners, Robert F. Smith. In September 2019, Mr Smith followed through on a real pledge, paying US$34 million to settle the loan debt for the nearly 400 students who graduated that spring from Morehouse College. Paying off these young Black students’ debt takes a tremendous burden off their backs, burdens many white privileged students never have, as their wealthy parents flip the bill. But now, for these fortunate students, a major portion of their future earnings can go to saving for a house much sooner, starting to build equity rather than paying down debt. Putting them in a better position to compete and win in a hyper-competitive universe. Mr Smith has been doing these types of things over the last ten years without any fan fair, putting close to one billion US dollars into impactful things that help advance Black economics. These are the effective type of things those Black Canadians with true wealth, can authentically and impactfully do!
Riding the global wealth curve requires knowledge, entrepreneurship and leadership; prosperity is not a human right, you must create your own value. Dependency and timidness are fragile states of mind. We must shift to a winning state of mind. No more bedtime stories; telling the hard truths about our responsibility in all this, must be a part of the story that has to be told. There is no progress unless it’s led by truth. And I would rather be disliked in alliance with the truth than to be a loved storyteller in alliance with fantasy.
So, the authentic and effective bottom-up process is the only way forward. Wealth creation requires a long-term mindset — so make education the main thing for your kids, focusing on math and science, technology — understanding how to work with artificial intelligence, because that’s the future of work in the 21st-century. Prepare your kids to be fierce competitors, quantitative thinkers, not woke activists — encourage entrepreneurship and individualism, spirituality over religion, a purpose-driven existence. We don’t need more accountants, lawyers, academics, or government workers in our ranks. We need more tech-savvy generalists, free thinkers, aggressors, those young early adapters, the fearless doers — we need ENTREPRENEURS!
Stop asking others to do for us what we must do for ourselves; contrived government, corporate, and non-profit led programs will not close the wealth gap for us; equity will! You must create value for yourself otherwise you have no value to leverage for your economic interest and gains. The wokeness mindset is fine if it’s channelled effectively, but believing that you can simply have Canadian corporate leaders sign a weightless pledge and begin installing Blacks in senior management positions and onto boards reveals BNI’s leadership knowledge-lightness. Mr Hall gave corporate Canada a big pass, a gift! BNI remains unaware of its surroundings, and the true nature of the universe, and if we keep acting on emotion, following personality instead of real information and analysis, we’ll just keep losing.
As Einstein put it, we cannot solve our problems within the same level of thinking we used when we created them, so we need a higher dimension of thinking to solve them. This is the dimensional level of applying conscious intelligence to our decisioning. Utilizing data for critical analysis — the power of artificial intelligence to augment our decisioning. We need to strategically apply the specific processes of applied intelligence, a process that identifies and determines the correct problems to solve. It defines solutions based on evidence and selects the right technology applications to help solve them effectively — applied intelligence is inherently a bottom-up process, that builds fact-based solutions to solve complex socioeconomic and business problems. A mindset shift must happen where we begin to use quantitative and mathematical thinking processes for effective decision-making, as part of a restructuring of our operating system. We must come to rely on the utility of science to extract value from the universe and turn it into wealth. But without a vision based on realism, coupled with sound data-intense strategy formation, and building robust knowledge-based ecosystems to work for us, winning will remain elusive.
The “antiracism” approach doesn’t work because the universe doesn’t care. Confidence and primal self-preservation instincts must be honed and aligned to the core principles of building intergenerational wealth and opportunity outcomes. Entrepreneurship leads to equity, and big equity allows you to build your own boards and corporate suites, how you like. Tokenism appointments have never worked, or proven sustainable. So instead of going onto the Dragon’s Den show. Maybe Mr Hall can consider leading by example, engaging young, aggressive Black people, particularly Black women because they’ve had it twice as hard, and have been disproportionately carrying the load for their respective families, and communities, for far too long now.
So, forget the show and focus on the dough. Better yet, Mr Hall should ask the 300 CEOs that signed his pledge, to invest in a new “tech venture fund” — to think about creating something useful. He can get investment from those same executives who he publicly calls his “friends.” If this is your network, your world, you should be able to raise a couple of hundred million in venture capital from your boys? Use your influence and get yours and their skin in the game. You know how things roll with relationships among the wealthy, how things happen with the Old Boys network? Unless you’re not a part of that network in reality?
Don’t play the Black community for suckers, don’t try to stick us with paternalistic nonsense, let’s keep it real and do things that are real! You still have the chance to pivot, redeem yourself, reflect and do what’s in the interest of your community. This is the decade of transformation, and if Black folks don’t meaningfully advance through this decade, a 100-year Winter of setback will come to the “Black North.” The wealth gap will become a chasm.
So in the words of John Ruskin:
What we think or what we know or what we believe, is in the end, of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do.
So, what we do from here is to begin to lead ourselves, no more excuses, become less emotional and more self-reliant and get down to the first principles of the sophistication of self-preservation. Be relentless about it, while adhering to the laws of nature — first survive before you can thrive. Position ourselves cleverly, and create strategies to successfully pursue wealth, power, and privilege. Woke organizations like Black North are not the answer, they just intensify and create more problems, they just build more barriers to get over. This new religion…wokeness ideology has become superfluous, a big distraction away from the reality of what must be done. Progress first requires telling the hard truths, living in reality, not reading “How to Be an Antiracist” — these new-religion books hold us back. So, keep your kids far away from that, it will only build weakness and fragility in them. Gain back control of your intellect, your free will and individualism, stay away from the herd, we know from investing experience, that the herd, is seldom right, because if it were that easy we’ll all be rich. Kick emotional decisioning to the curb — no more stories. Quantitative and mathematical thinking toward real feasible actions based on the scientific approach is the path. Always bring a what’s-in-it-for-me mindset to the table. Good outcomes are never an accident, it’s always the result of intelligent effort. So, without an underpinning of applied intelligence firmly rooted, fixed in place, crossing that bridge of change will come with great peril, and will ultimately collapse once the sheer weight of reality sets upon it.
