Current Affairs

“Fear is often our immediate response to uncertainty. There’s nothing wrong with experiencing fear. The key is not to get stuck in it.” – Gabrielle Bernstein

It is inevitable to sit and think that we now live in a world of chaos and uncertainty. Camera phones and 24/7 news coverage have made us really bad at processing big, emotional events in helpful ways. This has led to a more panicked way of life than what we are ought to do. But here is how you can power through this.

It might seem impossible to make sense of a worldwide racial revolt being dropped into the middle of a pandemic in a world that’s already seething with bitter cultural divides, but let’s try anyway.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to get political here. Instead, I’d like to use this as an opportunity to walk you through how I go about processing extremely emotional and upsetting public events such as this. I think this is important because right now, due to social media and camera phones and 24/7 news coverage, as a society we’ve become bad at processing these events in a helpful way. I’ve had to kind of teach myself to go about reading about these things in a more objective manner and it’s not easy. So, I figured I’d break down my process here.

First, when approaching any difficult subject, before even starting, I try to remind myself of a few things:

• There is little evil in the world, but lots of stupidity and selfishness – With the exception of truly heinous crimes, most people are not motivated by evil intentions. In fact, it’s usually the opposite — most people do awful things with the best of intentions. Therefore, we should not assume people’s intentions to be evil, but rather try to understand why they believe what they are doing is good.
• Everyone suffers. The question is, for what reason are they suffering? – It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that nobody should ever be insulted, attacked, hurt, threatened, etc. Not only is this unrealistic, but if we are going to stand up to dangerous groups, individuals, or ideas, we have to be willing to sacrifice. Therefore, the question isn’t whether people should suffer or not, rather it’s a question of whether they are suffering for a good reason.
• Prepare to sit with the contradictions – People and groups can be both good and bad simultaneously. In fact, they usually are. Two opposing viewpoints can each be partially correct and partially incorrect. Evidence can be complicated and suggest contradictory conclusions. Be prepared to sit with these. Your mind will try to push you to be comfortable on one side of the fence or the other, but do not let yourself fall into mental complacency. Life is complicated. Issues are complex. Sit with the uncertainty.

With those assumptions in place, I then start asking myself a series of questions, and do research around the answers:

What is the historical precedent?

There is nothing that happens that has not happened countless other times throughout human history. Human societies, for the most part, are flawed in the same ways and make the same mistakes. But we forget about those mistakes every generation or two, so we end up repeating them.

Getting historical perspective is immediately useful because it snaps you out of irrationally feeling that what’s happening is of “end of the world” proportions. It humbles you to see that every generation before you has gone through a similar struggle. And in most cases, things eventually improved.

In this case, the United States has a long, long, long history of both police brutality and racially-motivated riots stretching back hundreds of years. They happened not so long ago in 2014, in Ferguson and Baltimore. But also the Rodney King riots in 1992, the DNC in 1968, Detroit in 1943, Tulsa in 1921, the Red Summer in 1919, etc. Race riots are as American as baseball and apple pie. And sadly, that’s because racism is as American as baseball and apple pie too. It’s an inextricable part of the country’s history, and despite great progress made over the past 100 years, the data is overwhelming and clear: this continues to be a huge problem today.

What human biases are at play?

If there’s one psychology lesson everyone should be forced to learn in school it’s that human perceptions are fundamentally inaccurate. Your mind takes shortcuts and these shortcuts are, by and large, self-serving. Our perceptions consistently fall into common traps, and unless we’re aware of them, we’ll helplessly fall into them again and again.

There are many such traps, but I’ve found the following to be the most common and consequential:

• Actor/observer asymmetry – When other people do something wrong, we assume their intentions are bad. When we do the same thing, we assume our intentions are good.
• Confirmation bias – The tendency to only seek out views and attitudes that reflect our own. See: all of the social media.
• The fallacies of composition/division – The tendency to judge a whole group based on the actions of one member of that group. Also the tendency to judge an individual based on their affiliation with a group.
• Salience bias – Our tendency to focus on what causes an emotional reaction regardless of whether or not it is important.
• Negativity bias – We pay more attention to negative events and perceive them to be more important than positive events. (Note: This is why the news is always so negative.)
• Impact bias – A tendency to overestimate the future impact of whatever is occurring in the present moment.

The most important bias in the current situation is that of composition/division. Our minds gravitate towards a false “black people vs police” dichotomy. Yet, the reality is far more complicated than that. Police in some cities were marching alongside protesters. Many of the looters and rioters were white, masked, and not part of the protests at all. Most of the protesters were non-violent and most of the police were non-violent. But, due to our negative biases, we saw and remembered the violent ones on each side. And due to our salience bias, we overemphasise the actions of the violent ones over the peaceful majority. And due to the fallacies of composition and division, we make assumptions about two groups based on the actions of a small number of individuals.

Generally, the more incendiary an event, the more “exhausted” our rational minds become and the more we fall back to our mind’s “shortcuts” like the one above. If you familiarise yourself with the above biases, you will soon begin to notice that at least 95% of all political “takes” are simply some form of bias or another. In fact, a lot of news media is designed to leverage these biases to capture and hold your attention. The right does it. The left does it. We all do it. And only by learning to spot these biases in yourself and others can you begin to undo it. Understanding cognitive bias is a type of mental freedom that must be earned through continuous effort.

What are the major socio-economic trends in play?

Okay, here’s where it might start to get triggering, so bear with me. Let’s look at some of the broader social trends going on so we can put some context on what’s happening. What are the social, economic, and political factors that influence this event?

Let’s start with perhaps the most obvious question and the most surprising result. The data is limited and fuzzy, but it seems that police killings of unarmed black suspects are actually down over the past seven years. In fact, it looks like African-American incarceration peaked in the 90s and has been coming down ever since.

Now, let’s slow down for a sec. Chances are that reading that just gave you an intense emotional reaction. I want to state two things clearly: first, just because things have gotten better doesn’t mean they aren’t still a huge problem. And second, just because the public perception is wrong about this, doesn’t mean their anger isn’t legitimate.

Remember, we’re holding contradictory notions in our minds here. Something can be getting better and be wrong, ask Zimbabweans about ED. Some people can be wrong about the facts but right about the issue. Public perception is wrong all the time about stuff like this, but that doesn’t make their anger or frustration invalid. It just means that we have to dig a bit deeper to understand more of what’s going on.

It’s hard to see the riots occurring during the COVID-19 lockdowns as purely coincidence. Black Lives Matter protests have happened regularly over the last five years, but they were almost always peaceful and orderly.

Also, what was striking about the protests was that many of the looters and rioters weren’t black. In fact, from most of the footage I saw, it appeared that the violence was usually instigated by young white men. Many of the Black Lives Matter protesters were even yelling and pleading for the white rioters to stop. Many of the rioters seemed to not even give a hoot about George Floyd or racial equality. They appeared to be in it purely for the mayhem.

I remember reading about geopolitics and that revolutionary movements and civil unrest almost always start with large numbers of unemployed young people (particularly young men). They have the most energy and anger towards the world as well as nothing to lose and nothing better to do. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, 40 million Americans have recently been furloughed or laid off. These layoffs have disproportionately affected the working class, most notably minorities and young people.

Therefore, a picture begins to emerge. Yet another infuriating death of a black man at the hands of a police officer. Mass protests emerge around the world, initially by civil rights groups for racial equality. But amid the chaos of the lockdown and the pent up anger and frustration of the young and unemployed, shit got out of hand.

Which brings me to the last long-term trend, the real frustration that I think is underpinning this unrest: A complete and utter lack of effective leadership. Note: this is not a Trump thing or an Obama thing. Sadly, in the 21st century, it is a WORLD thing.

I am thirty-six years old. Despite crippling problems with health care, education, gun violence, immigration, climate change, stagnant wages, income inequality, and racial equality persisting for my entire adult life, I have never once seen any government help with or resolve any of these issues. For as long as I can remember, it has been: tax cuts, war, tax cuts, bailouts, tax cuts, bailouts. I have never seen things get better in this world. Only worse. I have never seen anything substantive from my leaders in Zimbabwe, that makes me proud of voting for them. Seeing I wasn’t alive for independance. I am too young to remember the tribal massacres of 1987. I don’t give a hoot about the Unity Accord.

My introduction to my nation was Black Friday, followed by hearing about farmers losing their farms crippling the economy, followed by the biggest inflation records on the planet, followed by thirteen more years of absolutely no flippn’ solutions. Eleven million bankruptcies due to a corrupt and dysfunctional government. An entire generation of young people saddled with over a trillion dollars of worthless paper only to stay home and not work as soon as they get out of university.

So, if you’re wondering why the kids are running through the streets destroying everything in sight, now you know. I asked my confidant how they deal with chaos and uncertainty, they said in business they reason over emotion. In their personal life they are emotinal but never react to a situation, they react at. How do you fair in time of chaos and uncdertainty? Would have dived into the COVID-19 but you know how they will shut us down if we do.

Stay safe. Show some love to someone this week, preferably a stranger.

We’re all going to need it.

Photo Credit: Photo by Giovanni Calia from Pexels

“We read, we wrote, we prayed, we cried, we listened, we screamed, we spoke out, we marched, we helped others in need. But how much did we change for good?” – Matthew McConaughey

2020, an interesting year to the say the least. Buying toilet paper became the new gold rush, black people moved closer to being recognised as a people not as armed and dangerous because of the colour of their skin. Donald Trump fought Covid 19 and won ( I didn’t see that one coming).

There is no one out there that can say they clearly predicted the year 2020 and how the world would be in its aftermath. Though through logic and reasoning, those that have survived have managed to explain in their own way how 2020 was. Now allow me to weigh in on how I viewed 2020 through logic and reason.

See, logic will ask such questions:

“Every time a train arrives at the station, there are many passengers on the platform. You arrive at the station and see many passengers waiting on the platform. Is it necessarily true that a train will arrive soon?” 

Pretty much everyone would answer “yes” but then the correct answer is no—just because trains always arrive when there are many passengers does not mean that many passengers will always result in a train arriving. A lot of people find it hard to follow whats going on, struggling to follow the steps in reasoning between “people,” “train,” and “time.” 

Despite the confusion, that question is demonstrating some of the most fundamental principles of thinking:

• Just because two things often occur together does not mean that they will necessarily always occur together.
• Just because a line of reasoning is intuitive does not mean it’s correct—logic can often be counterintuitive.

Logic is the bedrock of pretty much all human knowledge. As such, philosophers have killed many trees over the centuries, analysing and determining the principles that define logic and reason. Their ambition has been to determine what we can know to be true and what we cannot know to be true.

What most people don’t realise is that logical fallacies—that is, errors in judgment and reasoning—are incredibly common in day-to-day life. Worse, we’re mostly unaware of how they disrupt and harm our lives, often in profound ways. These fallacies are right in front of our noses, yet we are so comfortable with our own thought processes that we fail to spot them.

In this blog, I will take you through some of the most common logical fallacies I witnessed in 2020. This will teach you how to not only spot them in yourself but also how to spot them in others. Lets Go!

Correlation is Not Causation

Let’s start with probably the most important fallacy to understand—the one you and I and everyone we know messes up with abandon: correlation is not causation. Just because two things regularly occur together does not mean one causes the other.

Let’s pretend for a second that today, I ate some ice cream and you lost your job. And what’s crazier is that the last time I ate ice cream, somebody else lost their job. Would you then say that me eating ice cream causes people to lose jobs? (If so, this would be one strange superpower.) Or would you simply say these are two common occurrences that happen to be occurring together for a short period of time? You’d say the latter.

Yet, you’d be surprised how often this sort of thing gets passed off as “news” in the world. You often see news articles announcing things such as, “Social Media causes anxiety and depression” or that “unemployment is caused by raising the minimum wage.”

Yet, when you dig into the data, you will find correlations—ice cream and job losses—and not causation. Anxiety and depression increased and social media usage increased. That doesn’t mean one caused the other. It could be a coincidence. There could be some mysterious third force causing both to happen. The arrow of causation could point the other direction (e.g., people are becoming more depressed, so they retreat to social media more often to feel better).

Two things occurring together does not tell us much about whether one caused the other.

This is a huge problem in academic research. Scientists frequently present data in a way that suggests causation when all they found is a correlation. And even if they don’t present it that way, journalists will often take correlational data and write about it as if it’s causative. So 2020 had Covid 19, which caused a lot of other things to happen but also was correlated to other things.

You cannot tell me your weight gain is a result of the Covid 19 pandemic, as much as you may want to use it to justify your bad habits, it is not the cause. The fact is, so much stuff happens at the same time and we have no idea why. You could argue that almost any correlation looks like causation if you wanted to. In fact, there’s a website called Spurious Correlations that does just that.

The Slippery Slope

Stop me if you’ve ever heard this line of reasoning before:

“We can’t let teenagers drink alcohol because if they drink alcohol, then they’ll start doing drugs, and if they do drugs then they’ll become criminals. And if they become criminals, then they’ll end up in prison and ruin their lives. Therefore, allowing teenagers to drink alcohol will ruin their lives.” 

The slippery slope fallacy is when you take one mild negative consequence and tie it with a similar but extreme negative consequence and then argue that one will lead to the other. You see this fallacy show up in all sorts of places, especially within business organisations, foreign policy, and yes, paranoid society parenting.

The truth is that some but not all kids who drink alcohol do drugs. Some but not all kids who do drugs become addicts. And some but not all addicts become criminals. Also some but not all criminals ruin their lives. Therefore, it is logically inaccurate to compare drinking alcohol with ruining a life.

(Not to mention, the data that shows that teenagers who drink alcohol are X times more likely to do drugs could be another case of “correlation is not causation.”) The Slippery Slope fallacy often messes us up because it generates a lot of unnecessary fear and anxiety. We mess up an assignment at work. The boss gets mad. You start thinking, “Well if the boss is mad, then she’s going to hate me. And if the boss hates me, then I’m going to get fired. And if I get fired, then I’m going to be homeless. OMG I DON’T WANT TO BE HOMELESS!!!” You have blown the whole joker out of proportion.

I have seen a lot of this in 2020, people making wild assumptions that led them to stock piling toilet paper over food. Did you really think toilet paper would save you in the event of doomsday? Really? You are out there right now on the last day of the year overthinking something that will in no way happen just because you got spooked. get your head in the game and think logically not linear…

False Dichotomies

There are some classes of arguments where there are legitimately only two options. For example, I could say, “There are two kinds of people in this world: people named Mansfield and people not named Mansfield.” This is a true dichotomy (or division of two): you’re either named Mansfield or you’re not.

But a false dichotomy is when a set of options is presented as if only two possibilities exist but in reality, many more exist.

For example, if I said, “There are only two kinds of people in the world: people named Mansfield and idiots.” This is a false dichotomy. Why? Because these two options don’t encompass all potential options.

There are plenty of people not named Mansfield who are also not idiots. Also—and I can tell you this from experience—there are some people named Mansfield who are total idiots.

False dichotomies are used to manipulate people into allying with the speaker. You often hear politicians or other leaders say, “You’re either with us or against us,” as a way to whip people into line. But this is a false dichotomy. You could be indifferent. Or you could be partially with them and partially against them. You could be against everybody. Don’t buy into this bullshit.

But false dichotomies often hurt us when we judge ourselves. We often say things to ourselves like, “If I worked harder, I wouldn’t be such a loser.” You know you can be a loser who works hard, right? You can also not be a loser and not work hard, too. In fact, being a loser and working hard are completely arbitrary things that you just decided to force into a false dichotomy.

Why? To feel bad about yourself. Now, why would you do that? I bet your name is not Mansfield…

When Covid hit in 2020, we where not given many options but the biggest of the options was Lockdown Vs No Lockdown. If you ask me both have their merits and data to prove these merits. Yet as time progressed I began to realise that these weren’t the only options that could have been implemented, a good mix of both could have done many countries some good.

Red Herrings

Red Herrings are arguments that seem relevant to an issue but actually are not. For example, we could be arguing about whether being vegan is more ethical than eating meat. Then, in the middle of a perfectly fine argument, I blurt out, “Well, Hitler was vegan! And he surely wasn’t ethical!”

This is a distraction from the real point of debate: whether eating meat is inherently unethical. These kinds of distractions from the argument are known as “red herrings.” And if you—god forbid—spend lots of time watching and reading the news in 2020, you will notice a large proportion of what is said and written is some form of a red herring.

Red herrings are also usually logical fallacies themselves. For example, the assumption that because Hitler was vegan, and Hitler was unethical, veganism must be unethical is known as the Fallacy of Composition—when something that is true for a part is assumed to be true for the whole (i.e., Sam is Zimbabwean and he is short, therefore Zimbabweans must be short). Im sure you all heard Donald Trump say Covid 19 is just another flu (fact) and will soon go away (false). The truth is it is like a flu but it didn’t go away, so what the US President presented was a fallacy of composition.

The ‘Appeals’ Fallacy

When in an argument, it’s tempting to skip the logic and go straight to appealing to some outside source to make your point feel more resonant.

Well, unfortunately, logic doesn’t care about your feelings. A bad argument is a bad argument, regardless of who agrees with you.

There are three common appeals that people make when trying to win points for their side:

• An appeal to authority: “Well, the president said it’s true, so it must be true!”
• Appeal to pity: “I know the data says that social media isn’t the problem, but these poor kids have so much anxiety, we should still get rid of their phones.”
• An appeal to the majority: “Everyone I know says that vaccines are dangerous, so it must be true.”

The hyper-social nature of our species causes us to appeal to outside influences. We all want to belong to a community. We all want to associate with high-status people. And we all want others to know we’re kind and considerate.

The problem is that none of these things have anything to do with logic or truth. If something is true, it’s true whether anyone believes it or not. At the end of the day, Covid 19 doesn’t give a hoot about you or me or anyone else. We care. And because we care we trick ourselves into thinking that these opinions affect the truth when they don’t. A lot of news and facts and stats have flooded our TVs, radios and all in 2020, trying to sway us in whatever direction but the remaining fact is the pandemic is still here and it is dangerous.

The Importance of Sound Reasoning

If you haven’t noticed, we all kinda suck at this logic and reason thing. This list is just a tiny slice of the logical fallacies pie. But probably accounts for a significant portion of what we think and are exposed to each day.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make every effort to be better. After all, logic and reason are our life preservers in a vast sea of uncertainty and bullshit. To let go of the life preserver, to cling onto the latest, greatest fad or the next genius who’s currently on your screen… well, that’s intellectual suicide.

Not to mention that a lot of these logical fallacies can turn you into an insufferable prick pretty quickly. Debating with someone over the merits of an idea or argument is already contentious enough. But falling into the trap of these logical fallacies, many of which hinge on making a mockery of the other person’s ideas (or the person themselves), will not make you the biggest hit at children’s parties. Not to mention people won’t exactly be thrilled to talk to you about anything important or meaningful.

At best, fallacious reasoning keeps bad ideas alive. At its worst, it pits us against each other in a hopeless downward spiral of tit-for-tat where nobody really wins and everyone definitely loses.

Logical reasoning isn’t about “winning” an argument. It’s about finding the truth. And inevitably, getting closer to truth requires one to recognise and admit when they’re wrong. And that’s something you and all the Mansfield’s of the world could be a bit better at. As we wrap up 2020 and get ready for 2021, be careful of circular reasoning. Make your own choices, ones that resonate with you, and present you with the best opportunities for the coming year.

Happy New Year, and for the losses we encountered in 2020, may 2021 be kind to you and yours.

Photo Credit: Photo by Ave Calvar Martinez from Pexels

“It’s amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday.”
― John Guare

Last week we highlighted some interesting facts in the post black child,black future. Talking about how the global black community needs to realise who and what they represent in truth not in theory. In order to move from a distorted past, we need to map a way forward to a desired future. And this process starts now, with us. The black future is the black community’s responsibility and should be seen as such by all black people.

There are 3 mains things that I would like to bring up that I strongly believe will aid in securing a solid and fruitful black future. Impartial Education, Economic Emancipation and Self Awareness. These 3 things are fundamentally the backbone of any human being but are not fully realised in the black community.

Lets break it down further shall we.

Education

While education is not a cure for all experiences with racism and discrimination, education can equip us with the tools to better understand, analyse and ultimately find solutions to the tragic incidents we are seeing too frequently in the black community. Including accurate and factual black history in all curriculum will be the first place to start as this will give a balance to history as a whole. These black studies classes must teach about theories such as the “critical race theory” and terms such as “institutional racism,” “white privilege” and “hegemony” to name a few. Exposure to these classes provides the black child with vocabulary and critical analytical tools to better understand challenges facing black people.

Many black people suffer from what  Psychologist Claude Steele has referred to this as “academic dis-identification.”. A phenomenon where a student’s self-esteem is disconnected from how they perform in school. This is because their sense of pride and self-esteem increasingly comes from their popularity and athletic abilities rather than their intelligence. As early as primary school once definitions kick in, the system begins to marginalise black children.

If you look for the dictionary definition of the word ‘black’ you will see what I mean. And how it is then linked to everything that is demeaning and opposite to white. So at an early age the black child is conditioned to think less of themselves. Or to put more effort to prove they are not what the definition says they are. This is why the education system needs to be looked into and changed to allow for a fair and impartial education. An education which eliminates cognitive development problems among others. In this case, helping black children break intellectual barriers. Every government should see how they can implement this sort of curriculum that tells a fair story of all races.

Economic Freedom

The major problem today in the economic development of black people is the lack of an economic system that is based on sound cultural analysis. Cultural analysis is not about focusing on how Europeans mistreated us. It’s not about spending endless hours doing research on slavery, etc.

We have a lot of people doing all kinds of research on how white people mistreated us, and as a consequence getting all fired up because of these kinds of issues. Instead of doing that, look deep into the heart, soul and mentality of black people. Instead, look deeply into the character and the organisation of money within black communities, and then use that analysis to create a realistic economic system.

Many spend a lot of time reading Karl Marx and others, yet their analysis was based on the European culture, standards and position within the social-political and economic dominance hierarchy. You can look at any African society driven by Marxism, socialism, capitalism or any other kind of ism. It is poor compared to its Western counterparts. That helps you to recognise that the problem that we face is deeper than subscribing to doctrines of  Karl Marx. Subscribing to European doctrines is not the solution to the black community’s problems. European theories are based on an analysis of European culture, and the economic recommendations therein are based on that analysis.

On top of that, we also have people amongst us that want to call these European theories scientific. They make it seem like these theories are universal, and are pretty much above “untouchable”. Yet when you look at it in Africa, and other places that have subscribed to it without being realistic about the social and economic position across the world, you can see that it has not benefited those nations or societies.

Why do some among us keep holding on to a philosophy that the Russians, and the Chinese have thrown aside? It’s quite surprising that the poorest nations of all are still holding onto these inapplicable theories. Sad, right?

This is NOT to say that Marxist ideas are not good. What I’m saying is let’s develop our own social and economic philosophy based on our own social and economic realities.

As you do this cultural analysis, you will find that your ideas are, sometimes, in parallel with those of Karl Marx. I’ve also found this in my own research. With that said, the origin is not Karl Marx but our own selves. That means that those ideas are our possessions. Therefore we don’t have to ask white Marxists or any other white group to interpret them for us. To end it off, where is black money? If you look at the collective earnings and resources of black people all over the globe, you’ll recognise that we are among the richest nations in the world. We trade with the rest of the world just like any other nation. We represent a tremendous amount of wealth.

You will find that the problem we have in the black community is not a problem of poverty, money and resources. What we lack is the correct utilisation and development of the wealth that we have. It is the allocation of money, not the lack of it. We have to start looking and thinking of the welfare of our people as our own responsibility. Not look to the West or East for help. We have to look within ourselves as a basis of wealth because we have the resources, collective income and more.

Self- Awareness

When Black people strongly identify with their cultural heritage, there is an increase in their self-esteem, self-efficacy, and academic motivation. This phenomenon is important to the academic and professional development of Black people collectively. Erikson (1968) defined the fundamental aspects of the life cycle of identity development in his psycho-social development theory. He argued that through each stage, the ego develops as individuals successfully resolve crises in each stage.

Erikson introduced eight psycho-social stages that individuals must master in order to successfully progress to the next stage. In each psycho-social stage, individuals will encounter crises. As they meet these crises and are able to successfully manage them, Erikson stated that individuals would be able to successfully emerge to the next stage. Carrying the accomplishment and virtue of success from mastering conflict in each stage, individuals would gradually develop a positive self-identity; whereas failing to master any given stage could result in a negative sense of self.

Essentially, this means that when faced with a significant task that will take a lot of consistent and focused work, we often simply don’t bother and stick to avoiding self-evaluation on this particular task.

Further, our level of self-awareness interacts with the likelihood of success in realigning ourselves and our standards to determine how we think about the outcome. When we are self-aware and believe there is a high chance of success, we are generally quick to attribute that success or failure to our efforts.

Conversely, when we are self-aware but believe there is a low chance of success, we tend to think that the outcome is more influenced by external factors than our efforts.

Interestingly, we also have some control over our standards, such that we may alter our standards if we find that we don’t measure up to them. And this is the place that black people need to reach in order to secure a black future. A place where we are not the subject of someone else’s environment but the product of our own making. In Africa we were Kings and Queens, creators, but now we are consumers. Our image is through a lens that never understood us from the start.

I believe the black future is possible, may take a while but it is very possible. We will have to work on educating the younger generation on who they really are and what they stand for. As always, stay safe and share with us your comments in the comments section. We would love to hear your thoughts, questions and opinions.

Photo Credit: Photo by Rahul from Pexels