WHEN A VIDEO EXPOSES AN UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH
There are certain things you can hear from another person that would have sent you through the roof years ago, but after living, observing, and experiencing enough of life, you begin to hear things differently. You no longer react to every statement according to how it makes you feel in the moment. Instead, you start asking yourself a much deeper question: Why does this person think the way they do, and what does their thinking reveal about the world we live in? That’s exactly what happened to me when I watched a video on social media showing a severely neglected area of Lagos, Nigeria, and listened to the message the person behind it was trying to deliver.
If I had seen that video several years ago, I probably would have become angry. I would have wanted to challenge the person, expose what I believed was wrong with his thinking, and defend the dignity of African people against the insulting message he appeared to be sending. But this time, I took a different approach. I shared the video with someone I respect, a sister who has offered me valuable guidance, and her response helped me look beyond the obvious outrage. She brought my attention to the difference between the words people speak and the beliefs hiding underneath those words. Sometimes, the most important message in a conversation isn’t what somebody says openly. It’s what their words reveal about what they have accepted deep inside themselves.
Let’s be clear about something from the beginning. Poverty exists everywhere, including in places that the world celebrates as wealthy, powerful, and successful. You can travel through the most admired cities on Earth and find neglected neighborhoods, abandoned buildings, homelessness, exploitation, and people struggling to survive. Yet the media doesn’t always present those places through their worst conditions. A city known for wealth and opportunity is usually represented by its beautiful buildings, shopping districts, impressive skylines, and comfortable lifestyles. Meanwhile, a poor African neighborhood can become the entire picture of a continent in the minds of people who have never set foot there. That difference in presentation matters because images don’t merely show us the world; they can also shape what we believe about the people who live in it.
I live in Ghana, and I understand that the reality of life here isn’t one simple picture. There’s beauty, intelligence, creativity, wealth, poverty, corruption, generosity, hardship, and tremendous human potential. There are people working hard to build better lives, and there are people in positions of power who fail the very communities they are supposed to serve. None of those realities cancels out the others. So when somebody takes the worst conditions in a Nigerian neighborhood and uses them to suggest that African people are incapable of building anything meaningful, I recognize the manipulation in that argument. But what truly caught my attention wasn’t just the insulting picture of Africa. It was the conclusion that the person drew from it: that the suffering of African people somehow proves that European colonization and the forced removal of Africans through slavery were things we should be grateful for.
Think about that for a moment. Imagine looking at the poverty, corruption, and hardship of a place connected to your ancestral history and deciding that your people must have needed somebody else to dominate them because they were supposedly incapable of creating a better society. Imagine believing that another population possesses some special ability to turn ordinary materials into greatness while your own people are naturally unable to do the same. That’s more than a political opinion. That’s a judgment about human worth, ability, and identity. And while I can disagree with the person who made those statements, I also have to ask myself why this kind of thinking finds an audience among people who share the very ancestry being insulted. The uncomfortable question isn’t simply why one man thinks this way. It’s why the belief he expressed can feel familiar to so many others.
COLONIZATION DOESN’T END WHEN THE COLONIZER LEAVES
One of the greatest mistakes we can make when discussing liberation is assuming that freedom begins and ends with a change in political control. A nation can gain independence while its people continue to measure themselves using the standards of those who once controlled them. A person can reject colonialism in public while privately believing that everything associated with the former colonizer is more advanced, more beautiful, more intelligent, and more worthy of admiration. That’s how an external system of control can continue to influence people long after the original chains have been removed. The physical structure may disappear, but the mental habits can remain in place for generations.
I’m not saying every African nation’s problems can be blamed on colonialism, nor am I suggesting that every problem comes from outside the community. That would be too easy, and it would allow people who have failed their own communities to escape responsibility. Corruption, poor leadership, exploitation, tribal divisions, political greed, and the misuse of public resources must be confronted honestly. African people deserve accountability from their own leaders, not endless excuses. But we also need to understand the historical damage caused by systems that treated African lives, labor, land, and resources as things to be controlled and extracted for someone else’s benefit. Recognizing that history doesn’t mean refusing to move forward. It means refusing to build our future on a lie about our past.
The disturbing part is that some people have absorbed the idea that the world became valuable only when Europeans controlled it. They look at a wealthy Western nation and see proof of superior human ability, but when they look at an African nation facing serious problems, they see proof of African inferiority. They fail to ask how wealth was accumulated, whose labor helped create it, which resources were taken, what institutions were built, and who benefited from the arrangements that shaped the modern world. They see the finished building but ignore the history of the land, labor, and resources beneath it. Then they turn around and use that building as evidence that one group of human beings was born to lead while another was born to follow.
That mindset is dangerous because it transforms historical injustice into a story of natural superiority. Instead of asking whether people were given fair opportunities, it asks whether they were ever capable of succeeding in the first place. Instead of examining the conditions that produced poverty, it uses poverty as evidence that the people experiencing it deserve their position. Once somebody accepts that kind of thinking, domination can begin to look like rescue, exploitation can be presented as generosity, and forced dependence can be mistaken for progress. The person being dominated may even begin thanking the system that helped create the conditions from which they are trying to escape.
And that brings me to a question I want every person reading this to consider. If somebody has convinced you that you cannot become anything without their approval, their products, their money, their institutions, or their validation, how free are you really? You may have a passport, a bank account, a comfortable home, and the right to express your opinions, but if your deepest beliefs still tell you that another group of people is naturally more worthy than you, something inside you remains under the influence of an old system. Real liberation requires more than changing the people who occupy positions of power. It requires changing the beliefs that make domination seem normal, necessary, or even desirable.
WE SAY WE LOVE OURSELVES, BUT WHAT DO OUR ACTIONS REVEAL?
Now let’s bring this conversation closer to home, because it’s easy to point at somebody else and identify the contradictions in their thinking. It’s much harder to examine the contradictions that may exist within our own lives. We can spend hours discussing Black liberation, African unity, and the need to build independent institutions, yet never ask whether our daily choices support the principles we claim to defend. We can call ourselves revolutionary while measuring our success according to how closely we resemble the people we say we no longer want to imitate. We can condemn a system in public while spending our private lives chasing its approval. That’s the contradiction I want to talk about, because it goes far beyond one video or one person’s opinion.
Look at the enormous pressure placed on Black people to change their natural appearance to fit somebody else’s standard of beauty. Skin-lightening products are marketed as though a lighter complexion can somehow increase a person’s value. Hair textures are judged according to how closely they resemble European standards, and people are encouraged to believe that their natural features need to be corrected before they can be considered attractive, professional, or desirable. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying fashion, experimenting with different hairstyles, wearing extensions, or choosing a personal style that makes you feel good. The problem begins when those choices are driven by the belief that what you naturally are isn’t good enough.
I want people to understand the difference between personal freedom and psychological dependence. A person can make a beauty choice freely without hating themselves, just as somebody can enjoy another culture without believing their own culture is inferior. We cannot automatically assume that every person who straightens their hair, wears a weave, or changes their appearance is suffering from self-hatred. That would be unfair and intellectually lazy. But we also cannot pretend that generations of racial pressure, advertising, entertainment, and social conditioning have had no effect on how people see themselves. The question is whether we have examined those influences honestly or simply accepted them as normal because we see them everywhere.
When a person spends years being told that their complexion is too dark, their nose is too broad, their lips are too full, or their hair is too tightly curled, those messages can become deeply rooted. Eventually, the person may begin to repeat those judgments without realizing where they came from. They may believe they are making independent choices while responding to standards they never stopped to question. That’s why self-examination matters. We need to ask whether we are expressing ourselves or trying to escape ourselves, because those are two very different things. One comes from confidence, while the other can come from the quiet fear that we will never be accepted as we are.
The same issue appears in the way we consume products, technology, entertainment, and ideas. There’s nothing wrong with purchasing something made in Europe, Asia, America, or anywhere else. No community can develop by pretending that every product from outside its borders is harmful. The real issue is whether we have become so dependent on other people’s businesses that we no longer believe we can build our own. Do we support Black-owned businesses when they offer quality and fair value? Do we invest in African industries, skills, agriculture, research, and education? Do we teach our children to become creators and owners, or do we only teach them how to become consumers of somebody else’s achievements?
You cannot build economic independence by relying entirely on other people to supply your needs while treating your own community’s attempts at development as unworthy of support. And you cannot build a healthy identity by constantly searching for proof that you are acceptable in the eyes of people who may never value you equally. This isn’t a demand that we reject everything from outside our communities. It’s a demand that we stop confusing access to somebody else’s achievements with the creation of our own. Buying a product doesn’t make you inferior, but neither does buying it make you independent. Independence comes from having choices, building capacity, developing skills, and refusing to believe that you are incapable of producing something valuable yourself.
THE BUSINESS OF SELLING REVOLUTION
Social media has created a remarkable opportunity for ordinary people to communicate ideas, share information, challenge powerful institutions, and connect with people across the world. I’ve experienced the possibilities of that world firsthand through decades of online commentary and creative work. But the same platforms that allow meaningful conversations to reach a global audience can also turn political anger, cultural frustration, and the desire for belonging into profitable products. Once attention becomes a source of income, we have to ask whether every person claiming to represent a cause is actually committed to that cause or simply understands how to market it.
Some people have learned how to speak the language of liberation so well that they can convince an audience they are building a movement when they may actually be building a personal brand. They know the right slogans, the right historical references, and the right emotional triggers. They understand which subjects will make people angry, which arguments will attract donations, and which dramatic statements will keep viewers returning for more. Their speeches may sound powerful, but the real test is what happens after the speech ends. Are they building organizations, supporting useful projects, developing young leaders, sharing practical knowledge, and helping people become more capable? Or are they simply asking for another payment while promising that the real work will begin tomorrow?
Let me make myself clear. There’s nothing wrong with earning money from your work, and people who create content, organize communities, or offer valuable education deserve to be compensated. I’m a creator myself, and I understand that equipment, internet access, research, production, and time all have costs. A financial contribution doesn’t automatically make somebody a fraud, just as refusing payment doesn’t automatically make somebody honorable. The issue is whether the money supports meaningful work and whether the person asking for it is honest about what they are doing. If every discussion about community development eventually turns into a demand for donations without clear goals, accountability, or measurable effort, then people have every right to ask what they are actually funding.
There’s a difference between inviting people to support a project and making people feel that they must pay to prove their loyalty to a cause. There’s a difference between offering a useful service and selling people an endless supply of emotional outrage. And there’s a difference between building a community and building an audience that becomes dependent on your personality. A genuine organizer wants people to become informed, skilled, connected, and capable of acting without needing constant instructions from one central figure. A dishonest operator may prefer to keep people emotionally stirred up because an audience that feels permanently threatened can be easier to manipulate.
I’ve watched people speak beautifully about unity while refusing to cooperate with others who share their stated goals. I’ve seen the jealousy, competition, personal attacks, and resentment that emerge when somebody else receives attention or develops an idea that could benefit the community. Instead of asking how two people can combine their strengths, they start asking who deserves the credit, who will control the money, and whose name will appear in front of the cameras. The language is revolutionary, but the behavior is no different from the selfish competition they claim to oppose. When personal recognition becomes more important than the work itself, the movement begins to serve the egos of its loudest voices rather than the needs of its people.
Sometimes the person who exposes a contradiction becomes more threatening than the person who created it. A sincere individual may ask questions that interfere with somebody else’s business model, reveal weaknesses in a proposed project, or challenge the credibility of a popular speaker. Instead of answering those questions, the person being challenged may attack the critic’s character, question their loyalty, or try to turn the audience against them. That’s why we must learn to evaluate arguments according to their substance rather than the popularity of the person making them. A person’s ability to attract attention doesn’t prove that they are trustworthy, and another person’s willingness to challenge them doesn’t prove that the challenger is an enemy.
I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m far less interested in titles than I am in evidence. Don’t tell me how revolutionary you are. Show me what you build, how you treat people, whether you keep your promises, and what remains after the excitement has passed. Don’t tell me how much you love the community if you cannot work with people who refuse to worship you. Don’t tell me you are committed to empowering others if your entire operation depends on keeping them emotionally attached to your personality. A title can be claimed in a second, but character is revealed over time. The more dramatic the claim, the more important it becomes to examine the conduct behind it.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A CONTENT CREATOR AND A REVOLUTIONARY
I’m speaking from personal experience when I say that having a camera, a microphone, and an audience doesn’t automatically make a person a revolutionary. Sitting in a comfortable studio and talking about injustice can be useful, especially when those conversations educate people or expose problems that might otherwise be ignored. I’m doing that work myself, and I’m not going to pretend that communicating ideas has no value. But we need to stop confusing the ability to speak about change with the willingness to participate in the difficult work required to produce it.
Throughout history, people who challenged powerful systems often faced serious consequences. They risked their safety, their livelihoods, their relationships, and sometimes their lives. They could not always predict who would betray them, where the next threat would come from, or whether the people they were trying to help would stand beside them when the pressure increased. We can study their courage without pretending that our own circumstances are identical to theirs. The point isn’t that every modern activist must face physical danger to be legitimate. The point is that meaningful change requires more than performance, and genuine commitment becomes visible when the work demands sacrifice, discipline, patience, and accountability.
A person can contribute to a cause through education, journalism, art, organizing, business development, mentoring, or direct service. Not everybody needs to occupy the same position, and not every meaningful contribution must happen on a public stage. But whatever role we choose, we should be able to explain what we are trying to accomplish and how our actions support that goal. If we claim to be helping young people, where are the programs, the mentorship, and the practical opportunities? If we claim to be building economic power, where are the businesses, the partnerships, and the plans for ownership? If we claim to be bringing people together, why are we constantly creating new divisions whenever somebody disagrees with us?
The problem with performative activism is that it rewards the appearance of courage without always requiring the substance of courage. A person can receive applause for condemning injustice while avoiding the uncomfortable conversations needed to correct it within their own circle. They can become famous for preaching unity while refusing to share power. They can build an identity around defending the people while treating individual people as disposable whenever they become inconvenient. The audience sees the speech, the photograph, the livestream, and the emotional moment. It may never see the private decisions that reveal whether the speaker lives according to the principles being promoted.
That’s why I refuse to let somebody else decide whether I deserve a particular label. I know that I have work to do on myself, and I don’t need to present myself as a flawless example of anything. I can acknowledge my mistakes, reconsider an opinion, and admit that experience has taught me something I didn’t understand years ago. Growth doesn’t make a person fake. In fact, the willingness to change when the evidence demands it can be one of the strongest signs of sincerity. What matters is whether you take responsibility for your words and actions instead of constantly inventing excuses to protect an image.
I’ve been creating and sharing commentary online since the early days of the internet, and I’ve seen how easily a platform can become more important than the original purpose behind it. People begin with an idea, develop an audience, and eventually become so invested in maintaining their reputation that they are afraid to speak honestly. They worry about losing followers, donations, invitations, or access to influential people. Slowly, the message changes to fit the expectations of the audience, and the creator begins serving the very attention economy they once claimed to challenge. That’s the trap I’ve tried to avoid, and I would rather speak honestly and lose an audience than spend the remainder of my life performing a character I no longer recognize.
WHEN HATRED OFTEN HIDES BEHIND PUBLIC MORALITY
Another lesson I’ve learned through observation is that people can become extremely aggressive when a subject touches something they have not resolved within themselves. Sometimes a person’s public behavior is designed to create an image that protects a private contradiction. They may speak harshly about a group, condemn certain lifestyles, or constantly present themselves as morally superior, only for their private actions to reveal a much more complicated picture. That doesn’t mean every person who speaks strongly about a subject is secretly involved in what they criticize. We should never confuse suspicion with proof. But it does mean that public declarations alone cannot establish a person’s character.
The important lesson is broader than any one individual or controversy. We should be careful around people who demand that everybody else live according to standards they refuse to apply to themselves. A person who uses shame to control others while refusing accountability deserves to be questioned. Someone who preaches honesty but relies on deception should not be protected simply because their message sounds appealing. And a person who claims to represent a community should be judged by their treatment of that community, not merely by how forcefully they condemn its enemies.
This brings us back to the man in the video and the outrage his words may provoke. Some people will focus entirely on condemning him for expressing gratitude toward the colonizer, and I understand why those statements would offend anyone who knows the history of slavery and colonial domination. But I also believe that an emotional reaction can become a distraction if we refuse to examine the deeper attitudes that made the statement possible. It’s possible to condemn the conclusion while still asking what social conditioning, personal experience, or internalized beliefs helped produce it. Understanding the source of an idea doesn’t mean approving of the idea. It means looking beyond the surface so we can understand what needs to change.
We also need to examine how racial admiration and personal attraction can become entangled with ideas about status and worth. Human attraction is complicated, and nobody should be treated as disloyal simply because they love someone from another racial or ethnic background. Adults have the right to choose their partners, and interracial relationships are not evidence of self-hatred. The problem arises when somebody openly treats one racial group as a prize, a status symbol, or proof that they have risen above their own people. When a person believes that dating somebody from a particular group automatically upgrades their value, they may be revealing a hierarchy of human worth they have never seriously examined.
The same standard must apply to men and women alike. We should question why some people praise their own community in public but express contempt for it in private. We should ask why some people repeatedly describe their own people as unattractive, unintelligent, or undesirable while treating another population as the ultimate measure of success. Those attitudes deserve examination because they can reveal how deeply social messages about race, beauty, and status have entered a person’s thinking. But we should not turn that examination into a new form of racial policing, where people are judged by the appearance of their partners instead of the honesty, respect, and values that shape their relationships.
I’m not interested in telling people whom they must love or what they must find attractive. I’m interested in whether they understand themselves well enough to recognize the difference between genuine affection and the need to gain approval through association. If you love somebody, love that person because of who they are, how they treat you, and the relationship you build together. Don’t use another human being as a trophy to prove that you have escaped your own background. And don’t degrade people who share your ancestry in order to convince somebody else that you deserve a place beside them. No relationship should require you to despise yourself or humiliate the people from whom you came.
STOP SEEKING VALIDATION FROM PEOPLE WHO BENEFIT FROM YOUR INSECURITY
One of the most damaging habits a person can develop is the constant need to be accepted by people whose approval has become the measure of their self-worth. You begin changing your language, hiding your interests, softening your opinions, and abandoning your principles because you want to remain welcome in a particular circle. You may convince yourself that you are simply being flexible or learning how to get along with others, but over time you can lose track of the difference between healthy adjustment and self-abandonment. Eventually, the desire to fit in becomes so powerful that you begin treating your own values as an inconvenience.
I’ve watched this happen in workplaces, social circles, political groups, and online communities. A person enters a new environment and immediately starts studying what earns approval. They notice which opinions receive praise, which people have influence, and which behaviors allow someone to move comfortably through the group. There’s nothing wrong with learning how a workplace operates or developing professional relationships. But when somebody decides that acceptance requires them to abandon their dignity, betray their convictions, or participate in the humiliation of others, they have crossed a dangerous line.
Imagine a Black man entering a workplace where most of his colleagues come from a different background. He’s polite, focused, and still learning the culture of the organization. During a break, he reads a book about Black history or thinks quietly about his next career move. There’s nothing threatening about that. Yet if somebody has already decided that Black independence, historical awareness, or a strong sense of identity is a problem, even ordinary behavior may be viewed through that suspicion. The man who is eager to win approval might feel pressured to distance himself from his own interests and beliefs simply to prove that he is harmless.
Now imagine that another employee has spent years trying to gain acceptance by mocking people who speak openly about racial inequality. He may believe that this behavior protects his position, but he could also be teaching others that he is willing to sacrifice his principles for approval. I’m not suggesting that every workplace operates this way or that every colleague from another background has hostile intentions. People should be judged according to their conduct, and professional environments vary widely. The lesson is that we must never become so desperate to fit in that we allow other people to define which parts of our identity we are permitted to express.
Sometimes the person who receives the warmest welcome is not the person with the strongest character, but the person who makes everyone around them feel comfortable. A person who avoids difficult questions, laughs at every joke, and never challenges an unfair assumption may be seen as easy to get along with. Meanwhile, somebody who is thoughtful, independent, and unwilling to participate in every social ritual may be treated with suspicion. That doesn’t automatically mean the independent person is right or the popular person is wrong. It simply reminds us that approval is not a reliable measure of integrity. Sometimes people welcome you because they genuinely appreciate you, and sometimes they welcome you because you never make them question themselves.
You must learn to recognize the difference. If somebody respects you only when you agree with everything they say, that relationship may be built on compliance rather than mutual respect. If your presence is welcomed when you entertain people but rejected when you express an independent opinion, pay attention to that pattern. You don’t need to become hostile or suspicious of everyone around you, but you should never surrender your judgment simply because somebody has offered you a seat at their table. The goal isn’t to make enemies. The goal is to preserve enough self-respect to know when a relationship requires too much of you and gives too little in return.
WE CANNOT BUILD A FUTURE BY DESTROYING OUR OWN RESOURCES
Let me put this in practical terms, because the conversation about identity becomes meaningless if it never leads to action. Imagine that you own a large piece of fertile land. The soil is productive, the trees provide fruit, and you have the ability to grow vegetables, roots, and other crops that could feed your family and create income. Instead of learning how to manage that land, improving its productivity, and developing a business around what it produces, you abandon it. You sell it cheaply, allow the productive resources to disappear, and then spend your money buying food from a business built on land that once belonged to you.
What have you gained? You may have access to a convenient store, but you have surrendered the opportunity to produce something yourself. You may have saved yourself the work of managing the land, but you have also given away a source of independence. The person who now owns the property can make decisions about what to grow, how much to charge, and who gets access to the products. Meanwhile, you have become dependent on a system you no longer control. That’s a simple example of how a person or community can exchange long-term independence for short-term convenience without fully considering the cost.
This is not an argument against trade or cooperation with people outside your community. Trade can create opportunity, and working with others can allow everyone involved to benefit. The issue is whether the exchange is fair and whether you retain the ability to make meaningful choices. A community that grows some of its own food, develops local businesses, teaches valuable skills, and invests in its young people has more options than one that depends entirely on outside suppliers for every basic need. The same principle applies to technology, manufacturing, education, finance, and the ownership of intellectual property. The more capacity you develop, the less vulnerable you become when conditions change.
African communities have enormous opportunities to strengthen their economic foundations, but those opportunities require practical work rather than slogans. People must learn to cooperate across personal differences, identify genuine needs, pool resources where appropriate, and create businesses that provide useful goods and services. They must develop trust through clear agreements, transparent accounting, and consistent delivery. They must also accept that not every business will succeed and not every partnership will work. Progress requires learning from failure without turning every setback into a reason to abandon the larger goal.
We also need to stop treating the idea of unity as though saying the word automatically creates it. Unity does not mean everybody must share the same personality, political views, religious beliefs, or approach to life. It means people can recognize a shared interest and cooperate without requiring total agreement on every subject. Two people may disagree about politics while still working together to improve a neighborhood, support a school, develop a business, or mentor young people. They may have different backgrounds and different experiences but still understand that a practical partnership can produce results neither could achieve alone.
The real test of unity comes when cooperation requires us to share credit, respect another person’s contribution, and accept that we cannot always control the outcome. Anybody can speak about unity when they expect to be the leader, receive the praise, and make every decision. The harder question is whether they can support a useful project when somebody else is leading it. Can they offer assistance without demanding public recognition? Can they disagree without trying to destroy the other person’s reputation? Can they acknowledge another person’s success without feeling that their own importance has been reduced? Until we can answer those questions honestly, much of our talk about unity will remain an attractive slogan rather than a working principle.
LEARN TO RECOGNIZE THE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO BORROW YOUR CREDIBILITY
Over the years, I’ve learned that not everyone who approaches you is necessarily interested in building something meaningful with you. Some people genuinely respect your work, appreciate your ideas, and want to create something useful together. Others may be attracted to the reputation you have developed because standing beside you allows them to borrow a little of the credibility you earned through your own effort. They want the association, the photographs, the introductions, and the appearance of being connected to somebody who has already established a public identity. But once the moment passes, you may discover that the relationship never had much substance behind it.
Think about how people sometimes behave around wealthy or influential individuals. They rush to take photographs, post the pictures online, and allow others to assume that they have a meaningful relationship with the person in the photograph. For a moment, the association makes them feel important. But if they never develop their own skills, improve their finances, or build anything useful from the opportunity, the photograph changes nothing about their actual circumstances. They have borrowed the appearance of success without doing the work required to create it. The same thing can happen in activism, business, entertainment, and community leadership.
Some people want to stand beside a person who has a reputation for speaking honestly because they believe the association will make them appear honest too. They may praise your principles in public while quietly avoiding the responsibilities those principles require. They may tell others that they support your mission without contributing anything meaningful to it. In some cases, they may even use your name to attract an audience or encourage people to trust a project you have never properly examined. That’s why I believe every creator, organizer, and community leader needs to understand the importance of protecting their credibility.
You cannot prevent every person from misrepresenting their relationship with you, but you can be careful about the endorsements you provide, the partnerships you enter, and the claims you allow others to make in your name. You can ask questions before lending your platform to a project. You can insist on clear expectations, written agreements when appropriate, and honest communication about what each person is contributing. You can also accept that somebody’s enthusiasm is not proof of their reliability. Trust should grow from consistent behavior, not from flattering words or the excitement of a new opportunity.
I’ve become more selective about the people with whom I share my time and energy, and I see no reason to apologize for that. Discernment doesn’t mean believing that everybody is fake. It means understanding that relationships should be evaluated according to what they actually are, not what we hope they might become. Some people will prove themselves through patience, honesty, and useful action. Others will reveal that they were interested mainly in access, attention, or personal gain. When the evidence becomes clear, you don’t need to stage a dramatic confrontation or spend months explaining yourself. Sometimes the wisest response is simply to establish a boundary and move forward.
I’m not interested in using the credibility I’ve built to help somebody else mislead an audience. I’ve invested too much time in my work to treat trust as a disposable resource. People can disagree with my opinions, challenge my arguments, or decide they don’t like my style. That’s their right. But if somebody wants to associate their work with mine, they need to understand that I take honesty and personal responsibility seriously. I cannot guarantee that every person I encounter will share those values, and I don’t expect perfection from anyone. What I do expect is a willingness to be truthful about intentions, acknowledge mistakes, and accept the consequences of one’s own choices.
YOUR INTUITION IS A SIGNAL, NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR JUDGMENT
Have you ever met somebody and felt that something about the relationship wasn’t quite right, only to ignore your concerns because you wanted to believe the best about them? Perhaps their words sounded impressive, but their behavior kept changing. Perhaps they praised you one day and undermined you the next. Maybe they repeatedly made promises without following through, or they seemed interested in your connections but strangely absent whenever you needed help. Later, when the pattern became impossible to ignore, you looked back and wondered why you had dismissed your original concerns.
I believe people should pay attention to those moments, but we must also be careful not to confuse intuition with unquestionable truth. A feeling can alert you to something that deserves closer examination, but it cannot automatically tell you what another person intends. Past experiences, fear, stress, and personal bias can influence how we interpret someone’s behavior. That’s why discernment requires both awareness and evidence. Notice the feeling, examine the facts, look for repeated patterns, and allow a person’s actions to reveal more about their character over time. You don’t have to accuse somebody of wrongdoing simply because you feel uncomfortable around them.
One of the benefits of maturity is learning that you do not need to prove every suspicion in public. You can decide that a relationship is not right for you without turning the other person into a villain. You can reduce contact, protect your personal information, decline a partnership, or stop sharing your resources when trust has weakened. Those decisions don’t require a dramatic announcement. Sometimes peace comes from recognizing that you have no obligation to maintain every connection simply because it has existed for a long time.
I’ve also learned that being selective with your energy is not the same as becoming bitter. Bitterness keeps you emotionally tied to the people and situations that disappointed you. Discernment allows you to learn from those experiences and move forward without carrying every conflict into your future. You can acknowledge that somebody treated you unfairly without allowing that experience to define every new relationship. You can protect yourself without becoming cruel. And you can maintain high standards without pretending that you have never made a mistake yourself.
That last part matters because self-examination must never become a weapon we use only against other people. It’s easy to identify somebody else’s contradictions while refusing to examine our own. We may criticize their greed while ignoring our own selfishness, condemn their dishonesty while making excuses for our own, or accuse them of seeking attention while becoming upset whenever we are overlooked. If we want to develop real discernment, we must be willing to turn the same level of scrutiny inward. Otherwise, our so-called wisdom may become nothing more than another way to protect our egos.
I’m not claiming to have mastered every lesson I’m discussing here. I’m still learning, observing, correcting myself, and deciding where my time is best spent. The difference is that I’m no longer interested in pretending to be something I’m not just to maintain an image. I would rather acknowledge an uncomfortable truth than build my life around a convenient lie. That principle applies to how I choose relationships, how I conduct my work, how I approach my responsibilities, and how I decide which battles deserve my attention. A person who cannot admit their own weaknesses will eventually find themselves defending them instead of overcoming them.
STOP WASTING YOUR LIFE TRYING TO FORCE PEOPLE TO WAKE UP
There was a time when I wanted to reach everybody. I wanted to explain, persuade, challenge, educate, and encourage people to see what I believed was happening around them. I wanted people to understand the importance of history, identity, economic independence, and community cooperation. I believed that if I could find the right words, present the right information, or make the argument clear enough, I could help people recognize the contradictions that were holding them back. That desire came from a genuine place, but experience has taught me that there are limits to what one person can accomplish through persuasion alone.
You can offer somebody information, but you cannot force them to examine it honestly. You can present evidence, but you cannot make another person value truth more than comfort. You can show somebody a pattern that has harmed them repeatedly, but you cannot make them abandon it before they are ready to do so. Some people will listen, think, ask questions, and gradually change their understanding. Others will immediately reject anything that threatens the beliefs they have built their identity around. The same message can open one person’s eyes and provoke another person’s anger, because people do not all approach information with the same willingness to reconsider themselves.
That realization has changed how I think about my time and energy. I’m not interested in spending the remainder of my life chasing people who have already decided that they would rather remain comfortable than confront an uncomfortable truth. I can make my argument, explain my position, and allow people to decide what they want to do with the information. If somebody is sincerely trying to understand, I’m willing to have the conversation. If they are only looking for an opportunity to insult, provoke, or drag me into an endless argument, I can walk away without feeling that I have failed.
There’s a difference between abandoning people and accepting that you cannot make their choices for them. We should continue to educate, mentor, support, and encourage those who are willing to engage honestly. We should also recognize that our responsibilities include caring for our own lives, developing our abilities, supporting the people who depend on us, and making useful contributions where we can. If all our energy is spent trying to convince the unwilling, what remains for the people who are ready to build something meaningful alongside us?
I’m sixty-three years old, and I think differently about time than I did when I was younger. I still have things I want to accomplish, ideas I want to explore, art I want to create, and conversations I want to have. I still enjoy reading, learning, working in my studio, and finding ways to communicate what I see. But I’m not interested in treating endless conflict as proof that I’m committed to a cause. I don’t need to be in every argument, respond to every insult, or spend every day trying to win the approval of people who have no intention of understanding me. There’s a point where a person must decide whether they are building a life or merely reacting to the lives of others.
I want to use my remaining years with intention. I want to protect my peace, maintain my health, continue my creative work, and invest my energy in people and projects that have a realistic chance of producing something useful. I want to enjoy the life I’ve worked to build without becoming so distracted by other people’s behavior that I forget to appreciate what I already have. That doesn’t mean I’m indifferent to injustice or that I no longer care about the future of African and Black communities around the world. It means I understand that caring about a cause and sacrificing every moment of your peace are not the same thing.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE TRULY FREE?
Freedom begins with the willingness to examine the beliefs that control our decisions. It means asking why we admire certain people, why we pursue particular goals, and whether our definition of success comes from genuine purpose or the need to prove our worth to somebody else. It means recognizing that money, status, appearance, and public approval can be useful parts of life without allowing them to become the foundation of our identity. A person who has learned to think independently can appreciate the world without worshipping it, cooperate with others without surrendering their judgment, and pursue success without treating their natural identity as an obstacle.
We also need to understand that freedom is not simply the right to criticize other people. It includes the responsibility to build something better. If we believe our communities deserve stronger institutions, we must support the education, planning, cooperation, and investment required to develop them. If we believe young people deserve more opportunities, we must help create pathways that connect their abilities to real possibilities. If we believe that economic independence matters, we must take ownership, entrepreneurship, skill development, and responsible financial decisions seriously. Complaining about a problem may bring attention to it, but attention alone cannot replace the work required to solve it.
At the same time, we must stop expecting every person who shares our ancestry to share our values automatically. A person’s complexion does not guarantee their character, just as a person’s background does not determine every belief they will hold. People can be selfish, generous, honest, dishonest, courageous, fearful, thoughtful, or manipulative in every community. If we want to build meaningful relationships, we must judge individuals by their conduct rather than assuming that shared identity makes them trustworthy. Unity becomes stronger when it is based on mutual respect, shared responsibilities, and clear standards instead of blind loyalty.
That’s why I return to the central question raised by the video that started this discussion. I can disagree with the man’s conclusion about Africa and colonization while still recognizing that his words force us to confront an uncomfortable possibility. What if some of the beliefs we condemn openly continue to influence our private decisions? What if we sometimes repeat the language of independence while behaving as though our worth depends on somebody else’s approval? And what if the anger we direct toward people who expose these contradictions sometimes comes from the fear that their words have touched something we would rather leave unexamined?
I’m not asking anyone to accept every opinion I express or to pretend that I have all the answers. I’m asking people to think seriously about the relationship between their stated beliefs and their daily choices. If you believe in liberation, examine what freedom means in your own life. If you believe in unity, look at how you treat people when you disagree. If you believe in self-respect, ask whether you are making decisions from confidence or insecurity. And if you believe in revolution, look beyond the performance and ask what you are actually changing. Those questions are uncomfortable because they remove the easy excuse of blaming everything on somebody else.
MY CLOSING THOUGHTS: I HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO PROVE TO PEOPLE WHO REFUSE TO SEE
I’ve spent a significant part of my life observing human behavior, sharing my opinions, creating content, and trying to make sense of the world around me. I’ve watched people change, communities struggle, movements rise and fall, and public personalities reveal sides of themselves that their audiences never expected to see. Those experiences have made me more careful about the claims people make and more interested in the patterns behind their behavior. I no longer believe that the loudest voice necessarily belongs to the most committed person, or that the most popular figure is automatically the one doing the most meaningful work. Sometimes the truth is quieter than the performance, and sometimes the person who receives the least applause is the one doing the work that matters most.
I’m also comfortable acknowledging that I’m still a work in progress. I have my own weaknesses, blind spots, and responsibilities, and I don’t need to pretend otherwise. I can revisit an old opinion, admit that I was wrong, and continue learning without feeling that I have destroyed my credibility. What I will not do is manufacture a false personality to satisfy people who have decided that I must always think, speak, or behave according to their expectations. My responsibility is to be honest about what I believe, remain open to evidence, and accept accountability for the consequences of my words and actions.
As for the people who come into my life looking for access, borrowed credibility, or an opportunity to present themselves as something they are not, I’ve learned that I don’t have to fight every battle with them. I can observe, establish boundaries, and allow their own decisions to determine the direction of the relationship. I don’t have to expose every contradiction, respond to every provocation, or spend months trying to convince an audience that I was right. Sometimes the healthiest decision is to step aside and let people take responsibility for the lives they have chosen to live. My time is valuable, and I intend to use it accordingly.
To the brother whose video started this conversation, I would say that your words have forced me to examine a difficult issue, even though I strongly disagree with the idea that colonization and slavery were gifts that African people should celebrate. I will not confuse the ability to provoke a conversation with the ability to prove a conclusion. But I will acknowledge that uncomfortable statements can expose beliefs that people may prefer to hide. The real value of that moment lies in what we do next. We can spend all our energy insulting the person who spoke, or we can examine the larger questions about identity, independence, history, and self-worth that his words have brought to the surface.
And to everybody reading this, I want you to understand that your life is too valuable to spend it constantly begging for acceptance, chasing appearances, or performing a version of yourself that keeps other people comfortable. Build your skills, protect your integrity, develop useful relationships, and put your energy into work that can survive beyond the excitement of the moment. Learn to recognize the difference between people who want to help you grow and people who simply want to stand close enough to benefit from your efforts. Most importantly, stop waiting for somebody else to give you permission to recognize your own worth. You can appreciate other cultures, enjoy the fruits of global cooperation, and pursue a comfortable life without believing that your identity makes you inferior.
I’m going to keep creating, thinking, reading, drawing, speaking, and enjoying the life I have. I’m going to keep learning from experience and making adjustments where they are needed. I will continue to support genuine efforts toward education, independence, and community progress, but I’m no longer interested in confusing endless arguments with meaningful action. The time I have left is precious, and I intend to use it with purpose. If you want to work together honestly, we can talk. If you want to build something useful, let’s examine what needs to be done. But if you only want to borrow my name, drain my energy, or use my credibility to support an image that your actions cannot sustain, you will have to find another route.
Because at the end of the day, freedom is not a costume you put on for an audience, and revolution is not a title you award yourself. Both must be examined through the way you think, the decisions you make, the people you help, the responsibilities you accept, and the values you uphold when nobody is watching. We cannot demand that the world recognize our worth while continuing to treat ourselves as though we have none. We cannot build a future on the foundation of self-doubt, endless division, and dependence on external approval. And we cannot create meaningful change by turning every cause into a business and every disagreement into a personal war.
So I’ll leave you with this: the next time somebody says something that makes you angry, take a moment before you react. Ask yourself whether the statement is false, whether it contains an uncomfortable question worth examining, and whether your response will lead to understanding or simply add more noise to an already crowded world. Defend your principles, challenge dishonesty, and refuse to accept ideas that diminish human dignity. But never become so invested in proving that somebody else is wrong that you forget to examine your own life. That’s where genuine growth begins, and that’s where the work of freedom must continue. Much love to everybody who understands the message, and to those who disagree, think about it for yourself. This is LanceScurv, signing out with one thing in mind: peace, clarity, and the courage to live according to what you truly believe.
