I wanted to speak on the "Cancel Culture" phenomenon that is alive and well within our society. Cancel culture goes by many names in different cultures. Some call it the crab mentality, I jokingly say the hit songs "Can't Nobody Tell Me Nothing" by Little Nas X and "Thank You Next" by Ariana Grande epitomize my point. You'll see Cancel Culture is NOT so alive and well when a music artist is praised for using their 1st Amendment right to lyrically talk about abusing or killing their spouse or when other artists or politicians use "blackface". In these moments the masses say 'its just in fun', or 'wow look at their age', or even better --- 'you can't govern speech'. The funny thing is this falls out of alignment with what I learned in Corporate America. Someone has to set the tone from the top and be accountable and oh by the way aren't these musicians, artists, and politicians governed by a larger corporation or government structure.
So I wonder why I see a difference when certain people appear to be targeted or (wait for it) the Cancel Culture comes calling when its a subject on race, supporting the marginalized, or leveling the playing field.
If I to ask to diversify Board Rooms and the CEO suite, which is severely underrepresented by people of color, I'm told we can't find the talent. --- I like the response of Alex Ohanian, Chairman of Reddit who simply stepped down and said I'll make a path. --- I didn't like the response I saw of one company who needed my help on a cyber project. I went to their website and they boasted about having a diverse board. The board was all-white but now had 4 white women in the ranks. So I decided not to pursue it further.
If I ask to diversify Hollywood, which is also underrepresented, my show might be canceled, Instagram page flooded with cancel messages, etc. --- What happened to data driven metrics. Without much argument data should be able to tell me the diversity mix without someone telling me I need a cultural sensitivity lesson for trying to solve an age old problem. I wonder instead of the quick to cancel response, we find ways to open doors like Alex Ohanian did, or does he only now understand the problem because he is married to an African-American woman, Serena Williams. In the corporate world, we form joint ventures and partner with small startups and businesses --- so WHY did Tyler Perry have to build his own film production company to make films that are directed, staffed, and include actors from multi-ethnic backgrounds. The cancel culture can infect even people that look like you as he was sometimes even canceled by people that look like him? He's a comedian and he employs African-Americans...strange we DO NOT critique or hold Corporate America accountable but we come down on him, Michael Jordan, and others --- Cancel Culture not everything we do will be advertised on the internet.
Why is my analysis of data considered a protest when the facts are clear that most African-American dollars DO NOT even circulate within our own community. Will you try to cancel me, call my statements a protest? Or will you make a path for me, sometimes partner with me, even take a risk on me so that I can simply do what many other cultures do. Will you try to cancel me for wanting my real estate property to be managed, or the plumbing to be fixed, or by college or work diversity, or the movie I watch to be comprised of people that look like me. Or should I just cancel culture you, like when you tell me to revisit a Confederate museum, or the Constitution, or your cultural history.
I don't mind revisiting history as I've revisited the world's history all through school, college, and even in your responses. I will take up the challenge to learn from you BUT SHOULD I cancel you since Black Lives Matter, Colin Kaepernick, Boardroom and Workplace Diversity, Police Brutality are racial, civil, human, and even religious rights issues that predominantly affect me and my African-American community. Thank you for offering up your history, let me offer up mine.
I call in the Bunce Island Response:
When you put on Blackface, put a knee on a neck, make an insensitive joke, question me against my will after a volunteer event, tell me your commute is impacted by a protest, allow the Confederacy to mark public buildings and landmarks, or fail to defend against hate speech to African-Americans you are complicit in denying our true history. My history is your history as the world was involved. Bunce Island was famous to the world as one of the primary processing points for slaves to be sold for the rice plantations of the South. My people's villages were raided for their expertise, what we now called Subject Matter Experts (SME), in cultivating rice. Let me take you to my our home of West Africa, where Africans were rounded up from countries like Sierra Leone, Liberia, Senegal, Gambia, and even as far as Angola to survive concentration boats, concentration plantations, and horrendous abuse from slave labor.
To deny our history is to deny a path forward to solving this problem. I ask modern day citizen, how many weeks, months or years would you work without pay? How would that make you feel and how should these wrongs be corrected? I saw interns recently sued the big magazine corporations a few years ago for internships with out pay. They could leave after the summer go back to school --- what if for multiple generations your family's identify, wealth, assets, investments, SME, children, wives, fathers were killed or assets stripped, or compensation never paid without any fair market based valuation. And then go to a school name after the person who robbed your family --- How would that make you feel?
So when I, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Oprah, Lebron, Nas, or the host of many people talk about African-American investments, owning assets, and circulating dollars and knowledge without our community, please don't stand in solidarity...take action. Don't cancel culture me as you accumulate debt or pile debt on people that look like me...let's invest together. And if you're afraid to take risks, I understand --- over 400 years ago and systematically since then many of us have been programmed to get what you can and NOT to share with others out of fear that there is not enough for everyone. haha a rising tide lifts all boats.
Like Jay Z said I'm not a businessman, I'm a Business, man. Or as I like to call it a Platform:
- 1 Primary Home
- 1 Rental Home (more coming)
- Investment Portfolio with over 30 stocks at any given time
- 401K
- Rainy Day Savings
- Corporate Job
- Own a Small Business - training and employing underserved groups on how to enter the information technology field
- 529 College fund for my kids
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