A.D. Wright's Blog, page 3

We is Sick: Is Materialism Our New Master?

Due to the beauty of modern-day multitasking, I spent my morning train ride to work looking through my finances on my  Mint app while listening to Malcolm X speeches.  As I writhed over the money I continuously waste, Malcolm’s House Negro and Field Negro speech began playing.  Although the speech was about the social effects of “the […]

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E=MC2 & Why I’m Still Not Married

Ever since I passed that age 30+ mark, my friends and family have incessantly asked, “So… why aren’t you married yet?” I keep replying, “Because I don’t want to be;” but for some reason, my answer doesn’t provide the social conformation that they seem to be seeking from me. Here’s my real answer. E=MC2 The […]

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The New American Dream

Industrial Age vs Information Age Have you ever heard a parent tell their child, “You can do anything you put your mind to”? I never understood what it really meant, but I always appreciated the optimistic gesture. About three years into my third career path, I finally understood the power in that statement. That realization […]

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A Road to Racism paved with Good Intentions

THE DANGER IN HOW NON-PROFITS MARKET Have you ever noticed that the term “In The Black Community” is always preceded or followed by some crisis or deficit i.e. AIDS, poverty, or some ‘ism? Take a moment and type “in the black community” in Google and see what auto-populates. Told you! The marketers of non-profits are […]

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Sympathy Fear

Everyone, who tries something outside of the accepted norm – like pursuing his dreams, loathes the possibility of disappointing his family by failing miserably and squandering the time, money and energy that has been sacrificed for his success. But what we loathe even more is the “you’re going to fail, so why even try” attitude that our friends and family display through their “advice” about how we should get a “real job or maybe go to law school” The double edged stress of obligation mixed with isolation has caused countless visionaries to abandon their dreams and writhe in the safety and security of a 9-5.

Although it’s infuriating and hurtful to think that your loved ones don’t believe in you, don’t be upset. Their attempts to discourage you are simply because they are fearful for you. You are taking the road less traveled, with the unknown creating more risks which makes them uncomfortable. They project their fear of the unknown onto you because they love you and don’t want to see you fail, even if it means never achieving your dreams and being miserable but safe for your entire life. To them, it’s a worthy trade.

Like villagers surrounded by a dangerous jungle, their primal instinct is to go (and teach you to go) on the safe known routes. However like the trailblazers whom we celebrate as brave heroes, you want to create your own path through the great unknown and create safer routes for others. You are compelled to this destiny. Even if you fail at one endeavor, you know the journey is even more important than the goal. One failure can be a necessary step to a future triumph.

Be brave and evolve, even if it means leaving the herd behind. Be that horse that raised his head up high, stood tall and became the first giraffe.

Buying Your Time Back

Every day, while sitting in my cubicle, my aspirations, dreams, “million dollar ideas and regrets flow through my mind. Some I write down, while others I forget almost instantly. But, all give me a haunting feeling that maybe I should be using this precious time on earth to do something epic. Like most American working stiffs, my bills and responsibilities, all of which I’ve created, bring me back from the heavenly clouds possibility to the dark doldrums of “reality.”

In this reality, we are born with something of scarce value, our time, and throughout our lives, we exchanged our obligated time for something that we value even more, our limited experiences. According to the hierarchy of needs, we cannot do without some of these experiences e.g. avoiding hunger and environmental hardships. While others, like experiencing fine linens and fast cars, are completely unnecessary but create an enhanced experience.

Some of us are born with our primary experiences pre-paid. Those lucky individuals have two options. They can keep their time unobligated and just enjoy their unearned experiences or they can convert their time and money to that of premium value by experiencing sought after knowledge and skills e.g. college. They can then sell their enriched time for the enhanced experiences mentioned above.  We call these people the middle class.

So how about the rich? The rich create experiences for the rest of us to enjoy. The more enjoyable experiences they create, the more money they make.  Here’s a challenge. Go to the 100 Richest People in the World article and try to identify what experiences they or their companies create.  So how do the rich stay rich? They experience less than they have already created while continuing to create more. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

How do we buy our time back?

We buy our time back by:

Not obligating our future time in the form of unnecessary loans and credit cards.
 Identifying and killing our addiction to unworthy experiences and focusing our limited time on creating worthy experiences for ourselves and sellable experiences for others.
Enriching our experiences with knowledge and skills with the end goal of creating “experience output machines” that run without using more time than we wish to obligate.

Easier said than done? Probably. But, are you doing something better with your time?

The Subtle Racism of Low Expectations

During one of the more memorable The Simpsons episodes, Bart Simpson is placed in a Special Ed class due to his continuous slacking on schoolwork. Being the bright yet defiant young man he was written to be, he sarcastically states, “So, I supposed to catch up to the rest of my class by going slower than them?” This paradox is the crux of the digital divide and the racial achievement gap.

In Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, Joshua Foer coins the phrase “the Okay Plateau.” The Okay Plateau explains that what was once assumed as the limits of our natural ability is actually our human tendency to only improve until we think that we have improved enough to reach a comfortable level of success.

This being said, if the expectation of success is lower for poor inner-city children than their middle-class suburban neighbors, their Okay Plateau will be lower, thereby making them seem somehow intellectually inferior.

How do we fix this?

Anyone who has been in a competition of any sort already has the knowledge to exceed the Okay Plateau. The job of every coach/trainer is to slowly increase the difficulty of practice in order to produce higher performance levels from their players. Moreover, every athlete, martial artist and chess champion knows that when they compete against other great players, their skills improve beyond their own perceived limits. Simple isn’t it?

As mentioned in bestselling book Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell, the exposure to quality training greatly influenced the success of our most revered “geniuses.” Mr. Gladwell gives example after example of how the current titans of industry became so by being exposed to more quality and consistent practice in their given field than the rest of us.

It may be easier to use race, gender or socioeconomic factors as indicators of success due to the pretty graphs these statistics often lend themselves to, but it is more likely that dedication, environment, and exposure to rigorous resources (like those found in a public library) are the keys to success and the ultimate cincher of achievement gaps.

The Pro-Black Middle Class

Recent racial injustices have given voice to a grossly underrepresented group. A cross sectional sub group of both the Black Community and the American Middle Class, the Pro-Black Middle Class might be the only hope for accountable leadership in the Black Community.



What happened to our leaders? Well, it depends who you ask. Some were assassinated by the Federal Government (i.e. MLK, Malcolm X, Black Panthers and Marcus Garvey;) Others sold out for personal wealth, fame and power (e.g. Al Sharpton;) Most, however, were destroyed by circumstance before they had an opportunity to develop into true leaders.

The cultural gap between the general Black Middle Class and the Black Poor has been slowly widening since the conclusion of the Black Civil Rights Movement. Just as one of the unintended effects of Racial Integration was the death of Black economic independence, an unintended consequence of Affirmative Action is the loss of a common oppressor. In true American Capitalist fashion, the Black Middle Class is becoming richer and less culturally aware, while the poor is vilified, ostracized and exploited for our entertainment.

A quick history lesson from W.E.B. Du Bois’s Talented Tenth circa 1903:

Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races.

Its technique is a matter for educational experts, but its object is for the vision of seers. If we make money the object of man-training, we shall develop money-makers but not necessarily men; if we make technical skill the object of education, we may possess artisans but not, in nature, men.

Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools—intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it—this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life.

W.E.B.’s idea is the polar opposite of today’s popular culture where drug dealers, philanderers, and attention hungry buffoons inundate the radio, television and ultimately our zeitgeist. Today, our “Best,” as W.E.B put it, has willfully ignored the rest for fear that they may be associated with the unwashed masses – a notion that would be reasonable if they were not already perceived by default as active participants in this self-destructive culture by the “majority.”

Who will save us? Most likely, the original hopeful saviors from W.E.B.’s day… The Pro-Black Middle Class – especially those educated at Historically Black Colleges and Universities also so referred to as HBCU’s. Albeit many “Predominately White Institutions” have student created Black social groups that exhibit the same values, the decision to attend an HBCU shows an appreciation for culture, a belief in the possibility of Black unity, and the courage to face possible backlash from racists due to this decision. Regardless of if a young person decides to be immersed in Black Culture or to create an oasis of Black Culture inside mainstream America, the ideals of such a person are the same. These ideals plus an economic backing from a community willing to conspire for its own success will create a force strong enough to break the cycle of oppression, contamination and death.

The Talented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders of thought and missionaries of culture among their people. No others can do this and Negro colleges must train men for it. The Negro race, like all other races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.

What do you think?

Fashionable Outrage

This post isn’t about Trayvon Martin or the suffering his family must endure due to the lack of congruency between the law and common sense. This isn’t about harassing the dissenting opinions of simpletons on Twitter or Facebook. This isn’t even about thousands of people protesting a verdict. This is about fashionable outrage

This is about seeming to care about injustice -as long as everyone else does. (And as long as it doesn’t interfere with Love and Hip Hop Atlanta) This is about having little to no knowledge about Martin, Malcolm, Marcus, W.E.B., Parks, Booker T, Brown vs the Board of Ed and the many others who are disgraced by the convenience of fashionable outrage.

This is about being too busy to volunteer or too “broke” to donate to a community service organization. This is about not conspiring for our own success by supporting and creating minority owned/operated businesses. This about not voting with our wallets and supporting local politicians who reflect our values. This is about our everyday choices to support the things that don’t support us. This is about not supporting HBCU’s, scholarship foundations and improvement associations.

This is about controlling our resources, our image and our nearly dead communities. This is about dedication, understanding and the ability to communicate our ideas. This is about the revolution that begins in our minds and expands to our families, our communities, and eventually to the world. Even if we are divided when we are together, we must be untied when we are apart.

The Theory of Body Awareness

How We Get Fat Have you ever noticed getting fit takes concentrated effort while getting fat seems to happen while we sleep? When our mind is distracted with the day to day stresses of our life, we forget about our body’s functions, needs and potential. In short fat people think fat and fit people think […]

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