Is This Accountability or Self Hate?

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Every black leader is dismissed. Every movement is mocked. Every achievement is somehow minimized. Every historical struggle was treated as fraudulent, right? It's treated as weak, as as embarrassing, or meaningless. Like, what? Like, people say these things about the actual civil rights leaders in the civil rights movement. These are black folks who who claim, in many respects, to be looking out for black people. I see it all the time. It's dangerous.

[00:00:30]One of the things that I've noticed across YouTube and um social media in general is a a kind of a like a a rise of what I call black cynicism or black nihilism. And I don't know if if it's just something that has always been there that it just was never a part of my sphere of influence and I just overlooked it. But, there's this there's this really problematic critical, you could you could argue it's an internal criticism within group, like, which is valid, but I think it's a little more intense than that. So much so that it caused me to put a pause on another topic that I wanted to do today to address this. The thing that I'm concerned about is what do these people stand for? Because many of them, from what I can tell, seem disconnected from organizing. I don't know what organizations they're with or a part of.

[00:01:28]I don't know what scholarship they're leaning on. I don't know what institutions they're part of building. I don't know what their political education is. I don't know what their responsibilities are to their to their communities. They just pop up in the comments.

[00:01:44]Or they just pop up like random YouTube channel. You Then you look and it's like, you know, 50,000 50,000 comments.

[00:01:51]And it's like, yo, so people are actually like listening to to to this?

[00:01:56]Like, people are taking this in. So, this is the broad scope of what I want to talk about today. But before I forget, right? I need you to like, subscribe, and share this platform with your friends, with people who are like-minded, with people who can build off of, you know, you know, my content, and people who can offer a healthy critique. I'm all for healthy critique.

[00:02:18]And there are instances, not many, I'll be honest, but not but there are instances where people, you know, correct me. And I'll I'll go back and sometimes I'll publicly acknowledge it.

[00:02:29]So, this is what community is about, right? You can't be scared. I tell my kids all the time, you can't be scared to make a mistake. Like [snorts] if you planning on winning, you can't be afraid to lose. That's just how it goes. So, anyway, the difference between critique and historical nihilism. Every historical movement made mistakes. Every leader was imperfect. There was no perfect leader, right? As a human as humans, we make mistakes. Human the the the essence of humanity is to err. Is to make an error.

[00:03:01]The benefit of life and longevity allows you to correct the error.

[00:03:08]Whether it's the person in his in his or her lifetime, or whether it's those who come after him or her to correct them.

[00:03:15]Not to tear down what came before them, but to correct them.

[00:03:19]So that the so that the path forward can continue, right? So, this is not unique to to black history. This is human history.

[00:03:28]This is what we find across humanity across time and space.

[00:03:33]But hindsight is easy as I mentioned, it's always 20/20.

[00:03:38]It's easy to to to offer a critique in 2026 with regards to civil rights leaders. It's easy to That's low-hanging fruit. It's easy to critique black radicals. It's easy to critique Joe Joe Jackson, right? For the Jackson 5. It's easy to I'm just bringing him up because I made a video about Michael Jackson about the biopic and the people went crazy in the comments about Joe Jackson.

[00:04:01]It's easy to to interrogate or to critique, you know, integrationists, right? And there's a lot to critique with them, right? But again, hindsight is 20/20. So, even though it's easy it's a lot it's easier today to critique the role that integration integrationists played or played the role that they played and the fight that they fought with regards to integration, it's easy, but we could also understand why they did it to some extent. Right? And it just depends on who you are. Like people are on different sides of this. I'm on I'm on the side where I'm very critical of the integrationists because of what they gave up or because of what was given up, but I also understand that there's a lot more to the story. There's a lot of nuance to the integrationists.

[00:04:46]Right? That's a whole other conversation for another day, but just to to sort of plant a seed, you know, there was a there was a there was powerful interest.

[00:04:54]There was powerful state-sponsored at the presidential level interest to to to fight towards integration because of the the geopolitics happening at the time.

[00:05:05]So, this is another argument. This is another part of the integrationists because not all the people not all the civil rights and the black power leaders wanted to integrate. They just wanted they they were fine with the segregation. They just wanted equity and equitable amount of resources, you know, based off the tax dollars that they were putting into the paying into the tax system. All right? But that's another story another that's another conversation. It's easy to critique them. It's easy to critique the black nationalists, the pan-Africanists, or the abolitionists. These people it's easy to critique them in 2026, but to critique is not to tear down.

[00:05:42]Right? You don't have to tear down to critique healthy critiques and respectful critiques. These are people who who risked their lives, who risked their livelihood, who, you know, put their families and whatnot to the side for a cause much bigger than them.

[00:05:59]So, it's easy to critique them. The harder task is what conditions, you know, were they navigating? What what were they going through? They were faced with hostile surveillance, the counterintelligence program, level surveillance at the at the highest level, at the presidential level, right?

[00:06:19]State-sponsored covert assassination attempts and plots, right? Political imprisonment, right? All sorts of infiltration at the highest level, disinformation campaigns, and you know, the various levels of state violence.

[00:06:37]This was the climate that they were that they were faced with. So, for someone in 2026 to look at all of the institutions and the peoples who really really I'm talking about Black Americans in 1950s to the 1970s who really worked to change in real ways the United States as we know it, and the United States as it exists today, as flawed as it is, a lot of what it became was because of these struggles.

[00:07:15]And you can't remove or eliminate the context. It wasn't like these people were free to do the things that they did. They were under constant duress, and you can't just sit at your as cozy and as comfortable as I am in front of this microphone sitting on this this comfortable chair, relatively comfortable chair, and just pick them apart and pull apart with no resistance. I mean, there are people who are doing this, you know, and and we we don't know what they do.

[00:07:46]We don't know who they are.

[00:07:49]We don't know what they studied.

[00:07:51]We don't know who their mentors are.

[00:07:55]We don't know where they've been trained. We don't know anything.

[00:08:00]They're just telling us that every single thing black Americans did was wrong.

[00:08:07]Or that it wasn't the way we frame it.

[00:08:14]If you lose respect for the traditions, for the people who created those traditions, if you lose respect for what it took for you in 2026 to survive given the history of our people, if you lose respect for that, to say the very least, you become politically vulnerable. And that's exactly where we are right now. We're vulnerable politically. We're vulnerable because our representation is nil. And when we do have representation, we do it we have it without power.

[00:08:49]Right? We have representation that in in large part is is working against our interests. This is political vulnerability because we're so divided, so many lanes across so many like we can't figure out that, you know, our our collective um survival sort of hinges on us working together, not necessarily agreeing on everything. There's a difference.

[00:09:16]Let that breathe.

[00:09:19]Internal fracture and the politics of division.

[00:09:23]This is the second theme of this conversation. And it brings me to a quote by Chuck D from Public Enemy. He once said, "Every brother ain't a brother cuz a black man squeezed on milk a max the man.

[00:09:38]The shooting of Huey Newton from the hands of a who pulled the trigger.

[00:09:44]Come on down. Get down. All right, anyway.

[00:09:49]I just I kind of lost myself in that.

[00:09:51]But the point is Chuck D said, "Every brother ain't a brother."

[00:09:57]Then he goes on to expound on that.

[00:09:59]Because a black man squeezed on Malcolm X.

[00:10:06]The shooting of Huey Newton. But he said, "The shooting of Huey Newton from the hands of a n- from the hands of a who pulled the trigger. Every brother ain't a brother." That applies everywhere.

[00:10:20]Not everyone who looks like us share the same political commitments, right? There are different there you know, we black folks we run the gamut on our political commitments. Our historical memories are are kind of different. Right?

[00:10:35]The historical memory of black families from Mississippi is a little bit different than the historical memory of black families from North Carolina, but we all share a foundation. And even even so, the black American families from New York City, the black Americans from Chicago, the black Americans from LA and Oakland, we're all bound by a similar foundation.

[00:10:56]That is all deeply rooted in the south.

[00:10:58]Despite the differences and historical memory, the despite differences in political commitment, despite um different understandings of justice, despite the level of loyalty to the black struggle. In many cases, we don't share every single aspect of these things.

[00:11:17]But we do share one thing and we do share one thing that is fundamental.

[00:11:22]We are fundamentally the kith and kin of one another. We are fundamentally the descendants of those who were enslaved in the the States. We are fundamentally the descendants of those whose ancestors were Jim Crowed up until the 1960s.

[00:11:37]Right? We're fundamentally the product of, you know, figuring out ways to survive. And as a result, our DNA and our genetic makeup, and I'm not a biologist or anything like that. But and and and I'm not a psychiatrist. But in many ways our our our our DNA and our our our our our psychological makeup, and this is what brings us together.

[00:11:56]This is part of, you know, the culture that makes us uniquely who we are as black Americans. But this also for fact or or this community fact or this reality about who we are as black Americans that encompasses not just our our our similarities, but also our differences. This also applies to Africans, right? Because Africans, you have over 50 um countries on the continent. And within one country, you might have multiple ethnicities and multiple differences among in language and language styles.

[00:12:33]Right? Various language and language style various variations within cultures or culturally, right? And within one country. So, multiply that across 50 countries.

[00:12:45]So so Africa is obviously not a monolith. So when people say black Americans are African, well, what do you mean?

[00:12:52]>> [laughter] >> What do you mean exactly?

[00:12:55]Right? Because our because our reality is based on for 500 years of engagement and conflict with Europeans in North America and figuring out ways to reinvent ourselves and to survive and to navigate and to learn based on our environment. How do you remove that and place it generically into the continent of Africa with countries with every country having a multi multitude of language and culture and norms and epistemology and ontology etc. etc. etc. Ways of knowing, ways of being that's common to them within their group.

[00:13:45]So, how do you how do you excavate us from where we've been and what we've been able to do and put us in a place completely foreign to everything that we've known for 4 to 500 years?

[00:13:57]>> [snorts] >> And I understand that there are people who don't agree with that. There are people who want to, you know, find themselves, infuse themselves into the realities on the continent. I mean, I'm not here to argue with you for that.

[00:14:10]But, you don't get to argue with us those of us who acknowledge our shared history and our shared connection to North America.

[00:14:21]Many of us Like I was looking at my DNA the other day. And yeah, I got 90 per 90% of me is from a a about 90% is from different parts of Africa, different parts.

[00:14:35]Bantu, Mali, Guinea, Senegal, and even though Mali and Senegal and Guinea even though Mali, Senegal, and Guinea were was once in Ghana were were once one empire.

[00:14:50]But, you know, I have I have you know, this and the Bantu people and and I was like 90% I got 10% European. Where the hell that come from?

[00:14:59]Where Where Spain? How does Spain show up in my DNA? How does northern Italy show up in my DNA? What the hell is Norwegian doing in my DNA? Scotland in the UK.

[00:15:09]That 10% Where does European come from?

[00:15:11]This is what makes us different and unique.

[00:15:14]This is what makes black Americans unique because all of us have this. We have this.

[00:15:20]We not proud We know where it came from.

[00:15:22]I'm not to spell it out. We know where it came from. We know how it got there.

[00:15:25]But this is what makes us unique and different.

[00:15:29]Most of us are disgusted by that element, by that aspect of of us, that reality.

[00:15:35]But yet it still is there. And the reason I'm bringing that up is because you know, one of the things that people do, you know, like they make the mistake that all black people globally, you know, share the same you know, relationship to race and empire and colonialism or black political struggle in the United States because they don't. Black Americans, we were forged through enslavement, through Jim Crow, through segregation, the Great Migration, the Civil Rights struggle in the US.

[00:16:06]And that produced a particular political memory and a relationship to America that's that's unique.

[00:16:12]Right? And again, as as I mentioned, in my DNA.

[00:16:15]You know, the things that show up in my DNA that I'm not proud of.

[00:16:20]Not embarrassed by it, either. It's just like I didn't control I didn't have no control of it. I didn't have control of these enslavers, you know, taking advantage of black black women and and forcing themselves on black women. It wasn't consensual. There's no There's no consent in enslavement.

[00:16:35]There's no consent.

[00:16:38]There's no consent when children are are torn apart from their family and sold off to another, you know, another plantation thousand miles away when a family is torn apart in North Carolina and sent off to Arkansas or Louisiana or South Carolina or Virginia or Georgia never to see each other again, ever.

[00:16:58]Maybe generations a hundred two hundred years later, um some of their future generations wind up together in the same place in North in New York, living next next to each other, neighbors, don't even know.

[00:17:12]Because two hundred years prior, like these are the these are the traumas that we carry as black Americans.

[00:17:19]This is unique These are unique circumstances and surviving this makes us uniquely who we are. People need to res- People don't respect that and that's crazy to me. How power exploits fragmentation. This is the point I want to talk about.

[00:17:34]And the third point, the ways in which power exploits fragmentation.

[00:17:39]The ways in which power uses differences to keep us divided.

[00:17:47]Historically divide and conquer has always been central to racial governance. And going into Africa or Latin America or Asia and carving up the people and drawing lines between tribes, by nations that we created as Europeans.

[00:18:07]The British, for example, goes into Egypt and Sudan and they draw a line between Nubia.

[00:18:15]They say, "The people on this side of the line are Egyptian. The people on this side of the line are Sudanese." But for thousands of years, they were the same people.

[00:18:26]The same you Everywhere on the map, you can say you can see this where Europeans went. So, this is This divide and conquer has been central to colonialism.

[00:18:37]And it's carving up of Africa and Asia and Latin America and it has been central and remains central to what's happening in the US.

[00:18:47]Right? It remains central. It's important that as new people come into the US from other parts of the world, it's important like as a racial governance order of imp- significance to keep black Americans away from other migrant groups.

[00:19:12]Black migrant group or wherever because we don't want them to be influenced by the historical memory of black Americans. We don't want them influenced by the savvy politicalness and the historic and the historicity of black Americans. So, the divide and conquer is very real.

[00:19:31]And that's the thing. Like I I have I have friends from other countries, you know, who I become those who I become friends with our friendship always it starts with like a simple question for me. I ask them. I say, "Listen, before you came to the US, what were you told about black Americans?"

[00:19:49]And the the ones who are who become my friends, they know exactly what I mean.

[00:19:53]Some of them will try to like deny it or try to act like they don't know what I'm talking about, but most of them, especially after they get to know me and stuff, they'll tell me. They'll say, "Oh, yeah, we you know, we were told to stay away from you all. We were told that you all were lazy. We were told that you all were this or that and my my" And I'll say to them straight up, "I say, you know what they told us about you?"

[00:20:12]They told us that y'all was walking around naked, swinging from trees, starving with flies flying over you and This what they told us about you.

[00:20:23]This is what they This is the image that they showed us about Africa.

[00:20:27]So, just like they told you what they told you about us, you got to understand they gave us a narrative about you, too.

[00:20:36]Now, we sitting here having this conversation, we both know it's not true.

[00:20:41]So, now what we going to do about it?

[00:20:42]But see, there's a lot of us who don't get it get the opportunity to have that conversation.

[00:20:48]But I do and this is why I have the kinds of friends that I have cuz it's about respect and it's about learning each other. You don't get to tell me that the flag that I wave as a black American is is somehow less than the flag that you wave as a Malayan or Kenyan or wherever.

[00:21:05]You don't get to do that.

[00:21:07]And if we can respect each other on that, then we good.

[00:21:11]If there's disrespect around that in any part of that, then then then there's going to be a then there's going to be tension.

[00:21:19]And the source of that tension should should should hinge on a simple question.

[00:21:24]Why do you have a problem with black American culture, black American history, and black American, you know, identity as a group, as a collective?

[00:21:36]Because the colonizers said, or because the colonizers didn't say it.

[00:21:41]Because the Europeans, because white folks didn't validate it when we say it as black Americans, when we are putting forth our own identity despite what Europeans are saying.

[00:21:55]Now everybody got a problem with it.

[00:21:57]All right. When people become disconnected from the historical memory, when history is no longer important, when studying and learning and understanding history as a living thing, not just as something written on paper and tucked away in a book, but as a living organism. History as a living organism to be felt and to be understood and to be and to move accordingly. When the historical memory is disconnected, solidarity weakens.

[00:22:29]When the his when the when the historical memory about who you are as an African becomes disconnected from the people that makes you the person that you are.

[00:22:39]And then, for example, you come into contact with people from other parts of Africa and you despise them for no other reason except that they're from another country.

[00:22:51]Or you come into the United States with that same energy.

[00:22:56]Right? This is a disconnect between the the history that made you the person that you are, that makes you from the community and the population or the tribe that you're from.

[00:23:07]And that weakness only benefits those in power, those who are holding on to the existing power structures.

[00:23:16]And this is why historical education matters. This is why political memory matters. This is why intergenerational dialogue matters. This is why it matters to have elders. Because once we lose connection to, you know, the history, the struggle, the sacrifices, the collective memory, they become people become easier to manipulate politically.

[00:23:35]And that's what we're seeing. That's what we're seeing. That's why small numbers of European are are are able to control millions of people on the continent of Africa.

[00:23:45]Right? Small numbers of Europeans are able to control the resources and the people, the collective of of people on the continent. Okay, so why does it Why does any of this matter? Why am I bringing this up? We're living through attacks on voting rights, which I'll talk about in another video in more detail. Book bans, censor educational censorship, >> [snorts] >> disinvestment in humanities, which I've talked about in previous um videos, rising surveillance, and a growing uh historical illiteracy.

[00:24:20]Right? And at the same time, black communities are fragmented, black communities within black communities.

[00:24:25]So, black American, there's fragmentation. Amongst Africans, there's fragmentation. Um amongst uh Africans and black Americans, there are fragmentations, right?

[00:24:36]There's economic instability all over the place. And so, when there are people who understand economic instability and who are people in power who are driving economic instability, they're able to exacerbate the fragmentations by offering money and and and setting aside money for certain groups of people that have been identified, you know what I'm saying? To empower or to enrich. And by enriching them, you are able to further exacerbate the fragmentation. So, economic instability, political disorientation, politically disoriented.

[00:25:10]You know, you got political groups or groups within our communities who are working for not for the best interest of black Americans.

[00:25:19]You have black American political folks who aren't working for the interest of black Americans, right? This is This is politically disoriented. You have that I won't go I won't go too far into that.

[00:25:29]But, this is This is what it means to be politically disoriented. You have a disconnect from earlier traditions of organizing and mentoring.

[00:25:39]This creates the fertile ground for the cynicism that I talked about. Cuz remember, we started out talking about the rise of black cynicism, the rise of black nihilism.

[00:25:53]And all of these things, it makes for the the fertile ground for the kind of cynicism that we see today and the kind of nihilism that we see today.

[00:26:02]Right? And cynicism without responsibility eventually becomes political paralysis.

[00:26:10]It becomes like like just look at the political paralysis of black communities in the US.

[00:26:21]It's almost It's almost embarrassing.

[00:26:23]When you look at the ways in which our ancestors fought so hard for representation. The thing that people miss today, when people say, "Oh, you know, we got to vote because because our ancestors, you know, fought for these rights." Yes, this is true. 100% this is true. But, what people leave out is the fact that our ancestors were fighting for power.

[00:26:46]For black power, not just black representation.

[00:26:51]Black representation without black power is a oxymoron.

[00:26:55]So, we have all that representation all over the place. We had a black president.

[00:27:02]With no black power.

[00:27:05]We have black elect more black elected officials now than ever in my lifetime.

[00:27:10]I don't know if more than ever historically.

[00:27:14]But the but the power is gone.

[00:27:18]Where's the black power?

[00:27:21]Black representation is now being used in the cause of white power.

[00:27:28]And so, yes, of course, our ancestors fought and died for the right to vote.

[00:27:32]But the thing that we're missing that our ancestors understood very well, that our right to vote is about empowering our communities. And whoever we vote for are going to be dedicated to empowering our communities.

[00:27:53]The fact that black people in 2026 missed this point, this is the kind of political paralysis that I'm talking about.

[00:28:02]So, in closing, this conversation is not about the purity of politics. It's not about attacking immigrants. It's not about pretending black history was perfect.

[00:28:14]It's about asking a simple question or a few simple questions.

[00:28:18]What happens when people lose faith in their own historical struggles? What happens when survival itself becomes mocked?

[00:28:31]And what kinds of political futures emerges when critique is no longer connected to responsibility, memory, or liberation? The answers to these questions and grappling with these questions is what I think we need to be we need to be focused on.

[00:28:51]Because the kinds of black nihilism and the and the black cynicism and the critiquing and the ridiculing of black leaders and black movements and black groups is is not a is not a flex. And at the same time, doing that with no education or very little education and and and not not not to just make this about education cuz there are a lot of educators who critique for the sake of critique. And they're arm armchair critics and arm armchair academics.

[00:29:24]So it's this is not just, you know, I'm not reducing this argument to just to folks without education. But for the people who are engaged in this, we need to we need to be very careful about them. We need to acknowledge them and we need to call them out and we need to stay away from them, especially if we're serious about any kind of political future in this country.

[00:29:48]That's it for now, y'all. Peace.

[00:29:53]>> [music]