If I can only stress one thing, one piece of advice to Black people to help save their lives and help them get to where they are headed, explaining to them who they choose to follow and associate with determines everything – it does. In my lifetime, I have learned and observed over and over that there is no other factor in this world more important than who a person chooses to be around.

Learn to choose wisely and the best time to choose is right now. The first choice you need to make is the lifestyle you really want. If you want the reality-TV celebrity friends’ lifestyle, you have to position yourself in that scene and circle and move to places like Los Angeles or wherever they film that stuff. If you want professional and smart friends, you need to position yourself in markets full of smart people like Seattle or the Bay Area.

Make sure you focus on lifestyle and not identity such as Black identity. You moving to Atlanta or Dallas because you are Black and want to be around your people – you going to get what you asking for. You run into ghetto folks who don’t respect you, hell, they don’t respect their own kin folks but you coming to have some kind of affinity with other Black folks in Atlanta and Dallas, yeah ok. That’s where a lot of people mess up talking about a Black tech scene or a Black music scene or a Black fashion scene. Then you go there and see a bunch of low-grade fakers who are backstabbing each other in a petty fashion and all of them sucks and are mediocre. You are caught up in a Black identity mess and making no moves.

Who you choose to follow online also determines your path. No one really wants to deal with someone who follows fake clowns online – your credibility shoots to zero instantly. Black folks be coming asking to approach me then start talking about they follow Dr. Boyce Watkins or Umar Johnson and I politely ask them to keep it moving. Only a grade-A certified idiot would follow a Black charlatan online when there are so many real experts, real groups, knowledgeable podcasts and video series that can improve one life and position.

When you meet people in the old school days, they would ask what books are you reading so they can see what type of material you spend your quality time with. They would know at that point what kind of person they dealing with. So today, if someone ask you what podcasts or YouTube video or who you follow on social media, they know exactly what kind of person you are when you speak up.

The first step is you have to choose what you going to associate with and disassociate with. First, find out your lifestyle goals and where you are headed. Most likely if you reading this blog, you want to be associated with intelligent, real-working people who have global exposure and experience and can leverage technology and techniques to solve problems affecting us and our communities. You also if you a real folk, you want to disassociate with Black ignorance who is trying to keep up in a state of being stupid, faking, ghetto and with no power, no wealth, no mobility and no respect.  

The traps I see is associating yourself with a clique-mentality like a Blavity AfroTech where all of them suck and mediocre. If you truly want to be Black Excellence in technology, move to real tech areas and actually learn, don’t be there talking about you Black at Twitter, go there and be the spook that sat next to the door and master the stuff from the masters. Past 15 years, Chinese workers come here working in white privilege circles quietly learning to take back home to build empires; past 15 years, Black workers be creating social cliques acting like they special and just talk basic clique stuff and got nothing but dated LinkedIn connects to show for after 15 years.

Where is what we all need to do as Black Excellence. We need to search out quality associations that deliver the maximum benefit to us. We don’t care about race, sex or identity, we care about extracting value we can apply to make our lives better. That includes Reddit groups with experts that discuss trading and investing. Be mindful again, we got a lot of “Black identity groups” like Blavity AfroTech where there some self-proclaimed expert in that clique set up is trying to talk and maintain some HNIC status. We need to position ourselves where the associations have true value to improve our current position. That means several Black folks show up at the French cooking groups or meetups because that’s our lifestyle.

We already see this happening, you will see two Black folks biking along with White bikers where the White bikers may have years of experience – that is way better than Black identity bikers who start fussing about who is the HNIC and make assumptions of how Black one person need to be, distracting and petty stuff. If you travel globally and show up in Dubai for example, you going to have to hang with people from multiple races and discuss solutions from a diverse standpoint. You find yourself associated with people from multiple backgrounds that you can rely on for advice and mentorship and growth. That’s how you want to associate.

Then when we all meet up as Black people, we come to the table with all of the value-added associations that make us better people from our individual experiences and then we can talk about the common goals and what we all learned and what we all implemented. That’s how the association should be done in the 21st century.

For real, let’s stop the corny Black-identity associations where we are around low-frequency clowns that all listen to Jason Black talking online. Focus on associations that add value to your lifestyle goals and then work with others to pass the knowledge on to create value, regardless of race or identity. That’s the way Black Excellence has to move forward.