You know the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments. When God himself - no, not Joey, not Kim, nor Fred but omnipotent God himself delivered his chosen people to the Promise Land, those same people built a golden calf to worship while God was working with Moses on the 10 Ten Commandments. That’s the thanks God and Moses got for trying to save these people.

As an ADOS Digerati, you need to keep the story of Moses in mind as you move forward with creating solutions and creating value that you hope benefit your people but they are out there chasing golden calves. If they acted funny with God after what he done, then you should understand basic people acting funny with you as well, even in your own community.

I had this discussion so many times on Dream and Hustle in the past 10 years by the way and I have to keep coming back to this. It is a serious problem that I don’t think black folks realize how they are messing themselves up and not getting anywhere because the way they act. You got clout-chasers who are chasing status-based numbers rooted in white privilege and black oppression.  You got black folks acting indifference in terms of supporting other blacks trying to do real stuff. You got straight runners who run from their own family, their own community and real stuff going down. Then you got the so-called “cancel culture” that think they can cancel people with text-based messaging.

I know how you as someone trying to do for black folks feel because of my personal experience as well many of people who read Dream and Hustle should see come out once and while and right now. My journey has taken me all over the world with the true dedication to do for my people and I got straight garbage ass black folks I don’t know trying to show up around me with some commentary and opinions. I’m too old to make new friends so you know why they showing up when they find out someone actually out here doing something and making real work happen.  

Let’s talk about this environment because COVID-19 and this economic downturn we going through have a lot of people acting nasty and mean which is really who they actually are – bad times bring out the real character you never seen but you that hunch that’s what that other person was about deep inside. I want to tell you my experience and how I decided to move forward and hope you stay the course and fulfill your purpose you were set out to do for your people.

Our Folks on Some Straight Bullsh*t

If you go out on the Internet and look at our people, you start seeing some funny acting activity among black folks as if we are programmed to collectively keep ourselves from progressing. What kills me is how these folks be smiling while doing the ignorant stuff they doing to keep themselves from progressing. Let’s break it down.

Clout Chasing. We got black folks in 2020 chasing celebrity and status goals. Look at the current issue with police brutality, you see people asking Killa Mike or TI for a damn comment instead of actual lawyers and activists who have real world experience on the topic. Then you got black folks so damn thirsty to claim themselves as having “net worth” owning dozens of garbage buildings and homes no one trying to buy off them and the net revenue is marginal at best. Or you got validation-seekers like the Blavity AfroTech group wanting to be “blessed” by Silicon Valley white male privilege culture to feel special. Then they want to compare you, a real ADOS Digerati to their clout-chasing dreams by making up standards saying you don’t have followers or money – that’s how some black folks are operating.

Indifference. This is a major frustration shared with me by other black entrepreneurs. When a goodwill black entrepreneur wants to tell other black people of their works, efforts, products they handling, black folks respond with a deafening silence or non-responsiveness. We need to trust our guts and call it out for what it is. Black folks don’t want to see you succeed because they are comparing you to them constantly. Family members are the same way, they want you just be “regular” to them. Another thing is when trolls come to attack black folks on the Internet, other black folks will sit there and be silent hoping the trolls demoralize the black entrepreneur. You have to be cognizant of this and rise above it.

Runners. These people do exactly as described, they run. They talk a lot but they don’t stand on a square and be prepared to fight on that line drawn in the sand. They say things about wanting to live another day or it ain’t worth it – well, why they running their big mouth then? These people are worst when it come to the black family unit. You got black dudes going raw in a sista but running away or non-committal when she having his baby. You got black women when she got a good man, she running away from committing to a quality black family relationship. When it’s time for black empowerment and an actual plan comes out – hey, where everybody go?! People go ghost just running away from both black problems and black solutions.

Cancel Culture. These are mediocre black folks in the real world who decided to become part of “digital tribes” that believe they can wage a tribal war against another digital identity or digital tribe. We have black feminists that think they can “cancel” a black brotha who like to date women outside his race. We have black brothas that think they can “cancel” someone who call them out for being on the Coli or following Dr. Boyce Watkins like a loser.  The whole thing about cancel culture is these black folks be on white platforms like Twitter or Reddit trying to cancel another black person, how funny. Just a bit of advice, we brothas and are by default canceled by Western society, yall playing game over the Internet.

There is a reason why our people act like this and it has every thing to do with being in a state of oppression and marginalization – these behaviors I just mention is a black social response. They not “chasing clout” they want to mimic white privilege. They being indifferent the same way society is indifferent to black lives. They running the same way a slave runs from the plantation in a wandering manner. And they want to cancel other folks the same way their whole life feels cancelled. But so what – not an excuse and not something you or I should put up with either.

I Know How you Feel About This

Definitely can relate to all of you out there going through this and I hear it from a lot of good black entrepreneurs trying to do right. You grew up as a child in school and picked on because you wanted to be a smart and knowledgeable. You put in that work while dudes chased the fast sistas and sistas chased the players and ostracize you for wanting to just have a deep, cool relationship. You became successful as a young adult and handled yours as a full adult but see resentment from friends, relatives, alumni because they comparing your hard work to their work and mad, not glad towards your black excellence – you discover they were judging you, not supporting you.

It’s a hurtful and disappointing feeling, trust me. I would had all of my platforms and solutions delivered a long time ago and there was days, even weeks were I just felt like I didn’t want to provide a service to anybody who don’t reciprocate respect – my own ADOS Black African-American people who I wanted to help empower with my skills and training. But look, we know how important the work of the ADOS Digerati is for our people but we got to find a way to address that bullsh*t our people on because it does impact us personally, let’s be honest.

Look Inside Yourself

In order to move forward, you need to set the orientation to where it belongs – you. Because you are the one who have the purpose and drive and mindset and you own that. You take ownership first and foremost of your goal and remove ownership or any timeshare someone else got on it, evict them. You have to recognize what you do is your calling, not an obligation to black folks or something black folks even have to accept.

When you look outside of yourself, you see jealous folks, folks wanting to act like they on some better than you stuff, folks withholding praise or acting in silence to demoralize you and even family trying to make you feel you are going outside the coloring line they drew as the boundary of how big you allowed to grow. What you doing is giving them ownership of your goals – you first and foremost declare yourself 100% owner of your venture and enterprise and operate in that fashion.

How to Move Forward on Funny Acting Black Folks

I successfully created the platforms that were engineered to empower black people and black communities – I want you to understand my wording. I didn’t say I built these things to empower black people and black community, my new official wording is “originally engineered” meaning the intent and the baseline was for the black community but it is going to be implement everywhere in the world instead. Because cats wanted to start acting funny with me when they saw I was really about empowering my people.

You will see this “engineered for the black community” as my firm tagline to show how hardened we created our platforms instead of the typical pandering of “black-owned and operated” when black folks don’t come to the diamond batting for black entrepreneurs like that. Let me remind black folks reading this – I had more Asian support to build black solutions over the past 10 years and I don’t care how much this truth hurts your fantasy ego about how to go about black empowerment.

Here is the approach to dealing with the foolishness.

Just Say F*ck These Folks. When Moses came down from the mountaintop and saw them worshiping that golden calf, him and God said “f*ck these folks” and laid wrath upon them for their ungrateful overtures. I’m not going to have you as an ADOS Digerati work hard to do for your people, then your people start BSing and you let that slide like all is good after you put in work. No, you straight drop people, blacklist people and lay full wrath on those folks as well. You defend your own hustle and do not let anybody think you something they can walk over then they walk up to when you got value creation being recognized. You cut those folks loose and build with new folks on your journey – press the reset button, the delete button and the cancel button on them.

Operate on a Customer-First Paradigm. As an entrepreneur the real problem and transition point is you have to move away from friends and focus on customers. Your customers validate your purpose and your life and you serve them and they serve you and that’s the relationship you build. You hire employees who have the same vision to support your customers and a spouse who is just as passionate as you to support customers as well and you both together on this. Don’t restrict your customers to a race or creed such as black folk customers - your customers are anybody who respect the work you do and pay for it.

Focus on a Diverse, Global Market. This is baseline for the ADOS Digerati – we have billions of potential customers outside the hood we grew up in and we mostly focus on “digital trade” that can serve customers around the world by localizing our platforms to their regions. This is why I have parallel efforts going on in Asia and Europe. So when one of my people want to act like a clown thinking they can downplay or obstruct, I got thousands of customers in Asia for that one clown in the black community. My platform is clearly designed for global markets from the Middle East to Latin America and I meet so many cool people around the world who are genuine customers and have the same technology passion I do.

As a collective, I will be working myself to defend the ADOS Digerati against these black folks who cannot even phantom that Ed Dunn actually have a platform engineered for black empowerment because they spent the last 10 years chasing nonsense – I cannot even announce to them because the shock will be too great.

We already have structures in place such as a social credit system that impacts who gets to board on the platform or use services on the platform and perks and privileges are granted or denied. Trust me, the ADOS Digerati is going to move in silence as we grow and me and you are going to accomplish this through our own purpose-driven narrative, not at the whim of funny acting black folks we were trying to uplift in the first place.