2022 will be the most challenging year for African-Americans due to self-inflicted marginalization. The best analogy is the frog sitting in the slowly boiling pan of water. We are only several generations out of slavery and a few generations out of getting civil rights granted as federal legislation. We see the hardship etched in our living elders' faces and what they endured as a people.

But we also saw triumph among our people in the midst of adversity. We saw Jesse Owens run in the face of Hitler, we saw Muhammad Ali show he can talk it and walk it and operate at agency, we saw Benjamin Banneker and George Washington Carver engaged in academics while their people were chattel auctioned off and recorded in ledgers with livestock. Ida B. Wells, Rosa Parks, Josephine Baker, Shirley Chisolm – I can go on and on to say these are our people who had to do it real because that’s the only option they had and knew what they did was bigger than them.

Today, African-Americans lost their way in a manner likewise to the dinosaurs.  We have been exploited and hijacked by charlatans and our people went along hook line and sinker. We started celebrating the liars, the fake Black nationalists, people start talking they Black Hebrew when we should be proud of our West African pretext to the American story. Then we start lying about our money, our wealth, and posing and reducing ourselves down to clickbait, aspiration, and inspiration people. I see Black men acting emotionally even as thugs and I see Black women acting irrational and reckless cutting off her nose to spite her face. And we hide behind slave master Christianity expecting Jesus to be the answer – we are lost and that’s our current status.

I will explain the sad part after this paragraph because it is the part that bothers me the most. While we over here faking it, the rest of the developed world doing everything for real.  As of January 1, 2022, the RCEP takes effect. From Wikipedia, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is a free trade agreement among the Asia-Pacific nations of Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. This is the largest free trade agreement in the world and this is an economic shift about to take effect. They are about to make it really real on African-Americans who basically pandered in emotionalism and sought Eurocentric paternalism.

Here is the sad part – I’m real and I see the sad part. I discovered most Asians I met around the world, they know who Josephine Baker is, they know who Malcolm X is they studied them, they admired their courage in the true face of adversity and systematic marginalization. You guys out here – you don’t know shit except what you fill your own head with about how others are moving around the world. They know who James Brown is, who Michael Jackson is – Jack Ma of Alibaba got nothing but videos of him doing Michael Jackson routines. They see more in our heroes and legends than our own people are at this moment in time, that’s the sad part.

Let me explain something to African-Americans because 2022 is the unavoidable fate we self-inflicted on ourselves. We are going to just sit on the bench and watch everybody get it while we look fake and posing and lightweight. It’s actually going to be funny but not a laughing matter. We going to pretend we got money to spend while they over there got Gross Domestic Product to import/export to drive the economy of their nations. We going to still talk first Black stuff while they over there taking their entire nation from third world to thriving economies. We going to talk about aspiration/inspiration and planning to do while they are over there with full robotic manufacturing, artificial intelligence, and future sustainable farming methods. Just going to look silly still talking and smiling about what we may do while they already did it and now advancing further leaving us behind.

I have been extremely disappointed in my people over the years as I watch this dichotomy manifest between a posing ass race of people versus economic emerging nations. Right now, a Black man or Black woman will stand next to me and act like they are better and special as hell while another young Chinese entrepreneur is preparing to IPO on the Shanghai or Beijing or Hong Kong stock exchange moving away from NYSE or Nasdaq. But I’m confused about that Black man or Black woman and let me explain.

Last, I check, I have API gateways set up around the world, I have payment gateways set up around the world – I don’t give a fuck what these Black folks thought they were doing, they not scaled out like me. I can act broke and hang out with them and I got teams working for me around this world with microservices performing high-capacity transactions every second around the world as well 24/7. That’s because I put my head down like George Washington Carver while my people sat there putting in no real work – just believing some bullshit they made up in their head and fell back on their worthless sense of pride and self-worth.

Some of you are going to do better in 2022 because you are not going to be sitting on the benches like the rest of our people. Some of you know how to move around the world and enter markets with opportunities and keep your head down in the business. Some of you are book smart and follow real experts, not Black YouTube charlatans to get your game up and study and master it where you are in demand and can go wherever you want to go. Some of you brothas learned about dating Asian and Latino women and some of you sistas learned about dating ex-pat American brothas and British brothas and avoid the stank Black American relationship culture worshipping Steve Harvey, dudes sitting in cars talking into a cell phone about relationship advice and Kevin Samuels toxic propaganda. I’m not worried about you for one second, I’ll see you at the international wing at the airport or while getting milk tea at a cafe in Europe or Asia.

The rest of you guys – it’s going to be fun but sad watching you keep posing and acting like you just need to compare yourself to other Black people to think you special and walk with that high-minded attitude around the Black community, digital or physical. We are going to pivot Dream and Hustle to our own developed paid subscription model like SubStack where everybody can create their own paid story feed and don’t worry about a White liberal tech platform trying to throttle a Black writer speaking truth to power. Blavity cannot freely switch up their clickbait Buzzfeed-wannabee nonsense while Morgan DeBaum keeps touting worthless metric numbers as their measure of success. Besides Morgan DeBaum and that Harlem Capital characters are too hellbent on wanting you to admire them, not them creating platforms to empower you – that’s how folks like them think and will be easy to run circles around.

Here is what you going to do as Black folks in 2022. You are going to try to leverage your relationship with folks like me by thinking you cutting me off when I got cool friends and allies around the world who had my back for the last 10 years, I won’t miss you. I wiped my butt on the toilet with that Black card so you can have it back when you want it. Then you going to scowl and talk up like you are angry and emotional but you sniveling and being emotional don’t match up to other folks doing real work and making real moves, eh? And last, you going to move lightweight, travel and take selfie photos, buy luxury items to accentuate your self-worth, and flex like you are special to others. But you going to realize in 2022, a lot of other people spend money in investing in themselves in 2020 and 2021 and going to flex talent, skills, strategy, empires, growth, teams, hubs – you know, real power.

African-Americans cannot escape runaway capitalism, cannot escape digital transformation at their jobs, cannot escape free trade pacts like RCEP, cannot avoid gig work and Amazon factory jobs as an alternative. Acting phony, chasing charlatans, posing on virtual social media platforms is not going to save anyone either. To be honest, we made reckless decisions and we going to pay for it in 2020. I mean what are we going to do as Black people? Write more positive inspiration articles? Create a new dance challenge on TikTok?  Stick our nose further in the air at fellow Black people? Vote for Democrats? Start a small business? What are we going to do?

In 2022, we going to see a lot of bench-warming among African-Americans pretending they contributing to the team while everybody else is on the field playing the game. A few of us will break through because we going to break away from the toxic mass psychosis going on in our community. But overall, it’s going to be very awkward watching these Black people look for other Black people to compare themselves to act better while we are all in a global economy. As for me and my circles, we got a platform you don’t get, we got directions you ain’t going, we got dreams you cannot even wake up to – our 2022 going to reflect that.

2022, we are not looking weak; we are weak because our folks want to be fakers and posers in a landscape of global emerging talent and nations and we got no answer, just attitude. That’s the way it is and we laid our own bed to lie in.