let’s stop talking about race. no more discussions, tweets, books, podcasts, or documentaries about racism or “the culture.” it’s a trap. an endless labyrinth of unresolvable words and emotions tied to a group identity that has led us nowhere. worse than nowhere, it has distorted our view of ourselves because when we see ourselves as hammers and every problem as nails then we end up smashing a lot of delicate things.

human beings, as with most mammals, are social creatures that organize themselves into groups. we’re a bunch of little tribes and big civilization cliques that can’t help ourselves, but we must not forget that these compulsive impulses are superimposed, temporarily. today it’s black vs. white and tomorrow it’s protestant vs. catholics or the montagues and the capulets all over again. we’ve had a million of these labels before and we’ll have a million more. a forever stream of new ways to say “us vs. them.” it’s strange. it feels real because it’s loud and current and echoed socially, but it’s the difference between describing the world and experiencing it. and it’s not permanent, it’s not even yours. we’ve been given our consciousness (for the briefest of moments) to guide us through THE bullshit and to remind us that even though we can’t control what society labels us, we should never reinforce it. i have mixed feelings about black culture. it claims not to be a monolith, yet demands a singular view of the world: lest ye be cast out. but black culture is not black people, who are thoughtful, nuanced, and have always wanted to be viewed as unique individuals. this is obvious and easy to do so long as we ignore the siren song of that next racial discussion trying to drag us into yet another debate about who can say the n-word or interracial dating.

the second rule: aim for mediocrity. jordan, maya, mlk, baldwin, these people were great and deserve to be honored, but you are not them. i am not them. they are literally the outliers, and we are the median. black households are second-to-last in income, second-lowest in reading proficiency among 6th - 8th graders, and first in homicide-related deaths. obama was an anomaly; we are the norm. during the 2020 blm protests, there was a lot of ’60s cosplay going on: fists raised in the air, afros grown out, malcolm x-ish cadences, and lots of people who had “had enough”. they were acting as though the civil rights movement was only about civil rights activists. what about the other brave black men and women? the non-marchers, the regular people who gave no rousing speeches, sang no cultural anthems, and whose images aren’t on t-shirts or murals? were those people on the right side of history? will they even be remembered in history? there are millions of them—our grandparents and great-grandparents—who moved to poor neighborhoods where they were the first, got regular jobs, and raised regular families. they didn’t seek sainthood or attempt to dismantle the system. they sought a job that paid the bills and the freedom to do as they pleased. this is the story of most immigrants, most americans, and most people. most of us are like “all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” the silent majority is filled with black people who don’t rise to peaks or settle in valleys, they focus on living a decent normal life. this is what we need to model ourselves after. this is where our mimetic gaze should focus. stop looking for your michelle obama and just get a wife. stop talking about generational wealth and focus on getting out of debt, in this lifetime. no memes, no taglines, no slogans, and no more greatness. just be mediocre.

if we stop getting distracted by endless discussions about race and stop pretending we were kings and queens in our past lives, we could improve black lives where they actually exists, in the median. how would that change us or the culture? we are only 13% of the population, yet we hold significant influence in america. so when we suffer, american culture suffers too, because we embody america in the purest sense. every other group has had some ties to their original culture and, through assimilation, infused it into america. we didn’t have that luxury. we are orphans—the cultural output of this great american experiment. in a way, our size is a blessing. there are a billion chinese people but only ~40 million of us, so each one of us has an outsized imprint on our culture and black culture becomes american culture, which becomes global culture. that pipeline is real, and it compounds. to stop talking about race isn’t to ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist, and to focus on mediocrity isn’t to reject greatness or stop being inspired by it, but we’re culturally stagnant and need to flash ourselves with those men-in-black neuralyzers. we need new visions. fresh ones, no more 60s reverberations. the reality for most of us is not good and getting dragged down by the same tribal frameworks is not the path forward. what can be, unburdened by what has been.

when i was fifteen, i went to ndola, zambia. as the plane taxied down the runway, i looked out the window and saw a sea of blackness. all black people, doing every kind of job, across every class. i felt a wave of culture shock wash over me. i was disoriented by this foreign yet beautiful sight. it was deeper than race though, it was the realization that billions of people are out there, living completely different lives than mine. they have their own airplanes, airports, pilots, baggage handlers. their own systems. their own lives. i had never thought about them, and they had never thought about me.