Yes he is and yes he has six degrees and a very strong academic and degreed/professional background. He also has the right to change his name.
I have recently watched several interviews with him and I would say his value and thesis is 80% correct and valid. There are however biased points that are difficult to reconcile, not because they don't make sense or merit questioning but because the horse I out of the literal barn. By that I mean his views on interracial marriage and admonishing Black to seek only Black women as mates because of simpatico and empathy that can't be achieved with mates from other cultures and ethnicities. Since the Supreme court Loving decision this horse is out the barn, Johnson's assertion that there I an element of envy and aspirational interest from Black men marrying outside their cultural group has elements of truth to it for some men and women of color.
Johnson's further points about community development and translatable power are dead on. Black folk give churches $14 million a week for hope, not community power. Community power includes 4 tenets: stores, schools, banks, hospitals . That lack are why Black people are not in equivalent power to the $1 trillion we pour annually into the American economy.
Point in fact, several years ago on my local Manhattan community board we talked in depth about the problem from Columbia University on 110th street the the west side and up to Washington heights at approximately 168th to 190th. There is no economic base. Mainly cell phone stores, grocery stores, hair salons dominate the areas alongside clothing and food restaurants. The problem was twofold: Jobs averaged $10 an hour through the corridor and those making more routinely left the neighborhood to go to other neighborhoods to spend money. The corridor is about 50% Black, 35 % Latino and 15% White. There is no corporate centers, factories, car dealerships, few homes to buy so it stays one poverty laden and makes I ripe for Columbia soft and developer hard gentrification.
Johnson is correct in that minorities have forsaken the boon of financial power for the immediacy of disposable doodads and trinkets. That they purchase jewelry, clothing l, cars, accoutrements that lack anything but liability status because there I not comparative lessons intra culturally about assets. He makes an excellent point about a speaker, a banker, at one of his events saying potential borrowers are not just skin denied loans but tend to have car leases that suggest if push comes to tight times, a man of color will forsake mortgage payments over his car lease.
I agree here because I recently had a coworker making about $40k a year who'd just reupped into a car lease, rolling over the past vehicles $14k due to the new vehicle, making It a grand total of $44k due. I blanched, choked even. I pointed out he drove the car mainly on the weekend, 20% of the total time. The rest it sat in the driveway and he and his wife journeyed on bus and train five days a week. At least one week of their work month, or three months of the year were to pay for the car to sit....in the driveway.
My former coworker illustrated this to me as I tried to get him to posit that $44k in at the very least, and I consider it a C grade investment at best, a 401k or as a downpayment on a home. My mother and stepfather were much the same, opting for a Mercedes that they couldn't afford.
The psychological validation of shiny things in contrast to being a privileged person is what drives Black people to such insanity. Seeking external and/or object validation.
Johnson is right there.
Johnson is right there.
As a teacher I have severe reservations about Special Education designations and ADHD diagnoses. I often watch even on Quora how so many people self limit themselves with a constant diagnostic malady. "I'm type 2 this with overarching depressive this and have a family history of narcissistic borderline that.......here's my recipe for biscuits."
There is a mass enculturing of mental maladies but like anything else those with the less resources take the heaviest brunt of negative cultural events. By that I mean, and Johnson being able to diagnose and counsel pointed it out, Black people are less likely to go to qualified therapy and / or get new, additional feedback. The desire for false validation from doodads also perpetuates false arrogance.
There is a mass enculturing of mental maladies but like anything else those with the less resources take the heaviest brunt of negative cultural events. By that I mean, and Johnson being able to diagnose and counsel pointed it out, Black people are less likely to go to qualified therapy and / or get new, additional feedback. The desire for false validation from doodads also perpetuates false arrogance.
Further Johnson's points on the Struggle for parity , equality, sovereignty do point out the issues are not as completely prevalent as Jim Crow, social but are more governmental, systemic. I am happy to hear criticism of Obama, who I always felt was the appeasement President, not the person but his administration as an example of shifting social focus and primacy to LGBT issues and financial matters. I am wary in "liking" a political leader, I don't need to like you. I need you to be effective. I agree partially with his assessment of Trump as a truth teller who mobilized poorer Whites but the question of where were the millions of women who marched after election day and how many voted for Trump. I believe that women and minorities vote like abused spouses: Bloody lipped, bruised, resentful and resigned but ultimately compliant.
The whole pan Africanist vs socialist Africanist movement with relationship to Marcus Garvey and such is dynamically problematic in the sense that I think Johnson is evidence and agent of another consciousness system at work.
Spiral Dynamics.
Black people are Level 3s and 4s, family/tribalism and government /legality, respectively.
Level 5 is where Me as a person of self interest, expansive development and capitalism reside.
However Clare Graves the inventor of SD posited that individuals, cultures, societies pass through each level in 3 stages: Entering, Closed and Exiting.
One could argue that all the Quoran questions about entrepreneurs, money, business etc pointedly coming from overseas suggests Entering Level 5 consciousness about work, money, career----their religion, social and political issues notwithstanding.
I think Johnson is suggesting, with out the SD paradigm and with heavy racialism, is one of the intra and popular criticisms of the Civil Rights Movement, is that it stopped at equal legal rights and though Whitney Young did lots of negotiative horse-trading, the social freedom was pressed before financial growth.
One could argue that all the Quoran questions about entrepreneurs, money, business etc pointedly coming from overseas suggests Entering Level 5 consciousness about work, money, career----their religion, social and political issues notwithstanding.
I think Johnson is suggesting, with out the SD paradigm and with heavy racialism, is one of the intra and popular criticisms of the Civil Rights Movement, is that it stopped at equal legal rights and though Whitney Young did lots of negotiative horse-trading, the social freedom was pressed before financial growth.
Hence 40% of Blacks are in permanent, generational poverty, 30% in fluctuate ----school, unemployment, transitions and 30% in Middle Class or higher , stably, earning $40k a year, savings, home ownership, career, etc, there is then a micro 10th of a percent that is Transcendent (Oprah, Obama, Jordan, etc.) who possess possible or conclusive wealth.
By comparison, Whites are about 20% in generational poverty and Latinos 50%. However Latinos dont have the same fluctuate percentage, they tend to leave poverty and solidly occupy Middle Class, the working theory is community, la familia gives domestic and international stabilization for upward mobility which translates to navigating the American business and educational system better. The same for Asians who come to America.
Johnson is pushing for Exiting Level 4 but he's still saturated in the rhetoric, the racialism of Level 3 & 4 Black culture to both understand and be understood. He literally can't possess his level of education and be accessible to Black people without "speaking the language".
The language includes race as a central identity theme----which is not so much where I strictly disagree but diverge. It is still Black Power rhetoric and therefore, to my 21st century sociopolitical sensibility, passe. Foundational, yes but not wholly translatable to a globalization mindset. But I believe Johnson is a teacher, like me and understands you must teach people to swim before you get them to deep sea dive.
Potentially polemic, I think Johnson is the burgeoning Exiting 4, Entering 5 consciousness that Civil Rights halted at, which is why so much of his ideas ring very midcentury segregationist, a present day impossibility. What is possible and must happen is a good inculcation of financial services and skills-----did I mention how many of my Black and Latino coworkers over the past are not 401k participants?
A lot of them dress and ride fly, trying to fill a capitalist equation of success being material worth/money and if you can't have or generate that then you are worthless. But if you can sport a Mercedes like my stepfather, who got his GED at 45, and desperately wanted the glitter of being a business owner but none of the work, then you are validated as somebody. I bring up my own family to illustrate how we diverge intra-family so sharply within families and as previous posts have attested, such mentalities wrecked havoc in my family.
I'm maybe one of five from an extend group of seventy not in debt, with savings, a business, a financial lan that isn't just to get me stuff but work, education, to improve my, which radiates beyond simply racial lines, to foreseeing my efforts making resources available for my great grandchildren.
I'm maybe one of five from an extend group of seventy not in debt, with savings, a business, a financial lan that isn't just to get me stuff but work, education, to improve my, which radiates beyond simply racial lines, to foreseeing my efforts making resources available for my great grandchildren.
There's at least three living generations in Black culture that en masse lack financial intelligence because we are so consumed with race, a false, delusional concept, created for financial profit, that we are distracted to try and externally compete with white /capitalist materialism. Which I think might also include Johnson eventually moving to dismantling the social construct of race....for Black people.
You can't ascribe to the control based designations of an oppressor and "flip the script" and expect Blacks not have cognitive dissonance. I can't be a nigger yesterday and your nigga today without some serious investigation. I also can't try to validate a delusional constructed category and expect liberation. Johnsons points to rap, culture, tv, films, point to this dissonant lived experience.
Perhaps deeper, Johnson's pan Africanist cultural attenuation offers that respite. He's young enough that he can do books and YouTube videos and hopefully construct a salient, constructive, progressive platform that teaches more to swim and why it's so important.
raqce
Smile, Kyle
KylePhoenixShow@Gmail.com
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