The REACTOR: “Yes I’m A Black Writer — But I Can’t Write About Race Anymore”

A reaction to my fellow Medium author’s work

I’m a big believer in the power of reciprocation.

I know that to earn your willingness to listen to me about the things which I care about with ferocious urgency, I must first take an interest in what you care about.

That’s just how it works.

This is why I’ve started The Reactor series on my Resurgent.Us publication. Instead of putting my effort towards trying to get that viral curation of my own work, I’m trying to foster meaningful dialogue with my fellow authors, one at a time, about the works that you’ve written.

This morning’s winner of my attention is Assad Abderemane, a French author who’s written two pieces that have caught my eye.

So here’s my reaction… CONGRATULATIONS, Assad!!!

These are each hugely empowering realizations you’ve (mostly) come to. Even if you arrived at your destination by way of feelings of misery and discouragement, it doesn’t matter, you’ve unlocked some powers whose potential you currently have only the vaguest idea about.

The reason your previous approach of “showcasing black pain” as you put it was so unbearably draining is because of our neurological wiring. There’s something in the brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). Hugely successful people generally all know about and understand this. Even though they don’t necessarily use the scientific language or put it clearly into words that they can explain to others, they develop habits to take daily advantage of this system in the brain.

You, by contrast, have been using your RAS to find and describe in great detail all the myriad of ways that the Black experience can be painful. You’ve quite literally trained your RAS to seek out pain and misery. You associate the individual reward of having your stories published and getting the approval of your audiences with your ability to see and describe racial suffering.

This is a horrifying trap.

White guilt and Black rage each have an insatiable thirst for the commodity you’ve been producing, but the cost to you is catastrophic. I’m so excited for you because you were willing to let go of the goodies in exchange for your freedom, which most people cannot manage to do.

Anyway, since you’ve decided you’re willing to let go of the audience and the editors you already have if that’s what it takes to turn the page, then you’ve simultaneously made room for something far, far greater.

You’re right to recognize the fruitlessness of the project you were on. Describing Black pain for your audiences isn’t ever going to lessen it. Words don’t put food in starving Black bellies or put rooves overexposed Black heads. Opportunity does. And not just opportunity to talk about Black pain, that’s not the kind of opportunity you want, that’s not real opportunity.

If you want to change the world, you have to be someone who cuts new paths through the jungles of uncertainty, who lifts people up, who shows them the way.

You have to lead, which means you have to tune everything else out, you have to learn to ignore the distractions, and focus on what will have an impact on the world.

To your point about being trapped by a “smart kid” identity, and defending it by giving up too quickly when you’re not good at something, I understand that experience all too well. I limited myself for many years by obsessively playing computer games. Some of the online mentors who have helped me to reframe my thinking away from that reality and towards a much better one are Jim Kwik, and Alain de Botton, and Dan Lok.

I look forward to reading the impact these new influences will have on you.

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