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i think there should be a black woman podcast about contact management

I have had about five decades to figure out how little my opinion matters in the public square darkly packed. I have lived long enough to see, starting with my mother, Black women suffer deeply when actions in agreement with (most of) my opinions were not taken. It is very traditionally African to see the flow of ideas as the flow of water—not as “owned” property invented by an ego.

Today’s opinion: I think there should be a black woman podcast about the art of contact management.

Ohio Players “Fire” Album (reverse)

My opinion is influenced by others. It is based on data hunted down and gathered by my sovereign self. When I express curiosity and proceed to informally interview others, I have had no fear of being sexually assaulted/propositioned as a consequence of my behavior—let alone being trolled for years with online abuse. Women in general and hyper-sexualized black women in particular do have this problem. This is the item that should have been first on that “Black Male Privilege” Checklist that irritated me so much back in 2008. This item is the logical and strategic reason why many women would prefer to pay for a “master class” to learn the very same subject that I can wrangle for free.

There are more than a few top black-woman podcasts out there about “success” and I am very, very certain that these digitized talks about “success” will include the term “networking” or its equivalent. This networking thing—a thing that is centrally important to “success”—is governed by habits of professional contact management. What I am saying here is that anyone who is serious about “success” is also serious about contact management. Here is an incomplete list about the barriers in place, preventing women in general and black women in particular from being serious about managing contacts:

  • too many black women in particular are conditioned from birth to not even try to control incoming people-traffic in a professional manner and too many sisters give up without even trying
  • too many black women in particular are over-concerned with labels from white-controlled academic institutions and censor themselves from reaching out or block out others without white-controlled qualifications
  • there is an artificial barrier between personal contacts and business contacts with a bias toward personal contacting

I have seen with my own eyes how a sister, who is a seasoned professional in a world-class office setting, shut all of those skills off when she thinks she is interacting with a potential personal contact. She returns to elementary school non-logic and toxic childishness. She fails to return a phone call (email or DM) because it is related to her self-care (which she gratuitously disrespects) but when she is in the white man’s office the lowliest creature gets the prompt followup. She just wants to take “a break” from all of that in her personal life (because “all of that” in her fucked-up imagination belongs to the “white world”). Justice, equality and the sovereign self are thrown out her black capitalist window.

the Gorilla Glue woman

The adult woman who injured herself with Gorilla Glue is a glaringly obvious example of a person with an extremely ineffective network of contacts. The traditional, blue-collar, working-class information about glue products that my generation of Black people have easily enjoyed was clearly absent from this young woman’s life. The suffering from this poor networking is real.

After my sex-hormones have chilled out with age, it is crystal clear to me that there is a shadow side to being an attractive person—especially in a world full of digital devices amplifying the attraction. When I see an attractive, urban woman, I see a person who is under a firehose of introductions, propositions, pitches and offenses. These are the strategies I have noticed ‘attractive’ women use to address this terrible situation:

  • defer entirely to a third-party to manage contacts
  • use various disguises and pseudonyms and play with the firehose
  • once exhausted, withdraw entirely from the reach of the firehose

Many socialites will see these strategies as “life” and all I am doing is describing the aging process.

the Bumble woman

Speaking of a third-party to manage contacts, we now have the youngest, self-made female billionaire because of investments in her product, Bumble, which is designed to empower women to make “the first move.” Another selling point with Bumble is that lack of distinction between personal and business contact management I mentioned earlier.

Women making “the first move” by the way was something I remember from studies of American soldiers in England during World War II. It was quite a novelty, then, to distinguish English women as those who make “the first move.” It is tragically sad that it is still an American novelty now. In the traditional African context, it was about elder women making “the first move” as an advocate of and agent for younger women. It was about two generations of women self-organizing and researching without the assistance of a third party.

It should not be that difficult to find women who have a deep hatred for over-aggressive, overbearing people in general but “men” in particular. One horrible side effect of women not being in professional command of contact management is her eventual submission to the loudest asshole in the room or her leaving the room entirely. My advice for young, reckless males impulsively electing to “save” a damsel in this distress… ah, forget it: you kids are not going to listen to me anyway.

women should have right to reject other adults explicitly and graphically

I will know that “the culture” has truly advanced when it becomes commonplace for women to reject other adults explicitly, publicly and graphically without fear of disproportionate reprisal. And what I mean by graphically is visualizing and recording the reasoning behind the rejection. From my Black excellence bias, I am actually curious to see such a record because I can learn and improve from rejection unlike most of my younger peers apparently. You see, kids, my Blackness is world-class: there are a lot self-described black people who run to “black” because they are too incompetent to function in the “white world.” I am not that nigga.

I see the act of applying for a job for some white-owned company as identical to my frequent and ongoing attempts to get “friended” by Black women. In the same manner that I would be curious to see why White Company X rejected me, I am also curious about why Sister X will not even bother taking a face-to-face meeting with me. What I have learned from the “white world” is that:

  • I am wasting my time because there are no openings (might be playing with that firehose)
  • I am rejected because I am truly unqualified (which happened to me quite a lot when I was younger)
  • I am intimidatingly overqualified (which happens to me more often these days)

What is quite frustrating is to be rejected because she thinks I will be “bored” and eventually leave her (often because of her socialite bias). What is often happening in such an encounter is the subtle racism: the preference is to have the person of color in a constant state of overflowing gratitude instead of just allowing him to show up and do his job correctly and consistently for years and years. This actually puts him in a position of advantage instead of the more “correct” position, requiring the subservient “supportive” pleasantries of fear/gratitude. The organization would rather work with less competent (probably white) people than see this “arrogant nigger” walking around every day actually functioning. To arrogantly assume that black American women do not think the same way about males and even men of color in their personal lives is a deadly, family-law error that a brother should not make.

What I am talking about in the previous paragraph is what I call the fascist tendency. The fascist thinker is one who is constantly preoccupied with the drama of power hierarchy instead of systematic flow. This preoccupation tends to destroy out of fear (and virtue-signal optimism) rather than flow toward future with authentic optimism. All children are born with this sensitivity to flow and it takes fascist rape-trauma to strip this power away. Again, to assume that black American women do not think like a fascist—just because their entire history in America is centered upon being a victim of fascist capitalist exploitation—is a deadly, family-law error that a brother should not make.

not-so-honorable mentions

Organizations and individuals led by contemporary, Black womanhood have and do reach out to me regularly. But most of these outreach efforts are based on something I am calling fanatic engagement which is another way of saying that these ladies are looking for “fans” or flame-warrior fanatics for rage-venting rituals. The idea of having prolonged, one-on-one constructive engagement is defining a waste of time for these ladies or flaunting that which is alien. I have experienced outreach like this:

  • micro-celebrity fan seeking, characterized by social-media-following someone for years who does not even think of following me back
  • email newsletters packed with FOMO signaling, typically from a black startup, trawling for investors
  • email news from art galleries because a black artist gave my information to the non-black-owned gallery with no intent to use the info themselves
  • a DM over social media from a sister that knew me from our school days and has not contacted me for years until she started working for some terrible concoction of blockchain snake oil

the danger of only talking about marketing

This dream podcast of mine can easily fall into talking about marketing instead of talking about basic human rights. Women in general are denied the right to judge people as innocent until they are proven guilty (and, yes, I know I am “twisting things around” here). For Black women this is a terrible irony. It takes just one sexual assault to strip this right away from almost all but the most justice-focused women. The abuse and misuse of the word “bitch” obscures the self-destructive nature of this non-conscious habit. Black women miss out on critical opportunities that are often more advantageous for them than for the people they think are protecting themselves from… People like me… Most of my sisters I have found over the years of introspection, retrospection and investigation have saved me from themselves.

seeking ‘vengeance’ against black people by surrounding yourself with all non-Black people

I am not the only Black person in the world to have the challenges described here. Here in the rasx() context, the most extreme example of a response to these challenges is suggested by a biography of Clarence Thomas. When you listen to, say, Yvette Carnell talk about Clarence Thomas, you will find that, yes, he was a Black Nationalist. Yes, to too many people who are unwilling to investigate, this shit sounds crazy.

But Yvette points out that Clarence was a victim of black-on-black colorism in his college years and eventually found himself the fucked up person we have experienced (through his judicial influence) to this very day. Now that I am much older and have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on family-law issues related to not-so-excellent black motherhood I can finally understand why Clarence Thomas would marry the way he married. He would rather have a real white woman rather than a self-described black woman who is in violent denial about her deep-seated whiteness.

What makes me the “crazy” one is my preference to have nothing rather than knowingly become microscopically intimate on a DNA level with various versions and mutations of unchecked whiteness. Whiteness in the context of seriousness is irritating: the planet itself can no longer tolerate the environmental effects of whiteness of all skin colors. I can stop writing this shit and walk down the street right now, pointing out the black women who leave whiteness unchecked, by the synthetic intent of her hairstyle, petroleum-based skin-covering pastes and the easily-seen side effects of the food-like substances she puts in her mouth.

no need to contact me without researching me for at least five minutes…

The most frequent person-to-person contact in my life is from technical recruiters looking to make money by finding me a new job through them. It is an error to read what I am writing here as a self-described black woman and assume that these recruiters are doing a better job than you—and these people manage contacts for a living. The majority of these “professionals” (measured over all time) should not contact me at all. These associates are literally wasting their time and money because they are not reading my public profile and interpreting it correctly. This discovery was game-changing for me: this ignorance is literally nothing personal therefore I should feel nothing because of it.

Between the years of, say, 1996 to 2011, I would have been very patient, forgiving and welcoming to have any such contact. Now, I fully expect to respond to outreach by a seasoned veteran who spent at least five minutes researching me. The probability that the traditionally oppressed can do this (even when she can spare the five minutes) is very low. The psychology of the oppressed, around the world, can too easily mistake humiliating submission for basic respect—and error on the side of being disrespectful and even rude (often because these people regard anything they do as insignificant). It follows that you should leave things as they are and not contact me.

I cannot say goodbye because we never said hello.

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