what we need is a class of Black people who have real values and can empathize with the broader community and who have the resources and space and freedom they need to affect real sustained change. That’s where I think I need to play.

I was perceptive enough to recognize the premium placed on assimilation, but too naive to see that its returns were

I think that I understood the importance of doing my own research and creating my own perspectives on things and fitting other people’s information into that, versus starting with other people’s information and then figuring out

I did develop a capability to think independently and to only be moved by better information and not by who it was coming from. And

For one, as a person, you can waste your time pursuing things that aren’t for you and suffer emotional pain when those things don’t go well. Even if they do go well, you know that you aren’t doing what you’re meant to do and you can’t enjoy life the same way.

Money controls all important decisions. The closer you sit to the money, the more valuable and safe you will be as an employee. Someone, somewhere is accounting for you as a human with a dollar amount attached to your name. That is your capitalist value. Your leverage (or lack thereof) can be reduced to that dollar amount. Be aware of it. In hard

So shoving what they believe to be a gift back in their faces can be unhealthy. It can

limited—and presented risk to my mental health and self-esteem.

The core tenet of Black Magic is that power can be derived from trauma and suffering. I use the term “trauma” according to its precise definition: a deeply distressing or disturbing experience. Blackness is at times just that. Who would deny it?