Conscientious Objector: The Bliss of Ignorance?

Conscientious Objector: The Bliss of Ignorance?: "I was watching Steve Kroft interviewing Julian Assange (Founder of WikiLeaks) on CBS 60 Minutes the other Sunday. Something about the interv..."

Conscientious Objector: Are you a Team-player or a Take-player?

Conscientious Objector: Are you a Team-player or a Take-player?: "The other day my niece asked me: What is the meaning of a Team-player? When I inquired why she was asking, she told me that she was ha..."

Conscientious Objector: The African Rain Dance – Things are not what they ...

Conscientious Objector: The African Rain Dance – Things are not what they ...: "Copyright @ January 14, 2009, (Edited January 18, 2011) by Dr. Tendai Ndoro begin_of_the_skype_highlighting end_of_the_skyp..."

Conscientious Objector: Womanness: Consciously rebellious and totally rog...

Conscientious Objector: Womanness: Consciously rebellious and totally rog...: "Womanness: Consciously rebellious and totally rogueI bought The Women DVD movie some weeks ago, simply because it had a fantastic fema..."

Conscientious Objector: 5 PRINCIPLES Towards Wealth Creation

Conscientious Objector: 5 PRINCIPLES Towards Wealth Creation: "I developed the “5 Principles Towards Wealth Creation” many years ago and they have saved me well. I have always lived by them as the campus..."

The Bliss of Ignorance?

I was watching Steve Kroft interviewing Julian Assange (Founder of WikiLeaks) on CBS 60 Minutes the other Sunday. Something about the interview got me wondering about the Bliss of Ignorance. The question that arose in me during the interview was - Do we want to hear or know everything that our leaders or governments do in the name of us - the People? Surprisingly I had no definitive YES or NO answer to this question -just a MAYBE - it depends! Well that’s not good enough, I told myself. I do not appreciate living in the grey zone.  While I was pondering over this, I had an epiphany of sorts– A lot of people “prefer” to live in ignorance not because they can’t help it, but rather that they prefer to live in ignorance bliss because it absolves them of the responsibility to have to do something about it once they know the truth – especially if the truth leads to the responsibility of having to act against the status quo! Once you gain knowledge about something then you are now voluntarily or involuntarily recruited into being responsible for it.

 With responsibility comes action and with action comes accountability. Thus you consciously or unconsciously become an ‘activist’ or a ‘revolutionary’ of sorts. The essence of learning is that once one becomes informed, the information and knowledge inevitably leads to consciousness – e.g. self-consciousness or, social-consciousness or what I like to call  ‘circumstantial relative-consciousness’ i.e. when you understand yourself clearly relative to the circumstance of your universe. As Steve Biko once said, change the way a person thinks and you change their behavior!

Thus, I truly believe that when we say Ignorance is Bliss, it’s a choice because  the quest to be accepted, to be included, to belong is always greater than the pressure to maintain one’s own collective identity and thus one’s perceive integrity in the face of contradictory knowledge or values. Hence, when all I could come up with was a “maybe” to my question I was choosing to be in the bliss of ignorance? This hedging on my part, I concluded, was based on my double standard that -I don’t like secret, unless they are mine! However I have since come up with a definitive position on this thought, which I choose to keep a secret! But on a more general level my learning curve and final conclusion is that those who prefer or choose the bliss of ignorance are choosing to be irresponsible, hence those who stand for nothing account for nothing! Therefore, it’s better to be wrong than to be nothing.

Copyright @ January 31, 2011 by Dr. Tendai Ndoro begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting  end_of_the_skype_highl(DocNdoro) – Founder, SLIPPA/Brighten The Corner Foundation; CEO- EDCTrainers, LLC.

Are you a Team-player or a Take-player?

The other day my niece asked me: What is the meaning of a Team-player?  When I inquired why she was asking, she told me that she was having problems with this concept of working on group project and maintain being a team-player. Whenever she has to do joint projects with her classmates, she finds herself being the only one bringing ideas to the table to execute the projects and ends up doing most of the work! So she was getting frustrated and upset that everyone will gladly take the credit for the joint work even thought they know they did not contribute anything significant to the result of the work.Worse they seem to have no guilt conscience about it. On a recent team project she realized it was happening again, so she decided that each chapter of the assignment was going to have the contributor’s name in the footnotes. An uproar arose in the team and one of the lazy ones said she was not being a team-player!

In response to her question, I explained that most people don't know what team-player really means. Ironically, I think the term team player in practice is a euphemism for egocentric individualism. From my experience and observations I find that most people are socialized into selfish individualism, but really use the term Team-player as a permission to openly take credit for other people's ideas and efforts while obfuscating their personal selfishness, exploitation and incompetency.  If you bring nothing to the table, then you are not a team player but a take player!!! Take-players not only steal information and credit for others’ work, but they are very manipulative and prey on you emotionally, psychologically and to some extent financially.

Increasingly  I have also observed that when you refuse to share information with the Take players, they actually get viciously upset towards you and they are the first to say you are not being a Team player as a way of labeling you as an outsider or the uncooperative one! Honestly, when I am the only one sharing the information, then there is no team let alone any sharing going on!

I have encountered colleagues who will solicit the information from you and then rush to send an email to other co-workers or project colleagues with your ideas, even stand up and make a presentation with plagiarized information and never even acknowledge who originated the idea!!! Therefore, I can relate to my niece’s feelings of frustration of doing all the work and then having to share the credit with those that did not earn the credit! Why Take players are not ashamed of this behavior, I don’t know. Unfortunately, there is a whole generation of adults that have lost a sense of common decency?

For the most part there is information I don’t mind sharing and let someone enjoy shining with my knowledge whether they acknowledge me or not. But there is some information has got to stay in the vault! My advice is – when you have such a colleague in your environment keep your mouth shut like a vault! Being a big advocate for win/win collaborative partnerships, cooperative arrangements and mutually beneficial relationships, it’s difficult sometimes, to withhold information around the Take players.

Copyright @ January 27, 2011 by Dr. Tendai Ndoro begin_of_the_skype_highlighting  end_of_the_skype_highl(DocNdoro) – Founder, SLIPPA/Brighten The Corner Foundation; CEO EDCTrainers, LLC.

The African Rain Dance – Things are not what they seem!

Copyright @ January 14, 2009, (Edited January 18, 2011) by Dr. Tendai Ndoro begin_of_the_skype_highlighting  end_of_the_skype_highl(DocNdoro) – Founder, SLIPPA/Brighten The Corner Foundation; CEO EDCTrainers, LLC.

Well a sucker is born every day...so the saying goes...now all the suckers are grown!!! And its payday for all the few thieves out there.

When I started my PhD, one of my PhD professors once said to the class, and to me in particular ....”it’s so silly that some African tribes believe in the rain dance”. Since I was the only “African” (although I am Zimbabwean) I asked him what he really meant. He explained that Africans believe that if they dance the rain would come, and it’s really so silly if they understood weather science,  they would know that dancing does not bring rain, that’s why WE have meteorologist in the developed world.  

First I smiled to hide my boiling blood! At this post graduate level of study I was used to this condescending attitude in higher education driven by ignorant superiority complexes, I had also been run out of another PhD Program years before for being “unrestrained in my ‘passionate’ opinions” (which meant I did not know “my place”) that was 1995.  However, in 2001 I now knew how to manage my academic politics!

With my smile  still on my face,  I  calmly explained to him that “It’s interesting that you thing its  “silly”, but I don’t think It’s silly at all...if you lived as one with nature – like most Africans do, especially rural dwellers, you would know that when rain is coming, the earth smells of water, the dust feels damp and the birds start chipping excitedly and the chipping frenzy gets more excited as the rain day gets closer and approaches, they  may not know  exactly what day of the week the rain is going to actual fall, but they just know with certainty it’s coming soon. Because of all these natural weather signs and the people know they need to prepare it may take a few days or a week or at most two week but the rain comes sooner than later! So they dance in celebration because they rely on the rain for their agricultural crops to grow and thrive. But if you are not in touch with the way of nature and have no clue about these signs, you will think the dancing is silly because you are disconnect from your universe and there is no instant gratification of the meteorologist feeding you the information.”

 He was staring at me as I continued...”However, what I really think is more silly is the obsession with the revered stock market dance where people are expected to be dancing for YEARS for the pot of gold that may/or may never come and if it does come you are right where you would have been if you could have just put all that money under your mattress little by little and not having to pay someone to keep it for you!!! It was his turn to smile, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to get an A grade or D that semester! I got an “A”. He stood corrected after all!
 

The following African parable underscored for me the Stock Market rain dance philosophy and why I do not buy into it.  I think every culture has its rain dance; the difference is the high stacks associate with each and the margin of futility from stupid!

"Once upon a time a man appeared in a village and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each. The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and, as supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their efforts. He next announced that he would now buy monkeys at $20 each. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again. Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer increased to $25 each and the supply of monkeys became so scarce it was an effort to even find a monkey, let alone catch it!

The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50 each! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would buy on his behalf. In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers: "Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has already collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $50 each." The villagers rounded up all their savings and bought all the monkeys for 700 billion dollars. They never saw the man or his assistant again, only lots and lots of monkeys!

Now you have a better understanding of how WALL STREET, its CEOs and Banks got us in this recession ditch and this real estate mess!!!!

• Recommended reading: The Poison Wood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver -The Poisonwood Bible (1998) by Barbara Kingsolver is a bestselling novel about a missionary family, the Prices, who in 1959 move from Georgia to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo, close to the Kwilu River. (The nearest town, an impossibly long journey away, is Bulungu.) The Prices' story, which parallels their host country's tumultuous emergence into the post-colonial era, is narrated by the five women of the family: Orleanna, long-suffering wife of Baptist missionary Nathan Price, and their four daughters – Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May.(Copyright: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisonwood_Bible)

Womanness: Consciously rebellious and totally rogue

Womanness:  Consciously rebellious and totally rogue

I bought The Women DVD movie some weeks ago, simply because it had a fantastic female cast: Jada Picket-Smith, Eva Mendes, Annette Bening, Debra Messing  and  Meg Ryan and it had the caption “Gorgeously entertaining! Hilariously flat-out fun”.  It was entertained, but I disagree, it was not funny.  This is a movie about Women of course, an adaptation from a 1939 movie of the same name. It’s about the usual women’s struggles and balance like marriage, infidelity, friendship, class, the haves and have not, generation and generational gaps, child birth, motherhood, sisterhood, daughterhood “love” having it all and wanting it all,  almost everything except about female self consciousness  and self empowerment.

Since I bought the DVD, my son has played it over and over again -at least 3 to 4 times a day. What can I say, he is a healthy heterosexual. So I have breathed and live it to the point that I started analyzing it. It was all I could do to stand it. What quickly becomes clear is the subtle socialization message I have had to grapple with all my life – that a woman cannot have it all! This is not to say I agree that women can’t have it all, it is about how we as women have imposed this social conditioning idea on each other that you can’t have it all. I found out a long time ago it’s the women who actual define how other women are ranked in the perking order of things – they decide you can’t have it all – in fact they will create labels for you if you decide to go rogue and refuse conform to pre-established and prescribed  roles and categories:

 You can either have a successful husband, you have to shrinks to fit into this image of a “trophy” wife, home maker and swallow your own ambitions so you stay at home, take care of the home front, prepare power dinners and charity events, manage the domestic workers (and be so thankful you can afford them) and rear the children or token child! Or that once you find  your successful husband you also have to accept sacrificing the lack of companionship as a result of for his long working hours to afford you the suburban life you want; 

On the other hand, should you choose to become a career barracuda with a power job, high income you are doomed to forego all the “fringe benefits” of a marriage – you have your freedom, liberty and a Chiwawa or some delicate dog like that, but you cannot have a sustainable  relationship, no man and no children; In some cases you are allowed by the invisible universal female fraternity to become the other woman, with a lover (male or female)and a laisser-faire party life style – in other words the gypsy girl with no status, respect or accountability but the trade off is you do what you like when you like and not much is expected of you!

To say the least all these stereotypes annoy me! I was raised by men (a fact I discovered in my thirties after much psychological self-evaluation and diagnosis) – my grandfather and my dad taught me to think contrary to any of these stereotypes. They believed a husband is number 2, and education is number 1 for a girl child. The rational my grandfather always gave was, when you have the means to provide for yourself, no one can take it from you, hence education was a means of production for a girl child. But putting a husband at number 1 was not a sustainable plan according to them, because he could die, divorce you or become disabled such that I either case  he could no longer provide for you. With the girl child’s burden of the uterus, you were always left behind with the children! The paradox is they also believed in the institution of marriage. However, my world growing up from this perspective made lots of sense!  Till I started dating in my teens and my approach to relationships seemed to create contradictions.

I would always hear guy saying slight remarks like “Why are you so aggressive” when I did not back down in a debate, or say “You are such a know it all” when I confidently expressed my opinion or “You are going to do what you want to do, isn’t it” when I refuse to back down to a stupid idea; or as I got older I would hear “ No man wants to come home to  a confrontational woman” when I questioned or demanded accountability. The best one was “You are not acting like you want to get married!” and I asked, how does a woman who want to get married act?” and the responds was absolute “By not asking such a question first of all!” Thank God by then I was in my thirties and had found my power. Had this been said to me in my  twenties I would have shriveled and tried to shrink to fit into this  “definition “– never mind  I had no clue what this definition was – i.e. fitting the hole of this woman who wanting to get married! I have felt so sorry of my sisters who, no matter how many years they have been married they are still trying to fit into this hole! Their symptoms are exhibited in many ways – hysteria, calmness, neurosis, invisible nervous breakdowns, incessant complaining or talking,  alcoholism, shopping, misdirected aggression, purposeless project pursuits….I am sure you have seen these symptoms and you know everything is not OK. I must admit there was a time (in my twenties) I used to envy them because I wanted to conform and fit so badly, but now I just feel sorry and empathy. At this age, I am totally, consciously rebellious and totally gone rogue. It makes the women in my life nervous to say the least! Sure, I do want to get “committed” but for purely different reasons than I had when I was younger. I also want to be number one – and if I can find a man who is okay with that – hey I will get hitched!

But back to the movie – The Women – (screen written and directed by Diane English) I also notice how the casting tended to favor the stereotypes of which and what women should be privileged. Jada was the lesbian-cum writer in a rut, Eva was the mistress/perfume sales girl, Annette was the high powered career girl, Debra the married gypsy girl and Meg was the pampered suburban wife with the rich but cheating husband! Really? What happened to feminist movement?  In the original movie the cast is all Caucasian women. But how did I get from there to here where I had to write about it - this afternoon I watched parts of the Color Purple as it was Martin Luther King holiday. I have watched this movie so many times over the years and I started comparing how the black women in that movie were portrayed versus the Women movie I have been watching everyday for the last 4 weeks. I decided I did not like the Color Purple!  I also realized that the movie about The Women was also bothering me and I did not like it either. I started thinking about other movies and how both Black, Caucasian and Hispanic women have been portrayed.  I realized that in most of these movies  the narrative  has a common:  thread- the hard-core, exploited , strong Black woman, the sexually provocative calculating Hispanic woman and the privileged, protected, delicate Caucasian woman. Don’t black women deserve to be privileged? At least portrayed in movies as privileged, protected women. The black women I grew up with  covered the whole spectrum – some were privileges and/or protected, some were strong, or  hard-core, some were exploited, some were seductive and calculating to survive, but they were ALL  black women  and there was no predominant slant! They were JUST WOMEN IN DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCE!!!! That’s why the Western, (but in all fairness) rather the Hollywood portrayal of women bothers and irritates me!

Copyright @ January 17, 2011, Dr. Tendai Ndoro begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highl(DocNdoro) – Founder, SLIPPA/Brighten The Corner Foundation; CEO EDCTrainers, LLC

5 PRINCIPLES Towards Wealth Creation

I developed the “5 Principles Towards Wealth Creation” many years ago and they have saved me well. I have always lived by them as the campus that drives my goal achievement in life. At this point you could say I have perfected these 5 principles to a science. They are tested, tried and true. They have work for me every time and I have taught them in my leadership seminars, business plan courses, even my youth mentoring sessions and many people have told me how much they have provided clarity in their own wealth creation journey.

Every January 1^st I set up 2-3 goals I want to set in motion that year and since my birthday is August 14^th I use this day as my day to re-evaluate the year’s goals. It’s a great time for me to re-assess, re-think; re-goal, re-calibrate; re-direct and re-launch. When I am done with this process and I realize I am on track then it’s a great year. But if I discover that something is not being on track…well it’s the time for me reevaluate the goals, if not the whole action plan and make some major decisions.

The idea of wealth is relative, so whatever you consider “wealthy” living is your vision of your best life, so work toward achieving it.

My 5 principles toward wealth creation are:

1.   HAVE AN ACTION PLAN

2.   BE PRAGMATIC

3.   MOBILIZE YOUR RESOURCES

4.   SET BOUNDERIES

5.   CLAIM YOUR SUCCESS

PRINCIPLE #1: HAVE AN ACTION PLAN

Developing an action plan is very important. It keeps you on course and focused. There are eight steps to ensure that you have a sound AP:

lStart with the END in mind - Vision

lSet your mental preparation (be committed if you are not committed to it you also do not have the will power to see it through)

lKnow your priorities

lSet concrete Goals (characteristics of a great goal is that it should have:- the subject; the timeframe; the quantity and the quality of the end result)

lLay out the objectives (these are the action-steps and activities it takes to accomplish each goal)

lSet the time-frame (you have to have a period of how long it takes to get the action plan completed once its implemented)

lExecute your plan of action

lKEEP IT SIMPLE & SWEET – what you can’t do this year you can always do next year…but don’t delay what you need to do now for later!

PRINCIPLE #2 -BE PRAGMATIC

lUnderstand what you know; & Know what you don’t know

lLife is a lesson, so…

–Be MORE educated, THAN informed.

–Allow yourself to Evolve with Experience and let the lessons of your  experiences inform your future decisions!

–Have a purpose

–Maintain balance.

lKnow when to execute a paradigm shift – Learn to let go and not hold on to mediocre and obsolete ideas, values, worldviews, etc. The world is constantly changing so change with it. Know when to change gears if things are not going in the direction you want. Let go and let live!

PRINCIPLE # 3: MOBILIZE YOUR RESOURCES

ARE YOU PRODUCING IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION? Many people are busy, so busy they feel they are really doing something. But when they finally look back on the road they have come from, they have nothing to show for it and wonder – But I was working all along, what happened? Well you were working alright, and producing maybe; but in the wrong direction so when you look back…all you produced got consumed before it had time to bring a return on investment.

Your time is valuable – mobilize your resources to re-assess, re-goal, re-calibrate re-direct and re-launch

ASSESS:

lIndividual Assets?

lHousehold Assets?

lRelational Assets?

lFamily/Social Assets?

PARETO OPTIMIZATION PRINCIPLE: 80/20 RULE – this is a cardinal rule for me: 20% of your effort should produce 80% return on investment.

If you are not optimizing, you are wasting resources.

PRINCIPLE # 4: SET BOUNDARIES

lAlways SET your parameters.

lRespect is not given, it’s earned!

lWhat you do is always personal.

lWhat others do is impersonal – don’t get caught in their dramas! Start with the position that their issues are not about you, so keep on moving and mind your own business!

lBe economical with your TIME – a minute missed is a minute lost forever.

lBe frugal with your ENERGY – reserve it only for your needs. Avoid going on a trip with the damsels-in-distress or the prima-donnas both types of company will sap you of your energy!!.

lKeep emotional vampires at bay

lAlways remember:– “Civility is not a sign of weakness” (A.P. Ndoro)

PRINCIPLE # 5: CLAIM YOUR SUCCESS

lBe bold in your actions – don’t waste time pulling the punches

lBe deliberate with your decisions.

lBe accountable.

lTiming is everything…Seize the moment!

lSUCCESS IS…The point at which preparation meets opportunity!

“Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans”

(John Lennon)

Look out for the book coming out next year. In the meantime - CREATE YOUR WEATH……ALL THE BEST AND GOOD LUCK!

Copyright @ May 26, 2009, Dr. T. Ndoro,

Founder – SLIPPA & Brighten the Corner Foundation.

Rethinking the Issue of Race –it’s about Economics

“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing.....! If we want better we have to do better and demand better”

I had a fascinating discussion on Face book with some of my networking colleagues the other day. The discussion was on race. A subject I usually avoid to discuss in person because my views are generally unorthodox to most people.  (I also avoid public discussions of religion and politics, if I can help it.) However, at the core of my philosophy about race is that it’s not an argument of SKIN COLOR (pigmentation) but a conflict about ECONOMICS (fundamentally who get what, when and how much of it!). For me this perspective changes and shifts the paradigm in many ways and for this I have been label by my intellectual friends as a “Classist”, which I don’t mind.  I find that may people are stuck in the events of history such as slavery and colonialism and forget all about what really drives us all - Self-interest and self-preservation. But ask the question, if each one of us had the opportunity to exploit the other for wealth creation would we think otherwise?

But let’s look at it from skin color because this is where most people are stuck from. I argued that racism is not a philosophical argument of demands and wants. When I go back home I find out that even after years of so called “independence” the remains of colonial racism are so entrenched among the black to black relations within themselves. It’s from everyone even the mediocre black waiter in Meikles Hotel who treats you differently that the Caucasian dinners as if we were still in the colonial times. Race from a pigment of your skin argument (which I think is now irrelevant in the global economy) is also a paralyzing state of mind. (ref. Steve BIKO – I write what I Like)

The pigmentation race-based argument is like that story most Shona people heard at family gatherings called “Biras” (night ceremonies to consult with the ancestors). Self appointed Zinathas (witch doctors and fortune tellers) showed up to consult with the hosting family and the family elders wanted to find out if there are problems in the family. They would be told that there is a problem of an unpaid debt...the story was always that the family owed an unfulfilled promise to some migrant worker (usually a Malawian man) who their ancestors promised a wife as a payment in exchange for the work the migrant worker did. Then for some inexplicable reason the migrant worker leaves without his payment (the promised wife) of course intending to come back to get his wife at a later date, but never does. So now the family is haunted by the migrant worker's spirit that still need to be repaid!!!

I have asked every Shona person that has stopped by my house if they ever hear of this legend and so far I have had 5 people tell me their family were also told the same story about the migrant worker curse.....So I started thinking this reminded me of the race argument. When will other races stop paying their debt to black people? Yet we ignore the Black heads of states that have mismanaged their African economies and have stashed away billions of dollars in foreign bank accounts! It’s time we start taking responsibility; focus on self-sufficiency & self empowerment, instead of steal from each other; mismanaging & plundering the country with greed, then turn around and blame it on history of colonization & everyone else!!!

I have been called an apologist, a classist and other choicer labels, but I am not an apologist, apologies are a waste of time! I am a realist and I understand how the game is played. Whenever I give my African brothers and sister the migrant worker curse parable I find that they do will not address it even if they see parallel futility of it all.  I used the immigrant worker curse as a parable to highlight that: a) Historical debts are a black hole that gets black people nowhere and will never be settled as details/facts are obfuscated; b) We get stuck on focusing on the past not the future; c) we exhaust energies on problems that divide us and not solutions that unite us: d) instead for remembering the past to create a new future of the future past we would all want our children's children to remember; e) finally we should not want our children to carry the burdens of our ancestor...whether they owe or  are owed a debt. I like working with progressive people no matter what color they is!!! That’s mobilizing my resources (SLIPPA principle #3)

From an economic perspective the issue of race makes more sense to me. It is the idea that those with power and resources can exploit those without in order to maintain the status quo – both within their economic class bracket as well as externally  to other class brackets without. From my observations, it seem that the moment you have power or resources that you can bargain with, your race matter not! We all seem to forget a person’s race once they become wealthy, for example people like Oprah, Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson or Tiger Woods, and no one really seems to be preoccupied about their race. Unless  of course they become too greedy and  dominant and violated the principle of “YOU GO CHOP, I GO CHOP

I had a debate with some Nigerian colleagues of mine during the Tiger Woods scandal and everyone was arguing that it’s because he was a black man and they were just waiting for him to slip up, which he did, and the vultures where out to pull him down! I argued that Tiger’s exposure had nothing to do with his race at all, but with the economics of who get what, when, how much and for how long! It was more to do with the fact that he was dominating the Golf  economic pie! He was getting all the lucrative endorsements in addition to staying number one in the game! Same thing happened to Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson. They dominated their industry pie so much that the only way to move them over was to find a scandal that would derail them at the right time and place…The reason why people want to pull over-achievers down is because it’s the only way to make room for others to enjoy the pie. I reminded my Nigerian friends, it was no different from what  they famously say  “YOU GO CHOP, I GO CHOP”!!!   Its primitive, but its captures the true essence of sharing the economic pie.  Tiger’s down fall had nothing to do with him being a black man…everything to do with the fact that Tiger go chop, chop all for himself and failed to let others chop also in the golf pie too!

On the other hand Oprah’s has survived because her style of doing business clearly involves “YOU GO CHOP, I GO CHOP “philosophy! Maybe not by design; But also I think because she is a black woman she does business different…very different from say…Martha Stewart! She had created all these other stand alone brand extensions and lucrative supply chains which have made so many other people really wealthy and famous along the way! So if one were to attempt to take her down they would really be taking down a whole chain-work of a highly integrated wealth creation system. Hence the program on the “ Oprah Effect”  exemplifies the tentacles of the “YOU GO CHOP, I GO CHOP” philosophy in her style of doing business.

So when we talk about racism or tribalism or nepotism any of those concepts of them vs. us its just a way of categorizing who  belong were at the time so that the curving of the pie goes to those with the most clout– we are talking about turn taking among the power elites in sharing the pie. For the most part the power elites don’t care what your race pigmentation is, but more what your economic status is! If you can create opportunities for more wealth for all to go chop you stay, but greed will result in evitable downfall.

 On a country level, we can talk about America and the European countries designing regional blocs and institutions as a way of having a mutual understanding of who get what spoils from where on the global level. But the rise of China and India has upset the status quo. A good example is China, which used to be the economic underdog of the West is now leveraging its labor resources to amass economic influence and the Western powers that be have had to calibrate their approach in dealing with China. Of interest is how the democracy carrot that Western powers used to use as a condition for doing business with the less powerful LeMonde du Sud (southern countries) has been undermined by China and its way of doing business -they are openly doing business with dictators around the world and this has upset the balance of economics in the global arena.  China has changed the paradigm of who is doing business with whom! It’s not my imagination that I don’t hear much about conditionality of democracy in the development narrative…..? Not that it has completely gone away,  is now encapsulated in the new  “governance” terminologies.

I could flip and dissect this race issue in so many ways, to prove how the race argument is so obsolete on a macro level. Of course, people of color may encounter isolated incidents of racial prejudice, but I would attribute this to an element of individual failings or insecurities, but not a narrative of mass consciousness. As Friedman said “The World is flat”, hence economics is the only relevant relational narrative currency of our times!

Copyright @ January 2011, Dr. Tendai Ndoro begin_of_the_skype_highlighting     end_of_the_skype_highl(DocNdoro) – Founder, SLIPPA/Brighten The Corner Foundation; CEO EDCTrainers, LLC