Zoomed in Commencement Speech to the Graduates of The Eastlake Male Youth Initiative
Decatur, Georgia in the Atlanta Metro Area

KEEP ON GOING

Good morning where you are and good evening 8 hours ahead of you where I am now sitting. My sharing today is entitled Keep on Going. Thank you Dr. Kenneth,Mr. Derrick , and Mr. James ,and for your board of advisers of this marvelous Eastlake Male Youth Initiative for Black male youth aspiring to become great positive men; located in the Decatur area of the greater Atlanta Metropolitan area. I bring you all greetings from Mauritius, Africa’s most eastern country located in the midst of the Indian Ocean. Let me say first congratulations to my potential sons/nephews, my African terminology, for a job well done in running this race well, for completing the course, and now doing all you can to take what you have learned along with your parents and other family members and keep going. I am becoming like a big three year old kid these days in telling anyone whether they are listening or not or care or not how old I am. Yes, if the Lord blesses me, on July 9th a few weeks from now, I will be 70 years old..not young old. I realize I don’t look like it and neither do I feel like it since we know Black doesn’t crack. I am proud of my categorical age, realizing in other more important senses such as maturity, character, personality, goals, vitality, and mental and physical health age folks is indeed just a number. I guess I am willing to tell just anyone like this crowd that I turn 70 soon if God wills because being a sociologist of Black experiences in the United States and elsewhere in the world, you see I am here in Africa, one startling fact that I learned some years ago is that when you are a Black man, probably no matter where you live, once you turn the age page to 70, the life span prediction reverses with your White male peers. What that means folks is that up to age 70 or around that age give or take a year, more than likely if you are a Black male you are going to die before your White male age peers, those your same age in other words. We know that the death by violence or health problems both mental and physical of Black males from infancy to 70 is so much higher than their White male age peers due to what happens too tragically to many Black boys and men on the streets, in prisons, drugs, and in custody of the police and in hospitals or at home with or without hospice care due to some rare or not so rare disease. We also are aware Black males especially our older brothers do not take care of ourselves as we should, too often too vain to go for our annual check-ups and therefore not going until we cannot be helped and too often then die more than we should be dead. Indeed, the rate of Black male victims of violence, usually Black on Black violence is so high between the ages of 15 and 45 that at one point this statistic was declared by national health experts as being an epidemic. So, when you reach age 70 as a Black man my younger brothers and potentially sons/nephews and those who have supported you, sacrificed for you all these years as parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and as other child caretakers, when you reach age 70, you cannot help but be a very tough cookie. Given all the subtle and not so subtle crap you have to learn to put up with in a patriarchal society made only for White males, which leaves out, castrates, physically and mentally lynches Black boys and men to assure we die super early before our prime, drop out of school no matter how smart we are, and put us behind bars more than any other population, when you reach 70, without ever taking an illegal drug, and have been to Yale rather than ever going to jail, it is quite a feat, a blessing, indeed a miracle to sit here right now and tell you how old I am blessed to be. 70 years old coming soon if the Lord wills.

And along the way, since it happens to so few Black males in my age range and younger, I have noticed how blessed I was to grow up with a father and a grandfather and with great uncles and uncles and with senior older cousins who I remember as a child and recall going to most of their funerals once it was time for them to make their transitions in most cases many years after my childhood memories of them began to fade but their influences on me have made me as I am today in so many positive ways. I have become aware over my years in realizing how unusual it was growing up with so many older men as biological and adopted extended family in a household in which it was my father and I as the males and my mother and three sisters, two older and one younger as the females. As I reflected on what to say today, this privilege of being reared by such a group of positive older men including my biological father I thought you might want to know a few things I learned from these older men. Things which must have worked since here I am through the grace and mercy of God sitting before you today and doing so not in front of you directly but thousands of miles away in again, Mauritius, located in the midst of the Indian Ocean, Africa’s most eastern country. Go ahead and Google it, don’t take my word for it. And while you are at it just in case you may think I am some jive old Black dude all talk and nothing to back it up, while you Google Mauritius, please Google me too.

I guess the first thing I learned from these older men is that though I had a father, it is important to collect fathers wherever you are, especially if you have no biological or legal father or if you have a biological or legal father who refuses to carry out his responsibilities fully as a Dad should sometimes for reasons beyond his control and for other reasons within his control, let’s be balanced and fair. In this long overdue age of women, God bless women, your grandmothers, mothers, aunties, sisters, and female cousins, we often forget the important value of having biological and adopted grandfathers, fathers, uncles, brothers and male cousins Having older men around you who have achieved and want you to achieve, who will praise you and give you criticism when you need it is so essential no matter how young or older you are and becoming. We are all individuals though there are common cultural things which happen and don’t happen to Black men that you learn when you find ways to grow up with and around positive Black male role models who are older, experienced, and accomplished to tell you their experiences growing up, to give you coping mechanisms so you know how to soar with eagles rather than stay down there with the chickens, who show you how to talk with substance not as if you have a bout with verbal diarrhea, who show you with their lives how to move from being someone with potential to becoming a man with substance. To let you know through words and more importantly by example that it is one thing to be a youth with potential and another to be as a fool as a well grown man still with potential with no substance at all. Those older men who teach you manners of how to be kind, polite, and forceful when you must be heard; how to treat girls and women with respect and not allow girls and women and no one else to take advantage of your good heart and intentions. This is why programs like Eastlake Male Youth Initiative are so critical especially if there is an absence of older Black men in your home lives but as I have been trying to say, for all of you and those who parent you. With that allow me to thank those parents and other child caregivers who are single mothers who understand what I am trying to say which is why you have made the sacrifices to make sure your sons enrolled in this program and are today about to graduate from it. Realizing as you have demonstrated in allowing your sons to come and participate that you understand along with mothers with husbands or partners in the home or father figures elsewhere in family systems that it is important to raise boys, especially Black boys and boys of other dehumanized communities in this White Supremacy driven society, to be sons who grow up to become strong responsible members of their families, communities, and society who know how to take care of themselves and others, who are protectors rather than takers, who bend without breaking, who speak with substance, who have goals and a plan, and who know how to say no to anything and anyone who will bring harm to themselves or to others. Much better than raising young males to be mama and daddy boys, don’t even clean up their room or take out the trash, spoiled kings who will never have a throne, not having a job and no one wanting to give the lazy dude a job, laying up at home under mommy or daddy or mommy and daddy like a resident of a resort, in your 30s or older, and spending more time trying to look pretty in the mirror than your daughter or sister. So thank you fathers and mothers and single mothers for understanding the need to raise sons, Black sons, not only in ancestry and genes but in how they are proud of who they are as Black men, understanding the history of their roots, sons who do well in school and wanting much more in their educational attainment not for the money but to help their families, communities, this nation and world. Thank you those who have been parenting, for raising sons who understand what matters is not the dollar or the house or even all the degrees he will deservingly one day but living for justice causes bigger than him and more than that living more for God than any building with a faith name on it since no matter the mountain or valley or the time of day or the season in his life, what matters the most is for any one, especially in this case, a son to realize that God is who pays his paycheck, promotes him, protects him, and leads him, so thank you for teaching him to live for God. I will tell anyone that my mother is 97 years old and the most vivid earliest memory I have of my Mom is her teaching me how to say my night time bedtime prayers. And it has worked more than anything else, not my degrees, the elite places where I was educated and taught, not the salaries and fellowships, and the wonderful places I have lived with so little means, but being a son of a mother with father in the home who taught her little boy how to pray. So those of you who are parenting, you all just like your graduating sons here, you all just keep on going through all the challenges it takes and all the blessings which come in raising a boy to become a man, a real man not a boy in a man’s body.

And as I say this I must add that another thing I have learned from older men of all backgrounds as father figures or just as friends as the rock solid devout Christian I progressively strive to be and become is to be open to other faiths, not just tolerant, but open, appreciative, and respectful. Something I did not understand when I was a young fanatical Christian in my 20s through early 30s. But aging will teach you many things through life experiences. I have met people of other faiths or moral people with no faith affiliation more kinder and more helpful and more loving, with greater character and ethics than those who profess to be Christians, go to church faithfully, pay their tithes, but their lack of faith in God, their lack of Godly love which is supposed to be the first fruit of being a disciple of Jesus Christ is sorely missing in how they treat others and how they treat themselves. So, I am not going to sit here and urge everyone to be a Christian. Whatever you are and want to be religiously or as a moral person with no religion at all, just learn to be a devout disciple as the spiritual being on a human journey you are and show it in your character, ethics, integrity, and your giving heart towards others and how you respect yourself as well as others. If you are a Christian, be the one in the room. If you are a Muslim, be the one in the room. If you are Jewish, be the one in the room. If you are a Hindu, be the one in the room. If you are a Buddhist, be the one in the room. If you are a nature worshiper, be the one in the room. If you have no religious affiliation but live by some moral golden rule, be the one in the room. Be the one in the room who everyone realizes you are not the one who is going to do anything wrong, who is willing to walk away and resign when anything illegal or discriminatory comes down; and who everyone turns to in a crisis situation since you are the moral conscious in the room through your reputation before you came into the room. It is called having a moral presence, an aura of integrity, justice, and fairness which may even prevent you from getting certain jobs or even keeping certain jobs because you have a moral presence making those in power uncomfortable since they realize you are not going to yield to temptation and fall. Don’t worry about that, no matter the money or the power, getting involved anywhere there is an inevitable risk that your moral reputation will be compromised if you get hired or stick around will not be worth it in the long run even when in the short run it appears you are well on the way to getting the prize. You will not be able to look your grandkids in the eye much later when though no one else may know but you know you compromise your moral principles along the way of accomplishing great things. So, as the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament portion of the Bible teaches us, keep yourselves morally clean, just say no, don’t ever eat the King’s meat. Ain’t ever worth it especially in the long run. The very people who make you compromise your moral principles will be the same ones who will turn against you since they don’t respect you in the first place which is why they will break you through making you compromise thinking one day you will get some prize which may never come or if it does with even more compromising requirements destined to set you up to be ruined, to be ridiculed for the rest of your life with your career eventually destroyed or if not that, more importantly, you will destroy your very life and make those most important to you ashamed to be around you. Again, what will you say to your grandkids while telling them war stories of your heroic life when they know otherwise through the family or community rumor mill or through Googling you? What will your legacy be at and after your funeral? Will there be a long or short list of accomplishments and then a big BUT? So, whatever your faith is or golden moral rule is, just be devout and committed not to some institutional sign on the door but to the path God has given you as a spiritual being on your human journey and show it in your love, your care for others no matter who they are or where they are; show it in your character and in your ethics; walk your moral talk.

We do not know how long we have here on earth, but what older men, Black and otherwise have taught me is what matters the most is to take every day as a gift. Love God, love your family, and love yourself not for self-indulgence but love yourself enough to help others, to be a man with steel in your back bone with words of grace and mercy whose strength is in your character, your dignity, and reliability not in your muscles except those in your head called brains, to have people who follow you and who remember you for your substance, kindness, and generosity of spirit who tells the truth, does the truth, and lives for truth. And when you live like this with circles of fathers like mothers in your life inspiring you, encouraging you to grow up as a man my potential sons/nephews, no matter what others may make you think, you will be amazed how far you will go and will want to go. Sky’s the limit for only those who don’t want to go very far. Shoot for the stars, conquer the entire universe. You are not too young to think and do as I have been trying to say. After all, age is just a number as I said. I started thinking and doing as I have been expressing when I was about the age of most of you I have the honor to be sharing with today. My background was humble but God does not care about where we are from. He cares about our availability and our faith in God and our faith in ourselves as spiritual beings on human journeys as our callings, our purposes in life. God cares for how far we are willing to go in our lives to do good things for the human family, to stretch ourselves to our limits and then push ourselves beyond our limits to think and do amazing things and then think and do even more amazing things and then even more. God wants us to do what my father told me as his only son in his last coherent words to me before he died a year later nearly 12 years ago at age 87. Like my mother Dad never discouraged me from going higher though at times he did not know where I was going. As I left the house that day on the way to the airport after a home visit, he said at the door in those last coherent words to me:“John, keep on going.” My potential sons/nephews: Keep on going.

Allow me to conclude by saying all of this in another way, in an African context, in a nation I call my second home from home called Botswana; google again please. B-O-T-S-W-A-N-A. A small country the size of Texas with a little over two million people, sits on the northwest border of South Africa located at the tip of the continent. There are hundreds of cultures throughout Africa and numerous in Botswana so please don’t think as many Americans, even African Americans do, that Africa is a country with one culture. It is the most complex continent on Earth so you have to be specific when addressing issues which are African. There is one culture in Botswana in which there is the custom that one has many fathers, not just your biological or legal one. You develop a chain of fathers over time. A father that helps to birth you and first cares for you. A father who teaches you how to read and write, how to bait a fishing hook, how to hunt, other fathers who teach you how to protect what is yours, fathers who teach you how to protect your loved ones, how to protect your reputation, how to protect your career. You have fathers who teach you through rituals as a teenager how to be strong while being considerate, how to cry and when not to cry, fathers all your life as you grow up teach you how to stay and how to move, how to choose the right woman and stay away from the ones not good for you. In general, this configuration of fathers assures that you have a clear cut identity of being a male and what it means to become a man; a circle of fathers who teach you how to lead others and love and care for them along the way sometimes gently sometimes issuing out tough love since we all need that from time to time. Fathers who help you discover your intellect and how to use it well. Fathers who teach you how to strategy about life—to have A,B,C plans, how to have goals, how to have a vision, how to be bold and survive to see the results of your courage. Starting with and going beyond Eastlake Male Youth Initiative my potential sons/nephews, identify and recruit consciously, as many positive fathers you can no matter how young or old you are and keep them and love them all your life even when they have gone for their eternal rest. Recruit, Recruit, Recruit, in this globalizing America and world, good, competent fathers from as many cultural and national backgrounds you can who tell you comparative and differing stories about their experiences growing up as men to inspire you about what to do and what not to do as you press on in your life journeys. This is not only an African cultural trait but it is also one found in America in all cultures and elsewhere in the world where you find boys who move from phase to phase in becoming positive, effective men from young to older. Yes, we need mothers and circles of mothers too but we males we need to seek out fathers as well and learn in the process of sorting out those who are good for us and those who are not, and to pick and choose the qualities of those we select which are good for us and reject those qualities which are not good for us.

I am saying this with a sentimental heart since during the past eleven years, my circle of fathers have been leaving me in the flesh, but they remain with me spiritually, circling me with their arms of love and encouraging me to keep passing down circles of men fathers and to become over recent decades, a more dedicated father to any of those younger men and women who desire to have a guide in life who also inspire one day to also become father/uncles and and mother/aunties who follow after them seeking guidance. They gladly enter into the Prof John’s club of young men and women through which I make sure they meet each other and other older men and women to empower them to walk and do amazing things as they pass around the baton and down to the next generations. So thanks for inviting me to come and thanks for your attention. I am here for you even thousands of miles away in the midst of this stunning island land. Thank you. Blessings. My prayers as you all keep on going.

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From A Page or Two From My Memoir in Progress:
What It Takes to Make It to Star Status as an African Descendant Academic Scholar

This may be my first article in career coaching in this venue for justice values driven young and middle-career academic scholars on the continent of Africa and in global African Diasporas wishing to reach one-day superstar status nationally and most importantly, globally. I write this from the standpoint of being in and out of African academia since 1989 when I became a Fulbright Scholar in Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, Freetown. Since that time, I have held visiting posts and have served as a career capacity building coach for universities not only in my homeland, the United States and Brazil, but also in several African universities in most regions of the continent. I presently direct my own virtual policy think tank in Mauritius, registered in South Africa as the Institute for Advanced Study of African Renaissance Policies Ideas and in Mauritius as the Advanced Study of African Renaissance (ASARPI). My last distinguished post on the continent was as 2019-20 University of Mauritius SSR Chair of African Studies.
My career journey as a senior scholar with a global elite profile began when I graduated magna cum laude, summa cum laude in Sociology in California State University California, and at age 25 from Northwestern University some call the Harvard of the Midwest and then enjoyed a career as a senior Sociology Professor in the States and elsewhere in major research universities: Yale, William and Mary, University of California, and Indiana Bloomington before moving to Africa full time in 2014. Since 2014, I have worked as Director of ASARPI in joint venturing in capacity building projects in numerous African Universities and prominent social science research institutes while holding distinguished appointments. While in the United States and elsewhere, I have been appointed to 8 distinguished faculty positions and my scholarship in justice and peace issues in multiracial societies, has won a number of awards and some of my books and articles have remained in print in years due to their seminal status in transforming paradigms of research and practice.
I say all of this not to boast but to give you some idea that I write this not as a novice but as an African American male scholar who has made a legacy in my fields of research which I am not only proud of but I wish share with younger African and African Diasporas descendant scholars coming on up who wish to also get to my senior point of looking back and being proud of being not only a leader but a paradigm smasher and redeveloper in your field or more than one, as I have done over the years.
As I look back now as I begin to write my memoirs, it becomes clear to me that several things did not matter or not that much which seemed to be important on my way up career wise which may surprise some reading this article. It sure surprises me as I write this. Perhaps the most important things which did not matter too much in the long run were being a Black male in a white world, having a bad stutter as a primary and secondary school youth, and coming from a poor working class family. These are demographic attributes (“race,” gender, disability, class) which usually are said to be barriers to career mobility in conventional social inequality literature. It is critically important to never devalue the realities of structural, political, and economic inequalities and the prejudices which underlay them and sustain them. But if we belong to such a dehumanized and excluded demographic or others such as tribe, caste, or linguistic group, and internalize what those dominant negatively say about us we will never succeed or if we do, we will glass ceiling relatively quickly. What matters the most is being aware we have such demographic attributes and developing the will power to overcome them as we navigate our way upward since dehumanized demographic characteristics are not the qualities of physics and chemistry but are sociological, emotional, and political matters which can be overcome as we move forward. This takes being aware of who we are rather than repressing who we are and to use such self-esteem rooted in such personal awareness to propel ourselves around, under, and through barriers set up to put us down and to keep us out. This means working on standard scripts we remind ourselves about and inform others in a diplomatic way who stand in our way intentionally or habitually with stereotypes preventing them from seeing us as whole human beings.

Personally, even though in my formative years I lived in a lily white rural upstate New York community in USA as the only Black male in the entire school district, I was fortunate to have two parents who instilled in me pride for being Black and worked with me daily along with the school speech therapists to make sure I got over being a serious stutterer. My parents taught me and my three sisters, two older and one younger, to pick and choose our playmates based upon who respected us as human beings rather than being so anxious to fit in that we disposed of our senses of Black ethnic identity. And when that child parenting strategy did not work out for my oldest sister who took so much heat from her classmates, rather than encouraging us to fold or just take it, my parents gave my sister the space to survive and prosper in a way suitable to her which turned out becoming an academic star far surpassing her white peers (who would 50 years later track her down, begging her to come to their 50th class reunion). My two older sisters like me would with the help of our parents navigate the cards handed us so well that coming from a snow white environment became an asset in our mobility climb resulting us enjoying careers during a time in which White America was opening up in the 1970s and 1980s in which ethnically grounded Blacks began to rise to the top of their careers and eventually retire without the mental health issues that our age peers had who allow systems to break them and compromise them resulting in career retardation or complete failure ( as what happened to our youngest sister tragically enough who internalized the system and could not cope when we moved from the rural community to a working class suburb in northern California when we were mid-adolescents).

So knowing who you are, being proud of it, and learning how to take prejudices as realities which you effectively respond to but never allow to bog you down are the most basic coping skills you will need to have to make it to the top of your academic career. You have to remember that people seemingly always questioning your worth professionally is the reason why you develop a style of research in which you document exhaustively whatever you are trying to say verbally or in writing, be it a term paper, a Master’s thesis or your doctoral dissertation proposal and the actual manuscript. People who are prejudiced against you personally because of the socially constructed category you hail from really or in perception will not be able to touch you professionally when you are a thorough documenter and critiquer of what you document. Especially when you are claiming something quite controversial such as the well institutionalized racism in Eurocentric sociology and other social sciences is the reason why my first book, Philanthropy and Jim Crow is still in print and being cited after 36 years. It is because of the book’s weighty empirical evidence and lengthy footnotes containing unusual sources which people could expand upon and disagree with but not dismiss the evidence in a very controversial topic regarding racism in the history of academic social sciences. This is in recognition of the reality that all sciences, humanities and professional knowledge paradigms originate, germinate, and become dominant, marginal, and excluded in historically grounded political contexts of human interests. And so, especially if you are making claims counter to Eurocentric hegemonic claims about the canons of disciplines, you are dealing with power politics and threatening the bread and butter and the status authority of those in control. Academic knowledge production then is not just simply an exercise in sharing and debating ideas. Far from it, it is a political battle won by those who know how to shore up and use evidence skilfully and create power bases such as journals and publishing houses and social and other media platforms with high visibility to disseminate ideas especially when they buck against the status quo.

Yet with this said, as you age as an African descendant scholar with the award of tenure and especially with distinguished professor status, you should be bold enough and step away from empirical data and speculate about issues, especially those pertaining to justice issues with scant or no empirical data but you know through experience are truths which need to be told and told with courage. This is done realizing two things. First, speculation, not empirical evidence, is what drives forward motion, sometimes it leads to most disciplines in all branches—sciences, humanities, and professional knowledge fields—not hard evidence. Second, related to the first, this is why we find that European descendant scholars of great status and even of lesser status have been given the privilege of speculating while making it appear that we Black folks are not supposed to say anything at all beyond what the data says as a form of academic field hand slave labor with no thinking, especially futuristic, decolonializing thinking privileges.

To move on, if you are a young African descendant scholar wanting to make it big in your discipline with global visibility, you have to be strategic about who you choose to study with in a highly ranked doctoral studies program. This is because getting a doctoral degree is an apprentice relationship and the greater the reputation of a mentor in a highly ranked university with a legacy of working with African descendant students, the better off you will be in being able to do creative research and be placed well once your degree work is done. Keep in mind then it makes no sense to try to get into a prestigious doctoral program where there is no one of high rank willing to take you on as a student. You can waste your time being ignored or marginalized or end up working with a good hearted junior or senior faculty person who means well but has no significant clout in the department or in the national or global dimensions of your discipline. With this said, keep in mind a prominent faculty member’s willingness to work with you as a mentor has nothing to do with the person’s demographic characteristics. What matters is their high personal character and academic standards and their professional networks to place you well and help you for years in various facets of your career.

It is important to say this because many justice oriented African descendant undergraduates get inspired by distinguished Black and Non-Black justice authorities they read about in class only to discover that if they write to the person about his or her availability as a future mentor (always a good thing to do) they find the person has no interest at all, even to the point of never responding to their queries. Many academics including those of non-white backgrounds who claim to be for justice don’t want to work with students from their own backgrounds and in fact may even work against you once you enter their department. A pity, but too often true. Making a big name in a justice field with big money and big endowed chair positions is one thing, living a justice oriented life as a human being who wants to help deserving young people with potential rise and go further than them is a totally different situation. Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man, lives on. If you have never read that book, please do.

The importance of choosing the highest rank possible is necessary because becoming a globally prominent scholar one day occurs when you understand that universities within countries and globally are embedded in caste-like ranking orders. The elite and not so elite to bottom of the barrel rankings of universities is real. It has nothing to do with how bright you may be. Despite their rankings, universities have off the charts brilliant professors and students. But the caste ordering predicts who gets what privileges and assurances for continued success and who will listen to you when you say where you received your doctoral degree. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the faculty rosters of Ivy League Universities in the States and of Cambridge and Oxford Universities in the U.K. and notice where professors received their doctorate degrees—quite incestuous when it comes to first tier universities only hiring professors from other first tier universities with rare to the extreme exceptions.

Being able to go to such elite places for doctoral studies means as an undergraduate, not only get top grades but get to know 3 or 4 professors well enough over two or three letters by spending time talking with them and asking to work on their research projects as assistants to such an extent they will write you strong letters of recommendations to top places. If you are a Masters student who did not do too well grade wise as an undergraduate student, make it up in your Master’s thesis studies with a mentor who will write you a strong letter of recommendation along with other professors who know you as a Masters student or knew you as an undergraduate who were impressed by your academic performance.
I emphasize what I am recommending is not “networking” or manipulating faculty to get a great letter out of them. I am talking about learning how to build positive enduring relationships with faculty which will last for years and even transform into lifelong friendships and colleague collaboration relationships in which over time you become helpful to each other. I say this because one thing that irritates faculty so much is to have a student who just shows up or pops up and asks for a letter and you never even had an out of class conversation with the person. Or you have not heard from the student for years and then he or she pops up wanting a letter. Becoming an academic scholar who goes places means learning early in life and especially in undergraduate school the importance of building positive relationships with those older, same age, and younger. The isolated scientist working all alone in his or her laboratory or the lonely literature professor writing a poem always alone in some isolated mountain cabin is not the portrait of a scholar who becomes world renowned since you need people along the way in life who give you support as you do the same for them. People who isolate themselves, who disconnect, or just connect when they need something don’t go very far if anywhere at all no matter how brilliant they are, their social backgrounds, where they go to school and university.

It is important to say this since there is a rags to riches and a rugged individualism myth which is universal these days even in Africa and in African Diasporas as African descendant people get increasingly absorbed into narcissist mass consumer capitalism. Each person has his or herself attitude. That is, until we need or want something such as assistance in making it to the next level of our lives, in this case, our academic careers. It is the reason why for so many, careers plateau so quickly and increasingly easily when we are transactional and otherwise narcissist in our professional and personal lives.

When we realize this, as young scholars, many things change in how we engage in our human made environments be they be our homes, communities, going to the store, riding on a bus or a plane, or being in class or in a professor’s office or in a place or worship. It means we engage with others to learn more about who they are rather than sticking to ourselves, not saying hello or goodbye when we are sitting next to someone or standing in some line, and we evaluate others based upon their personal story not on what they look like or appear to have or not have. When we become more engaging people, doors come flying open since we do not know who people are until we give them space to tell their stories. And this life lesson I have learned through experience and through observation of those who go far in their academic careers and those who do not or only so far is the greatest thing to learn if you want to hit the stars and then the universe in your career pursuits.

And what this means is three other additional tips I have learned in my career hiking. First it is important, as a university provost told me, who was being treated poorly by her soon to be more than capable fired President with no interpersonal skills to speak of—it is better to be nice to people than being competent. On your way up, remember that you can be the greatest expert in the room let alone university but if you treat your colleague peers or those who report to you be they junior colleagues, the secretary or your research assistants poorly, one day you will pay and dearly at that through people quitting on, sabotaging, or falsely or truthfully reporting on you or making sure people in their networks will not work with you. Second, get to know people personally, not what you hear through the gossip circuit, which academics have made into a dysfunctional science, especially new faculty and administrators who gulp down third person stories about people rather than sitting down and impartially listening to the person tell his or her side of some story. Third, congratulate those who achieve even if you were the loser and never be glad when something bad happens to any one, especially someone who was an adversary. The negativity which jealousy, envy, and vindictiveness generates is wasted psychic energy better spent on caring and helping people and more basically just minding your business when the gossip monger (and most organizations have them and know who they are) comes to you with the latest piece of garbage to spread especially about someone you don’t care for or should not care for as a colleague or as a teaching faculty member.

And I speak as a veteran of not a few scraps in academia. My climb upward as a justice oriented social scientist has not been a piece of cake all the time. Universities are human made environments and academic politics are often brutal so know that while you are moving upward and don’t get discouraged and give up—hang in there with the right kind of strategic career building advice since the world needs your provocative ideas and justice oriented values commitments. Some have told me that corporate and government politics have nothing on university politics; especially if you stand for justice. At this point in my life, I have to agree. But, I would not exchange anything in regards to becoming an academic scholar who I hope and pray along the way contributed in the way God has called me into all my adult years to make a difference while learning how to navigate amongst the debris in space as I have zoomed along here and there in this at times seemingly out of space world called global academia with its various Saturn like rings in national and local systems contexts. It has been fun. You can have fun too. Just know what you are getting yourself into. Be alert. Be discerning. Be daring. Be a justice value-driven intellectual leader. In this day and age as the global map is centering in Africa and Africa, we need more justice value driven African and African Diasporas descendants to step up for a world in sore need of more of us speaking up, having our say, and seeing our say contribute the empowering wellbeing of all we human beings. So go for it. Please.
Kind Regards,
Prof John

Professor John H Stanfield

Director
ASARPI:Advanced Study of African Renaissance Policies Ideas
New Gate House
Third Floor
St.Jean Rd & Col Draper Ave
89 Col Draper Avenue
Quatre Bornes, Mauritius 72449
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Email: director@ asarpiversity.com; cc: stanfieldsci@gmail.com