This guy - Myron Gaines, and other grifters like Pearl Davis and Charlie Kirk have built lucrative careers out of spewing ignorance as entertainment. Many people have come to confuse this fast paced tactic as informed analysis when in reality, its fluff and no substance
In 2026, every topic – from the connection of people of African descent to Africa, to the Puerto Rican artist “Bad Bunny” performing primarily in Spanish at this year’s Superbowl halftime – is met with a barrage of disagreement based exclusively in ignorance. The people arguing that Africans born in the U.S. are not Africans cannot and do not support their arguments with ill refutable historical and genealogical evidence. They cannot produce a logical argument that disconnects our lineage through the transatlantic slave trade. They don’t make any attempt to scientifically explain the countless cultural, physiological, and historical evidence that we are Africans. Instead, the most prominent negation of African identity they provide these days is “I don’t know anybody in Africa. I ain’t never been there!”
An obvious point to that is if you never make an effort to study Africa, obtain a passport, and prioritize international travel, then without question, you will never go there. And, if you don’t go there, it becomes very difficult to know anyone there. Even that ill refutable and very simple logic never rises higher than the lowest levels of discourse around this issue. In fact, for more than a few people, the defense of not going and not knowing is considered viable evidence against any connection to the African continent.
By the same token, the Bad Bunny presentation is being dismissed because “I didn’t understand a word he said” as if many of the people saying this understand the words any entertainer says or as if learning Spanish is something that’s only possible for a secret 1% of the population. The issue is bigger than our ongoing identity struggles or a Superbowl performer. We could present the same argument as it relates to vaccinations, U.S. and world history, philosophy, racism, patriarchy, homophobia, and virtually any topic you can come up with. The requirement to disagree has been reduced to not knowing as an acceptable defense for not knowing i.e. I make no effort, thus I’m not required to know.
The critical question about this, as it is with every social phenomenon, is who benefits the most from this reality? The answer is that the capitalist system is the big winner when it comes to an extremely ignorant and uninformed population. If Africans in the U.S. don’t know they are African. If they aren’t the least big interested in knowing anything about Africa. If all they want to do is be entertained, worship colonial dominated religions, and buy stuff, then the capitalist system would have things no other way. This is true because the capitalist system relies heavily on exploiting Africa. Our Mother Africa is the most resource rich land base on the entire planet. Richer in this regard than the rest of the planet combined. And, Africa provides the most inexpensive access to all these resources than anywhere else. Multi-national corporations depend upon this reality to systemically exploit coltan, cobalt, diamonds, gold, silver, platinum, steel, zinc, bauxite, cocoa, uranium, chromite, oil, and many other rare earth natural resources. Meanwhile, the masses of African people, scattered all over Africa, Europe, and the Americas, are poor, disorganized, and have zero control over any resource production anywhere. If these Africans – over 2 ½ billion of us in and out of Africa, woke up one day and asked why we come from the richest land base on earth, yet why are we the poorest people on earth that would spark a whirlwind of questions that would lead to a massive uprising. The capitalist system doesn’t want to see this happen because when it does, the system knows its days are numbered. So, instead of promoting education, they discourage it. They dismiss our history. They send overt and covert messages that our history isn’t important to you and many of us accept this messaging. We accept their suggestions that we needn’t worry about Africa, just making it in this capitalist system. As a result, very few of us ever question why these capitalist, industrialized societies are rich and Africa is poor. Without ever giving it a moment’s thought, most of us probably believe the standard capitalist lies that this is true because capitalism is blessed by God and that they work harder, both lies, but these lies reinforce that we need to get as close to capitalism as we possibly can.
Of course, ignorance is the key driver for the above strategy to gain traction and stay in place. Without ignorance, they would never be able to exploit us and our resources they way they do. Without ignorance we could never chase unscientific fantasies about who we are so that we can avoid facing who we are, and more importantly, what we need to do because of who we are.
The Superbowl performance requires ignorance because without it, it becomes impossible to “other” people and without a consciousness that prevents that, it becomes easy to dehumanize people. Once that happens, you don’t care if those “others” are rounded up and brutalized. Their others, just like a roach. Just like you don’t care what happens to a roach. Under this pretext, Spanish or any language is seen as “others.” So why would you learn it? Why would you respect it? Just like the African identity question, the actual basic questions within this scenario are never asked, never. Like how the hell did African people in the West come to speak English anyway? And, why are there just as many of us who speak Spanish or French? We are so uninformed by these basic questions that many of us who have French names believe we descend from France in Europe. This is classic ignorance which of course, is reliant on self-hatred which is more ignorance about Africa, etc.
The good news is all of us can help stem this tide of ignorance becoming some type of flex in people’s minds. We can do this by raising simple questions. The bar is so low that doing this is very easy. When you hear someone say something like “I ain’t been to Africa” or “I don’t speak no Spanish” or “ain’t no such thing as being gay”, etc., try responding by asking “why not and/or other open-ended questions. Open-ended is always good because it forces them to think through a response. Ask them to explain their source of reference. Some of them will get angry and retreat, but that’s still better than letting the ignorance blossom. I do it all the time. While in Cape Town, Azania (South Africa) a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in the lobby of the hotel where I was staying. I was talking to some of the employees when I was approached by a European. He recognized my U.S. English accent and he said “I wanted to come over and ask what brought you here?” My response to him with an absolute straight face was “the better and more accurate question is what brought you here?” He stopped, looked befuddled and then continued on his way. He may have eventually picked up the irony of my response, or maybe he didn’t. Either way I couldn’t care less. What I was more concerned with is the two or three African employees who were present smiled and understood exactly what I meant. In one swoop I reaffirmed them, myself, and Mother Africa’s history while refusing to let that man shape the narrative. The only problem is not enough of us travel through the world this way. The more of us who do, the less ignorance becomes acceptable. The less it becomes acceptable to higher levels of existence we create for ourselves.
An obvious point to that is if you never make an effort to study Africa, obtain a passport, and prioritize international travel, then without question, you will never go there. And, if you don’t go there, it becomes very difficult to know anyone there. Even that ill refutable and very simple logic never rises higher than the lowest levels of discourse around this issue. In fact, for more than a few people, the defense of not going and not knowing is considered viable evidence against any connection to the African continent.
By the same token, the Bad Bunny presentation is being dismissed because “I didn’t understand a word he said” as if many of the people saying this understand the words any entertainer says or as if learning Spanish is something that’s only possible for a secret 1% of the population. The issue is bigger than our ongoing identity struggles or a Superbowl performer. We could present the same argument as it relates to vaccinations, U.S. and world history, philosophy, racism, patriarchy, homophobia, and virtually any topic you can come up with. The requirement to disagree has been reduced to not knowing as an acceptable defense for not knowing i.e. I make no effort, thus I’m not required to know.
The critical question about this, as it is with every social phenomenon, is who benefits the most from this reality? The answer is that the capitalist system is the big winner when it comes to an extremely ignorant and uninformed population. If Africans in the U.S. don’t know they are African. If they aren’t the least big interested in knowing anything about Africa. If all they want to do is be entertained, worship colonial dominated religions, and buy stuff, then the capitalist system would have things no other way. This is true because the capitalist system relies heavily on exploiting Africa. Our Mother Africa is the most resource rich land base on the entire planet. Richer in this regard than the rest of the planet combined. And, Africa provides the most inexpensive access to all these resources than anywhere else. Multi-national corporations depend upon this reality to systemically exploit coltan, cobalt, diamonds, gold, silver, platinum, steel, zinc, bauxite, cocoa, uranium, chromite, oil, and many other rare earth natural resources. Meanwhile, the masses of African people, scattered all over Africa, Europe, and the Americas, are poor, disorganized, and have zero control over any resource production anywhere. If these Africans – over 2 ½ billion of us in and out of Africa, woke up one day and asked why we come from the richest land base on earth, yet why are we the poorest people on earth that would spark a whirlwind of questions that would lead to a massive uprising. The capitalist system doesn’t want to see this happen because when it does, the system knows its days are numbered. So, instead of promoting education, they discourage it. They dismiss our history. They send overt and covert messages that our history isn’t important to you and many of us accept this messaging. We accept their suggestions that we needn’t worry about Africa, just making it in this capitalist system. As a result, very few of us ever question why these capitalist, industrialized societies are rich and Africa is poor. Without ever giving it a moment’s thought, most of us probably believe the standard capitalist lies that this is true because capitalism is blessed by God and that they work harder, both lies, but these lies reinforce that we need to get as close to capitalism as we possibly can.
Of course, ignorance is the key driver for the above strategy to gain traction and stay in place. Without ignorance, they would never be able to exploit us and our resources they way they do. Without ignorance we could never chase unscientific fantasies about who we are so that we can avoid facing who we are, and more importantly, what we need to do because of who we are.
The Superbowl performance requires ignorance because without it, it becomes impossible to “other” people and without a consciousness that prevents that, it becomes easy to dehumanize people. Once that happens, you don’t care if those “others” are rounded up and brutalized. Their others, just like a roach. Just like you don’t care what happens to a roach. Under this pretext, Spanish or any language is seen as “others.” So why would you learn it? Why would you respect it? Just like the African identity question, the actual basic questions within this scenario are never asked, never. Like how the hell did African people in the West come to speak English anyway? And, why are there just as many of us who speak Spanish or French? We are so uninformed by these basic questions that many of us who have French names believe we descend from France in Europe. This is classic ignorance which of course, is reliant on self-hatred which is more ignorance about Africa, etc.
The good news is all of us can help stem this tide of ignorance becoming some type of flex in people’s minds. We can do this by raising simple questions. The bar is so low that doing this is very easy. When you hear someone say something like “I ain’t been to Africa” or “I don’t speak no Spanish” or “ain’t no such thing as being gay”, etc., try responding by asking “why not and/or other open-ended questions. Open-ended is always good because it forces them to think through a response. Ask them to explain their source of reference. Some of them will get angry and retreat, but that’s still better than letting the ignorance blossom. I do it all the time. While in Cape Town, Azania (South Africa) a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in the lobby of the hotel where I was staying. I was talking to some of the employees when I was approached by a European. He recognized my U.S. English accent and he said “I wanted to come over and ask what brought you here?” My response to him with an absolute straight face was “the better and more accurate question is what brought you here?” He stopped, looked befuddled and then continued on his way. He may have eventually picked up the irony of my response, or maybe he didn’t. Either way I couldn’t care less. What I was more concerned with is the two or three African employees who were present smiled and understood exactly what I meant. In one swoop I reaffirmed them, myself, and Mother Africa’s history while refusing to let that man shape the narrative. The only problem is not enough of us travel through the world this way. The more of us who do, the less ignorance becomes acceptable. The less it becomes acceptable to higher levels of existence we create for ourselves.
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