I look at young Nigerians from not-so-privileged homes despising those with privilege. You’re short changing & limiting yourself. In life, there will always be those born with privilege, those who grow into it, and those who get it from relationships. Let me explain. Thread

Those born with privilege don’t start from ground zero-they attend good schools(quality education), they don’t struggle with physiological needs for their family, they have resources to fund their passion w/o having to labor or save, & ultimately they have strong social currency.
Those without privilege have little - no legacy funds or elite education, at times even no decent shelter & living conditions for their families. So your journey is longer, laced with struggle to improve the lives of your parents & yourself. You have to first work to survive.
So as someone without privilege, your fastest way to privilege is competence/value/talent and a painstaking attempt at building your social currency by yourself. Top on the list of those you need to build networks with are the privileged. They already have larger networks.
So as you’re growing in your capabilities, you focus on creating value - value you can offer to those with privilege- you build sufficient wealth from that value. You can’t afford to stay hating those with privilege, when you should be sweating to build privilege for your kids.
It’s no fault of yours that you were born without privilege, neither is it the fault of those born into privilege that they were. But what will be your fault is if your kids end up like you because you refused to create value & build bridges with privileged people for your kids.
So how can you add value?
1. Identify your interest & deepen your expertise at it so much that you become the best of the best - fingers should point at you at some point
2. Identify your talent, refine it (don’t push unrefined talent: most laugh at it) - then commercialize it!
3. Keep reinvesting in yourself. Further education, social club, neighborhood, work, church/mosque, etc.
4. Be intentional about your association. Don’t limit your circle to only those with similar backgrounds because you hate privilege. One of them may be your key to privilege.
5. Stop wasting your access to social media being savage or in ròfòrófó gists. People are building formidable networks, wealth & getting access to privilege here. Don’t build a reputation as a nuisance.

2021 is early. Ask yourself, are you okay where you are or desire more? End

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A few thoughts on this sad development 👇👇

20 academics criticizing an paper is fine; good science, really

10000+ hate mail for studying schools in Sweden is insane

Anonymous docs/ prof (hiding in faceless accts) on twitter smearing researchers is insane
[thread] https://t.co/QYldLD3WO0


In April 2020, @jflier and I saw this coming

We saw increasingly heated and personal attacks against scientists merely for having a range of views on COVID19 (PS there is no playbook/ right ans)

Tying science to naked politics was also bad idea, we

Yet, repeatedly that is what happened. Twitter 'experts' displayed an absolute intolerance to other views

Folks who disagreed weren't just wrong, they were malicious actors spreading "disinformation"

Really? Someone worked for 25 years as faculty to suddenly spread lies?

Disinformation has been so misused that it has lost meaning.

I recently saw an ID doc & lab researcher in the UK be accused of spreading "disinformation"

hahah, get outta here, you are trying to say "i disagree" but your keyboard is broken

Personal attacks have become so bad that I have seen a lab researcher accuse a doctor of wanting to engage in inappropriate relationships with patients due to diverging views on vaccine messaging

Seriously? It was a low point even for twitter

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Why is this the most powerful question you can ask when attempting to reach an agreement with another human being or organization?

A thread, co-written by @deanmbrody:


2/ First, “X” could be lots of things. Examples: What would need to be true for you to

- “Feel it's in our best interest for me to be CMO"
- “Feel that we’re in a good place as a company”
- “Feel that we’re on the same page”
- “Feel that we both got what we wanted from this deal

3/ Normally, we aren’t that direct. Example from startup/VC land:

Founders leave VC meetings thinking that every VC will invest, but they rarely do.

Worse over, the founders don’t know what they need to do in order to be fundable.

4/ So why should you ask the magic Q?

To get clarity.

You want to know where you stand, and what it takes to get what you want in a way that also gets them what they want.

It also holds them (mentally) accountable once the thing they need becomes true.

5/ Staying in the context of soliciting investors, the question is “what would need to be true for you to want to invest (or partner with us on this journey, etc)?”

Multiple responses to this question are likely to deliver a positive result.