Honestly, some people need to read the room. I received an email recently from someone offering to mentor me. He said he wanted to help me build a “personal brand,” get “recognition,” land “high-paying consulting gigs,” and finally “monetize” my writing. He was indirectly promising me to reach the upper echelons of success and money to bring me to the top of the social hierarchy and closer to the zenith of riches. He promised the usual litany of modern hustle-speak. I would be big time!! Yippee!
Look, I get how the system works. Dangle a shiny worm in front of the fish before you hook and reel him in, slowly and patiently. He wasn’t rude or pushy. In fact, it was generous by the standards of capitalist politeness. He was subtly transactional. Noting new or unexpected. But the problem wasn’t tone. It was that this offer, this so-called “mentorship,” completely missed the point of what and why I write.
I’m not writing to ascend into the very structure I’m critiquing. This is the very structure that decides that I don’t deserve and works constantly to take from people like me, our labor, resources, culture, knowledge, and strength, all to give to people who have more resources than they could consume in several lifetimes.
I’m not seeking to win the game. I know I would be murdered socially and economically, and perhaps physically as well, if I shine too much, perform too high, earn too much, be too much in a way that society does not allow. I have already had a white CEO laugh at me when I told him he should mentor me to replace him when he moved on. I have already had a deputy CEO insist that I should leave the job because I am overqualified to work with him (I have more experience and educational qualifications than the CEO and deputy. The CEO had just promoted him, and he thought that would be the answer to my frustration with their hoarding of positions among white men. I should leave. What mentorship could this guy give me that would break such a system?
I know this “mentor” is looking for money, and even if he meant well, he can’t help me reach the top I would reach if I were a white male. So, his output would be suboptimal. This is especially true for the topics I write about. I write to expose all of this. I write to show that the system that we have was not designed to work for all, but only a few, and the masses that dream of getting a piece of that pie are often not allowed to prosper unless they are super, super special. Even then, wolves await a moment to snap at their shirt tail and pull them off the pedestal.
What Matt, the pro-mentor of unknown writers, offered me was an on-ramp to a system I call omnicide: the totalized destruction of self, culture, community, and planet in service to ego, empire, and profit. He wants to help me make a living from my words. That has never been possible for everyone. Besides, I write to help others make a life outside this machine.
The Trap of Careerism Disguised as Progress
Let’s break this down.
When someone offers to mentor you toward a more “professional” version of your writing, they’re often saying:
Speak more profitably.
Write more sellably.
Become palatable to algorithms, publishers, employers, and clients.
They mean well. But what they’re really mentoring you into is silence in a language of success. Don’t speak your mind. Pander for profits, or get cancelled for speaking your mind, kneeling for a point, standing up for yourself, fist in the air.
They want to coach you into civil, capitalist, docile respectability—into the kind of language that attracts corporations, conferences, and Substack sponsors. I still recall being the only speaker at conferences who was of color. It was obvious the industry was sick with racism, as there were often no women, asians, Native people, Latinos, younger people, and Black people. People like these want to mentor you into a life of “visibility” that requires you to sanitize your politics, smooth away your rage, and repackage your truth in LinkedIn-friendly slogans and smily likes.
That’s not mentorship. That’s grooming for market obedience, something I reject wince I won’t actually benefit, nor will it make a difference to society.
When Mentorship Becomes Maintenance of the “Man”
Let’s be honest—most mentors today are just teaching people how to fit into a system that’s burning us all alive. This does not even pretend to be wisdom. It showcases what it is—indoctrination.
They’re not helping you build a voice. They’re helping you build a resume.
They’ll help you sell a personal narrative, develop an email funnel, and optimize your content for engagement, so long as you stay within the lines drawn by white advertisers and gatekeepers.
But what if your truth is messier? What of it exposes their ruse? Will they still support it? Even if they make money doing so?
What if your rage is sacred? It’s the only thing that can pry change under a mountain of lies.
What if your writing isn’t content—it’s dissent? It’s aiming to bring us to a new and better way to live, as this one crumbles before our eyes.
What if you don’t want to write to be liked? You want to write to be honest, to help others recognize what’s happening to them, and to show them that they are not crazy to believe they are deserving of the spoils of the earth as well.
We’re Not All Chasing the Same Thing
I write because I’m fighting something that has denied that I deserve access like everyone else.
I write because silence is violence and does not change things. It only allows you to be quietly raped and plundered while someone tries to convince you they are doing you a favor, so you probably like it.
I write because there are people out here trying to survive a collapsing empire, trying to raise children in fascist states, trying to breathe through debt, discrimination, depression, and despair. Black people have been fighting this for 500 years. What’s different is that it is slowly creeping towards faster consumption of people who believe in the white project.
I don’t need mentorship. I need solidarity. I already have suitable mentors.
Besides, I’m mentoring others already—people who have nothing to prove to the market but everything to reclaim for themselves. People who are learning to name the thing that’s hurting them, so they can dismantle it with clarity. People who don’t want to scale content but decolonize their minds.
So no, I won’t be joining the coaching cohort.
No, I won’t be refining my “thought leadership.”
No, I won’t be taking your Zoom calls about leveraging brand assets.
I’ll be right here—writing against the noise.
Writing toward liberation, not applause.
Writing for those who refuse to be bought.
Let This Be Your Reminder
If you’re reading this and wondering whether you’re “doing enough” to brand yourself, let me offer this:
Your value as a human being is not your visibility.
Your truth to be treated like one is not your engagement rate.
Your self-worth cannot and should not be monetized.
And if you’re someone offering mentorship, ask yourself who taught you that success means converting every voice into money. Who taught you that someone’s value is how much money they have on a balance sheet? What about you? When systems break down and the money is as good as paper weight to block a door, do you still have value, self-worth, and an identity?
Some of us are trying to escape the plantation, not plant flags on it, and certainly not move into it as servants.
Write because it matters to the peace and harmony you seek.
Write because it heals a world where hatred and the resulting violence have become so easy.
Write because someone, somewhere, is reading your words and remembering that they are not crazy, not alone, and not for sale.
