I Believe Dr. Umar

He was innocently perusing incense sold by a white woman

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If you don’t intimately know who Dr. Umar Johnson is, you are probably white. That’s ok (I guess), but not to Dr. Umar, a Pan-Afrikanist psychologist. Broadly, this means he is like Jordan Peterson for a niche group of Black people — unintentionally hilarious and extremely memeable — but with charisma. An account dedicated to no-context clips of him on Twitter has about 200,000 more followers than his official account.

His career, which includes posting dozens of times a day on Instagram, going on tours around America to speak on how to be “unapologetically Afrikan” and writing books titled Psycho-Academic Holocaust: The Special Education & ADHD Wars Against Black Boys, is dedicated (for better or for worse) to embracing, liberating and promoting Blackness. He also has been raising money to build a school, which clearly will never happen. One of his biggest beliefs is that Black women are the greatest living creatures, and he strongly condemns Black people dating outside of our race:

Which is why this week, a video of Dr. Umar at a mall in New Jersey went viral. The short clip shows Dr. Umar chatting with a white lady at a mall as she holds her phone, smiling, leading many to believe he was exchanging numbers with her:

Could Dr. Umar, a man who has spoken so extensively of his love for Black women and total disgust at the general idea of miscegenation, be hitting on a white lady? Yesterday, Dr. Umar posted a total of 6 times about the ordeal on his Instagram and offered up an explanation. He was recognized by a fan at the mall while on an incense and oils run, and the white woman in question witnessed the encounter, asked Umar who he was, and then used her phone to Google him. He ends the post by saying, “If you dusty snowbunny loving betamales don’t believe me then please visit the mall and ask her personally if we exchanged phone numbers. I was dealing with food poisoning and wasn’t in the mood for all that anyway, so chill haters. Heavy is the head who wears the crown….”

Many are taking this as an opportunity to discredit Dr. Umar, a man who has built notoriety by being one of the most prolific modern hoteps on the internet. While I don’t agree with Dr. Umar’s whole thing, having spent years absorbing videos of him in group chats and on meme accounts — I believe he is innocent. Dr. Umar is far too dedicated to his image to ever slip so easily. There are a lot of things you can say about Dr. Umar and his teachings. But I do not believe Dr. Umar would ever willingly spend one second with a white woman in public.