Beyond The Two Boxes

Black Identity, World Wisdom, and the Power of Diunital Thinking

By Garry Wendell

Unity is beyond two boxes. We don’t have to choose between the divided options we’ve been given.  Our diversity isn’t our partition; it’s a superpower within our reach.

The World Is Larger Than the Choices We Inherited

Black people in America have repeatedly been handed narrow choices: assimilate or be rejected, protest or remain silent, succeed individually or stay loyal to the community, honor the past or prepare for the future. These choices can sound practical, but many are false divisions. They reduce our vast, complicated lives to two boxes, then demand that we climb into one and alienate the other.

This habit is called dichotomous thinking: the tendency to frame reality as either/or, this or that, good or bad, winner or loser, us or them, and, most dangerously, friend or foe. It can be useful when a situation is truly binary. The door is locked or unlocked. A deadline has passed, or it has not. A mathematical proposition may be true or false within a clearly defined system. Formal logic, classification, and binary computing have helped human beings build, calculate, organize, and decide.

The problem is not the tool. The problem begins when we use that tool on realities it was never designed to contain—identity, culture, emotion, history, morality, community, and human possibility.

A person is not a light switch. A community is not a spreadsheet. You cannot understand a painful history by placing every person and every event into two permanent camps. When either/or thinking becomes our only lens, clarity hardens into confinement. Labels replace investigation. Disagreement becomes betrayal. One mistake becomes a total identity. A community rich in differences begins to divide itself into the educated and the uneducated, the successful and the unsuccessful, the respectable and the unacceptable, the old and the young.

Our challenge is not merely to escape other people’s boxes. It is to stop rebuilding those boxes inside our own minds and communities.

A Wider Lens: Diunital Thinking

Diunital thinking offers a wider lens. The word points to “two-in-unity”: two realities can remain distinct while their relationship also matters. Instead of asking only, “Which side is right?” diunital thinking also asks, “How are these sides connected? Under what conditions might each contain truth? What larger reality becomes visible when we stop forcing a premature choice?” It is a both/and practice, but it is not an excuse to call every claim true or every action acceptable. Contradictions still require careful examination. Harm still requires boundaries. Injustice still requires judgment and action.

Diunital thinking is the ability to hold complexity long enough to see clearly, considering nuances in between and what mutual agreements there might be. A person can love America and criticize America. We can pursue personal excellence and collective responsibility. We can value emotion as information and reason as guidance. These pairings do not weaken us. When evidence, ethics, and self-awareness discipline them, they make our judgment more complete.  The same can be true with a divided community.

Imagine what Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois might have accomplished if they had built on the common ground they once shared. After Washington delivered his Atlanta Exposition speech—later known as the “Atlanta Compromise”—Du Bois sent him a congratulatory letter on September 24. That letter shows an early moment of support, before Du Bois later became a leading critic of Washington’s approach. Their differences eventually grew, but they didn’t always stand on opposite sides.

Because of their brief, early agreement, we now recognize the value of both economic institution-building and civil-rights advocacy, despite their later unresolved disagreements. A both/and interpretation holds that communities need economic resources, education, and enforceable rights together. We’ve drawn this lesson from their debate, not from a joint position they formally adopted. Imagine what their compromise could have produced.

W.E.B. Du Bois gave us one of the clearest windows into this tension through his idea of double consciousness—a point of comparison for my discussion of diunital thinking.  He described the strain of being both Black and American in a society that often treated those identities as incompatible. I’m not reducing his work to a slogan for diunital consciousness; it was an account of the psychological burden produced by racism. Yet it also reveals the failure of a culture that demands a person amputate one part of the self to make another part acceptable.

My position is not to romanticize that wound, but to point to the need and power of thinking beyond rigid divisions, and to compromise what may appear as opposites.   It is to build conditions in which our many diversities can become sources of depth rather than reasons for division.

Euro-American constructs do not always fit our circumstances or mindset; we must always look beyond the many limitations shackled to our consciousness.

What Survived Was More Than Memory

Many American institutions were shaped largely by European traditions, which adopted Aristotelian logic, a form of dichotomous thinking that frames opposing choices, such as classification, individualism, hierarchy, and definition. That history does not mean that all Western thought is binary, or that formal logic categories created racism, colonialism, or capitalism. Such claims would repeat the oversimplification we need to overcome.

The danger arises when people and institutions with power turn differences into rankings—labeling some groups “civilized” and others “uncivilized,” or some people “deserving” and others “undeserving.” Those labels can excuse the oppression of people’s rights, opportunities, and dignity. Recognizing differences can help us understand people, but using those differences to decide whose life matters more can justify harm.

People adopt this logic to settle differences or seemingly opposing choices.

African-derived ways of knowing did not disappear when African people were forced to assimilate into the Americas. Enslavement shattered institutions, separated families, attacked languages, and attempted to erase histories. Yet ways of thinking, such as relating, assessing, creating meaning, and surviving, endured through family, spirituality, hidden cultures, storytelling, rhythm, memory, mutual aid, and collective struggle. These were not gifts from American institutions. They were hidden or implicit cultural inheritances adapted despite American pressure.

We hear that survival in the blues, where sorrow and beauty occupy the same song. We see it in call-and-response, where meaning belongs neither to the leader nor to the audience, but emerges through participation. We witness it in the Black church at its best, where individual testimony becomes collective encouragement. We recognize it in mutual-aid societies, freedom movements, neighborhood networks, family sacrifice, and the long practice of comedy and making a way out of no way. Pain and joy. Protest and creation. Individual voice and communal answer. These are not proof that every Black person thinks the same way. Black culture is diverse, contested, and always changing. They show that relationship and creative integration have been enduring strengths in Black life.

African-centered thinkers such as Na’im Akbar, Wade Nobles, and Marimba Ani have challenged models that separate mind from body, individual from community, and material life from cultural or spiritual meaning. Their arguments differ, and none should be flattened into one doctrine. Together, however, they invite a vital question: What happens when a people learn to measure themselves only through categories created without their history, values, or wholeness in mind?

Our cultural logic survived, but survival alone is not the destination. The next step is to turn cultural strength into durable systems.

World Cultures Remind Us That Humanity Has More Than One Lens

Looking beyond the United States shows that people have developed many ways to understand life’s values and apparent opposition. These traditions are not interchangeable, and none should be borrowed as appropriations or decoration. Each arose from a particular language, history, environment, and people. Their value is not that they all say the same thing. Together, they show that either/or thinking is not humanity’s only intellectual inheritance.

In many African philosophies, personhood is understood relationally. Ubuntu is often summarized as “I am because we are,” a phrase that suggests a human being becomes fully human through relationships with others. This does not erase individuality. It places individuality inside a network of obligation, belonging, memory, and care. The Akan image of Sankofa offers another lesson: return and retrieve what is valuable, then carry it forward. Sankofa refuses the false choice between living in the past and abandoning it. It asks us to practice selective inheritance—to preserve wisdom, correct error, and use memory in service of progress.

Filipino philosophy offers another relational lens. The concept of kapwa expresses shared personhood or a self understood in relation to others. Leonardo Mercado’s discussion of Filipino thought has been associated with the language of diunitality: distinction without absolute separation. Kapwa does not mean that every person is identical or that personal boundaries disappear. It challenges the fantasy that the self is completely self-made and independent of family, community, and shared humanity.

Chinese yin-yang thought portrays seemingly opposite forces as distinct yet interdependent within a changing whole. Buddhist teachings on interdependence emphasize that things arise through causes and conditions rather than existing in total isolation. Some Indigenous knowledge traditions understand human beings through reciprocal relationships with land, ancestors, future generations, and the more-than-human world. These traditions differ profoundly, but each can interrupt the assumption that separation is always the deepest truth and that we are all connected in some aspects.

According to Dr. Edwin J. Nichols, axiology studies values—especially what a culture values most and how those priorities shape behavior. In his framework, The Philosophical Aspects of Cultural Difference, he also examines epistemology (how we gain knowledge) and logic (how we reason).

Nichols broadly describes African value traditions as person-to-person, with relationships at the center. He describes European and Euro-American value traditions as person-to-object, with greater emphasis on objects and their acquisition. These different priorities can influence how people define success, build relationships, and make decisions. However, these are broad categories in his model, not fixed descriptions of everyone within a culture.

Western traditions also offer ways to understand complexity. Some explore opposing ideas, study how parts of a system affect one another, or examine the connections between people and their environment. Democratic debate can bring different perspectives into the same conversation. We should avoid dividing entire cultures into two boxes: one wise and connected, the other selfish and limited. Every culture includes different voices, values, and ways of thinking.

Still, binary—or either/or—structures appear throughout our lives. Computers use 0 and 1 to represent information. Switches often have two settings: on or off. Schools use pass/fail results and correct/incorrect answers. Religious teachings sometimes emphasize good and evil or heaven and hell, though they also describe human life in more complex terms. Employers decide whether to hire someone, and shoppers decide whether to buy something.

We also use either/or thinking when we label people as successful or unsuccessful, strong or weak, friends or enemies, good or bad. These labels can leave out much of the story. A person can succeed in one area while struggling in another. I can be a “Magic” Johnson fan and still appreciate Michael Jordan.  Someone can be strong and still feel vulnerable. Friends can disagree and remain friends.

A decision may have two outcomes, while the situation behind it has many layers. A school may record a pass/fail result, but that result does not capture everything a student understands. An employer may decide not to hire an applicant, but that decision does not define the person’s abilities or worth.

When we notice either/or thinking, we can ask: “Are there truly only two possibilities, or have we assumed there are?” This question helps us recognize when a clear distinction is useful and when we need to consider relationships, overlapping qualities, or other possibilities.

Understanding cultural values also requires listening. We can learn from one another without treating all traditions as identical or forgetting where ideas originated. In America, that includes recognizing the beliefs, knowledge, and experiences carried by people of the African diaspora—people with African ancestry whose communities have developed around the world.

From Cultural Resilience to Collective Power

For the Black community, broader thinking must lead to action. It can shape how we build wealth, educate children, resolve disagreements, choose leaders, care for elders, and create lasting organizations.

When either/or thinking combines with an extreme focus on individual success, progress can become isolated: one person gets ahead, one family builds wealth, or one business survives. These achievements matter. But individual success does not automatically give the wider community greater opportunity, protection, or influence. Diunital thinking asks how personal achievement and community progress can strengthen each other.

We can pursue ownership and generosity together. A profitable business can create jobs, train young people, and serve its community. We can compete and cooperate, too. Businesses can compete for customers while working together to purchase supplies, share knowledge, mentor new owners, and build partnerships.

We also need financial skills and an understanding of unfair systems. Learning to budget, save, and invest helps people manage their resources. Working together to challenge discrimination and unequal opportunities helps improve the conditions in which people make those choices. Both forms of action matter.

We should also be honest about the difference between surviving and building lasting power. Helping one another through emergencies is essential, but communities also need ownership and a voice in the decisions that affect them. Shared cultural pride can bring people together, but organizations need clear rules and fair ways to resolve disagreements.

Inspiring words must be supported by practical plans: budgets, clear responsibilities, measurable goals, and people prepared to lead when current leaders step aside. These foundations help an organization continue beyond one powerful personality or one generation.

The task is to use different ways of thinking where they help most. Either/or reasoning can be useful when a clear decision is necessary. Diunital thinking helps us examine how different needs, ideas, and responsibilities can work together. We need the judgment to know when to draw a boundary and when to explore a connection.

This work also requires generations to learn from one another. Elders carry historical memory, experience, and lessons learned through hardship. Young people bring knowledge of new technologies, changing conditions, and possibilities earlier generations may not have encountered.

We do not have to choose between old wisdom and new knowledge. We can bring them into conversation. The principle of Sankofa—looking back to retrieve what is valuable—can guide that exchange. Young people can draw on the past, while elders remain open to new ideas. Together, they can preserve what matters and build what comes next.

Freedom Requires Both Clarity and Imagination

Oppression often depends on narrow stories: there is not enough for everyone; another group’s gain must be our loss; disagreement proves disloyalty; respectability is the only path to dignity; anger and love cannot occupy the same movement. Wider thinking exposes these stories without pretending that every conflict is imaginary. Some interests genuinely collide. Some choices require a firm no. Some injustice demands that we take a side.

But taking a side is strongest when it follows understanding rather than replaces it. Critical thinking asks for evidence, names power, tests assumptions, and identifies consequences. Creativity expands the menu before judgment closes it. Diunital thinking keeps the mind open long enough for both processes to work. It asks whether a third possibility exists, whether the two apparent opposites operate at different levels, whether a hidden condition shapes both, or whether the question itself was designed to limit us.

This matters inside the Black community as much as outside it. We weaken ourselves when education becomes proof of superiority, wealth becomes proof of worth, a different strategy becomes evidence of betrayal, or generational disagreement becomes mutual contempt. Unity does not require uniformity. It requires a shared commitment strong enough to hold honest difference. A choir does not create harmony by forcing every voice onto the same note. It creates harmony by bringing different notes into disciplined relationship.

Unity is not sameness. It is difference organized around shared dignity, responsibility, and purpose.

A Practice for Everyday Liberation

Wider thinking becomes powerful through practice. When a headline, argument, or painful moment pushes you toward two boxes, pause. Ask: What two choices am I being offered? Is this situation truly binary? What evidence or context does each box leave out? Can two things be true in different respects or at different times? What additional choice, relationship, spectrum, or solution becomes visible when I widen the frame?

Then decide. Nuance is not paralysis. Both/and thinking does not mean delaying forever, excusing harm, or splitting every difference. It means refusing to surrender your judgment to a false choice. The mature mind can see complexity and still act. It can understand a person and enforce a boundary. It can study an institution and build an alternative. It can love a community enough to praise its beauty and confront what injures it.

For Black people, this practice is an act of intellectual self-determination. It lets us draw from African inheritances, African American creativity, and the wisdom of world cultures without surrendering our right to test, adapt, and create. We are not required to reject every Western tool, nor are we required to treat Western categories as the limit of thought. We can use the flashlight when we need a sharp beam and still remember that the beam is not the whole forest.

Our Future Does Not Fit Into Two Boxes

The Black community does not have to choose between memory and progress, excellence and compassion, self-reliance and interdependence, protest and institution-building, personal wealth and communal well-being. Our history has already shown that seemingly opposing strengths can coexist. We have grieved and created, resisted and rebuilt, protected identity and transformed the nation. Our future requires that same capacity, made conscious and strategic.

The goal is not to replace one rigid worldview with another. It is to develop a fuller intellectual toolbox. Let either/or logic bring precision where precision belongs. Let diunital thinking reveal relationships where separation hides the truth. Let critical thinking test what we believe. Let creativity generate possibilities. Let culture provide memory, and let disciplined action turn memory into institutions, ownership, healing, and opportunity.

For generations, we have proven we can survive inside systems not designed for our flourishing. The next chapter asks more of us: to create ways of thinking, relating, and building that make flourishing possible. That work begins when we refuse the cage of false choices and recognize the power already present in our complexity.

We are individuals and a people. We are heirs and innovators. We are wounded and healing. We are not one box or the other. We are a living, thinking, creating whole—and our most powerful future will be built from that truth.

Author’s Note

This essay grew out of heartbreaking conversations during the COVID-19 quarantine. On several Zoom calls with people across the country discussing the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, I witnessed some of my Black conservative friends refuse to engage with my Black liberal friends and vice versa. Those moments left me asking: How can we move forward together if we cannot talk to one another?

That question inspired this essay, which draws on my writings about African American cultural thought and Beyond Either/Or. It explores how we can honor our differences while finding common ground. The cultural traditions discussed here offer distinct perspectives with meaningful connections; they are not interchangeable philosophies or descriptions of everyone within a culture.