“Didn’t know you were famous,” the rapper Juliani, an old friend and musical collaborator, texted me from his studio in Nairobi.

I didn’t have a clue what he was referring to, but then he forwarded me the link to a tweet by Elon Musk that included a screenshot of a 2019 Al Jazeera column of mine, “ Abolishing whiteness has never been more urgent .” The original post was circulating on Twitter/X, courtesy of a white nationalist poster who obviously wasn’t too happy with the headline. Neither was Elon, who retweeted it with the comment, “It’s not okay to say this about any group!”

Although the post was only a few hours old, it already had five million views. Over the next few days, it would swell to close to 20 million.

“Elon, you’re six years late to the party, dude!” I texted Julian

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