The Short Story on “The Black Community” is that it is spiritually, morally and mentally deceased, as well as physically inactive. I buried it a few weeks back for lack of righteous standing in America for going on 50 years now.
If we had a “black community” any more, it behooves us as Black Americans to ask the question: “Who will be our spokesperson?” Better yet, where are our True Leaders?
Life always brings about kings and kingmakers, because most people are lost without an authority to turn to when it’s time to make decisions. We are starved and thirsted for Leadership, and for that reason alone, the “we don’t need no Black leaders” school of thought is out of the question.
For the answer, we must look to the Black Preachers, Teachers, Politicians, Doctors, Scientists, Journalists, and Writers.
Some would ask what about the Lawyers, Celebrities and Sports stars, but for the Black Community, most lawyers are either token CEOs for some corporation that says it is diverse when it’s really not, or ‘incognegro’ when it comes to social services and participation in the Black community.
They typically stand about in their particular ‘lawyer circles,’ with very few exceptions, where they are controlled by white lawyers who welcome them into the “club” with racial stipulations on their membership. Those feeder veins into the legal community do not typically come back to us in the form of good returns on Civil Rights.
Celebrities and Sports stars have done nearly all of the public speaking in the media circus that is Black America. Yet they have said nothing that we really need to hear or take to heart. They most assuredly have their insider cliques and circles, but as spokespersons for the nearly-nil “black community,” nothing comes to mind in celeb world. It all boils down to “Which celebrity is Black America ogling nowadays who can easily lead us around by the nose just because they are rich and famous?” At some point, glitter and glam will take the place of needful substance.
Where are the Community Organizations that used to speak for the Black Community?
Organizations like The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Urban League (NUL), or even the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)? Nobody that we ask seems to know the definitive answer on that.
The three main areas to consider when trying to figure out “who speaks for the Black community?” are in Education, Healthcare, and Nation-building. “We” are badly in need of refurbishing and focus and no one currently holds the spotlight as a Black Leader, let alone a Community Spokesperson, or ‘Council of Elders’.
However, if a 30-Year Plan were put into place in our own Constitutional Convention, the search would be on for a Unique Community Spokesperson who knows how to leverage the past in order to build the future.
The Audacity
Here, in no particular order, are the Top 10 Qualities and Search Criteria for a Black Spokesperson:
1 Someone with a track record of selfless and “community-green” work in the Black Community.
2 Someone who believes that the education of children, and the re-education of the adults, is a top priority in the Black Community.
3 Someone who understands and acts upon the fact that diversity is a fact even inside the Black Community, particularly with those who are of many various religious and spiritual beliefs and attitudes.
4 Someone who knows that Black America should redirect its priorities and pay its own bills with its own earned income, as well as become the types of business owners who can hire Black people and not have to depend on white America when looking for work. We exist in a world of multitudes of “flea-marketed” hand-held businesses that are too individualistic and disjointed–“all over the place” and not cohesive or inclusive of the entirety of the Black Community.
5 Someone who understands our precarious position when it comes to American jurisprudence and the law, and who will work tirelessly to have the U.S. Constitution revised and rewritten to include Black and African-Americans as full citizens and not 3/5ths of a citizen each.
6 Someone who understands that Black history is not to be dispensed with or overlooked or taken for granted, but taken into consideration for all its glory and as something that teaches us the lessons, and the errors of the past, that are useful for tomorrow’s Black Community. Someone who knows that those who say Black Liberation Theology is ‘hate speech‘ are those who are overtly angry that they have lost their prior standing in America as racially superior, and therefore, have also lost their control over Black people.
7 Someone who understands our political position when it comes to health disparities and the time-and-financial investment that Black America has already made into this nation’s socio-economic standings.
8 Someone who “gets” welfare as a subsidy for those who need it, and not something to use as a beat-up stick. Someone who will not put down Pookie & Shanaynay in preference for Philip & Sharon when seeking out The Talented 90th. Someone who knows how to give the Voiceless a voice that shakes off the ties of class-mongering behavior in Black America, and who understands that Mr. & Mrs. Such-a-Much are not to be esteemed above all and everyone else. Titles and degrees have always been a sticking point in Black America and we will never move forward by using something against one another that white America only used to keep us apart.
9 Someone who understands our spiritual history when it comes to the Bible and science; and who is able to delicately balance both sides of the equation as neither atheist nor creationist, but as a team of humanity-driven realists.
10 Someone who knows how to rely on the Community “expert panel” (the Council of Elders) who carry the wisdom, experience and knowledge to help move Black America in forward motion. They rely on the experts, not to simply express their position, but to use their place in the Bigger Picture of the entire whole.
As a matter of information, back in the day, most “Black Leadership” came out of the Black church.
Our community clergy taught and preached Black Liberation Theology in the pulpits, and sang “We Shall Overcome” instead of “We Shall Be Outdone.” They understood true freedom and voting rights as worth dying for.
It’s hard to imagine a person like a Serita Ann Jakes as Coretta Scott King, or a Taffy Dollar as Myrlie Evers, or a Victoria Osteen as Viola Liuzzo, or even a Jacqueline Brown Jackson doing what Betty Shabazz did for the Black Community–making those sacrifices and paving those inroads; and definitely not a Sandi Jackson character as Rosa Parks or even Winnie Mandela.
Their corresponding husbands would not have had the fortitude, strength of mind, or the conviction of heart to do what the men who built the now-deceased Black Community once did. That is painfully obvious in the no-shows on the front lines of a Black Community that still has much more work to be done, sans the marches and knee-bending protests of the 1960s that were so very needed at the time. And most definitely without the “prosperity gospel” of assimilation behavior that does not take into account the falterings of the prior generation.
It is incumbent upon us to look toward hearth and home and our own kith and kin whilst looking for Black Leaders, or for someone to speak out for the Black Community. We killed it, we are the only ones who can give it life again.
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