History Reveals Direction for Black Leadership of Today

For most of my lifetime, black leaders promoted a philosophy that relies heavily on two important credos. The first, racism as the source of what ails black folk, has catapulted certain leaders like Minister Louis Farrakhan, Reverend Jesse Jackson and Reverend Al Sharpton to the national stage. The second credo, that the guilt of those directly or indirectly responsible is a profitable enterprise, has subverted the true intent of the Civil Rights Movement in America.


In his recent publication, “White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Movement”, author Shelby Steele asserts that a combination of white guilt over racism and black opportunistic leadership came together to dramatically alter the original intent of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 60’s. It is worth mentioning that my study has led me to conclude that the Civil Rights Movement was not a struggle against racism as much as it was an effort to gain human recognition. Who can forget the signs held by the striking sanitation workers in Memphis 1968, just days before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.? Those signs said, “I Am a Man”, not a black man, but a man.


Today’s black leadership has drifted far from that proclamation by asserting blackness over humanity. While I am proud of my ethnicity, it does not deserve to be elevated over any other, even in light of past atrocities. The elevation of my humanity before my ethnicity removes the power of the racist in my life. I will not accept poor treatment because as a human, I require better.


It seems that past black leaders like Booker T. Washington understood this concept all too well. Washington, an ex-slave who rose to national prominence in the late nineteenth century, once remarked concerning the future of black people in America, “No greater injury can be done to any youth than to let him feel that because he belongs to this or that race he will be advanced in life regardless of his own merits or efforts.” This statement reveals Washington’s deep belief that the advancement of every human being should be by his or her own determination and effort.


Today’s black leadership seems content to mire the consciousness of America in the victim-guilt pathology. Leaders like Rev. Jackson and Rev. Sharpton make handsome livings by stoking the fire of racial intolerance, identifying the victims and sending a bill to the guilty. This policy of neglecting the glaring social problems that find their genesis within the black community must cease to be the rally cry of black uplift. We must shun leaders who wish to keep us in a state of perpetual victimhood, while they goad the assigned guilty into lining their pockets or assisting in the redistribution of wealth in America.


This doctrine of victimhood even infects those blacks who have worked hard and earned some degree of success in America by enticing them with the carrot of “you would be better off if not for racism”. Recently, I met a person of like ethnicity who appeared to be hardworking and gainfully employed. He remarked to me “the black man’s biggest problem is racism in America today”. When I challenged this assertion by saying that I thought the failure to take advantage of opportunity was a much greater malady, he proceeded to demand that he get what was his by right.


This thinking underscores the fundamental need for new direction in black leadership. Our history teaches that we can gain uplift without creating victims.