At Negrophile, George linked to an op-ed in The Seattle Times, 'Be light to ourselves': Black America must look inward for solutions by Aaron Counts and Larry Evans which may influence me in the near future. I think the article worthy of a couple of posts
Over the course of the recent presidential campaign, we saw how each candidate tried to ingratiate himself with various voting groups. And while NASCAR dads and Latinos were a big focus this year, we continue to witness each major election year the efforts that the parties make to court the black vote.
It's less a wooing than a predictable arrangement, as office-seekers vie for the endorsement of one African-American organization or another by snuggling up to the heads of these groups.
A system of artificial leadership is thus perpetuated at the expense of the collective of black Americans, many of whom occupy the bottom rungs of America's socioeconomic ladder.
Black activist have been making this complaint for decades. They were disregarded for several reasons, primary of which is the civil rights leadership did come from the mainstream of the Black communities and do have broad acceptance. Those who noted the media's focus on specific folks tended to note it while complaining about the lack of attention they were getting.
Yet that leadership is growing ever more distant from those who most need their attention. And given the nature of humans it was inevitable. First of all there's the truth first mentioned by Frederick Nietzsche, that any organization formed for any purpose eventually stops serving that purpose and becomes a vehicle to power. Both our major political parties have made that transition and several minor parties exist because they couldn't get into one or the other vehicle. The other major reason, rooted in the nature of power relationships not race but as manifested in race relations, is well expressed in 1967 by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in a New York Times Magazine article titled Black Power Defined:
We have many assets to facilitate organization. Negroes are almost instinctively cohesive. We band together readily, and against white hostility we have an intense and wholesome loyalty to each other. We are acutely conscious of the need, and sharply sensitive to the importance, of defending our own. Solidarity is a reality in Negro life, as it always has been among the oppressed.On the other hand, Negroes are capable of becoming competitive, carping and, in an expression of self-hate, suspicious and intolerant of each other. A glaring weakness in Negro life is lack of sufficient mutual confidence and trust.
Negro leaders suffer from this interplay of solidarity and divisiveness, being either exalted excessively or grossly abused. Some of these leaders suffer from an aloofness and absence of faith in their people. The white establishment is skilled in flattering and cultivating emerging leaders. It presses its own image on them and finally, from imitation of manners, dress and style of living, a deeper strain of corruption develops. This kind of Negro leader acquires the white man's contempt for the ordinary Negro. He is often more at home with the middle-class white than he is among his own people. His language changes, his location changes, his income changes, and ultimately he changes from the representative of the Negro to the white man into the white man's representative to the Negro. The tragedy is that too often he does not recognize what has happened to him.
I quote this article a lot. And I don't quote this particular section to demonize those that have made the transition because as I said it's a human thing. You don't blame people for that. But you can do better than the reflexive reaction if you're conscious of the problem and possibility, which (again for human reasons) most are not.
So when I read
Underlying these stories about black leaders is the idea the black Americans are a people who need to be led, perpetuating the idea that we are less capable of thinking and acting for ourselves than members of other ethnic or racial groups, and that we can be placated simply by corporate heads and politicians cozying up to select individuals.
Messrs. Counts and Evans are wrong. As we speak the Religious Right is getting the same symbolic treatment. What is a speech at Bob Jones University but a placation by cozying up to select individuals? What is legislative pork but a placation by cozying up to select individuals?
We need not just to acknowledge issues exist, but to correctly identify their nature.
Let me say a little about leaders and leadership in general before getting back to that Seattle Times op-ed.
We are social animals, and thus hierarchical. Over the years I've heard you humans discussing possible ways of organizing socially as though you had no body…as though your physical nature had no constraining power over your plans.
We will have leaders.
A while back (never mind how long ago; according to Perseus Development I'm older than over 98% of bloggers and that's all you need to know) I was asked just what I thought a leader was anyway. I said they come in three models: sparks, channels and flames. Sparks ignite folks into action. Channels, which I would call wayfinders now, are the first ones, the ones that carve a path to a new destination. Flames shine a new light on things, bringing new knowledge and hence new possibilities.
None of which deals with the central fact that a leader is just someone who gets followed. It was more an efforts to help decide what sort of thing your ought follow.
Meanwhile to the mainstream, "leader," or more specifically "Black leader" means "gatekeeper." And we will have those kinds of "leaders" too. More accurately the mainstream will have those kinds of "leaders," because they exist in the mainstream's social hierarchy (Rev. Jackson has the additional benefit of a position in ours). Messrs. Counts and Evans were very correct in this:
In conversations with black family members or friends, you will rarely hear anyone speak of our "leaders." It is usually the media that bestow that title
Providing more evidence of my incipient decrepitude, I remember discussions I had with white folks during the run up to the Million Man March. I was told we can't support the march because all it would do is "validate Farrakhan as your leader."
I told him it would only validate something in white folks' minds. We all knew Farrakhan and those that would follow him already did. We know the good stuff he says and we know the nonsense, but the march was a symbol to most and I approved of what it symbolized. Has nothing to do with the immediate topic at hand, I just didn't want to leave you hanging.
Next installment will be about the healing Messrs. Counts and Evans say is necessary.
Conspicuously absent from this agenda is a program of healing. Based on studies from the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, psychologist Omar G. Reid, of Pyramid Builders Associates in Massachusetts, has asserted that current conditions of many black Americans are linked to the long-term effects of slavery — a newly identified form of post-traumatic stress disorder.
These effects do not stem only from the direct trauma associated with being enslaved, but also from the lack of a centuries-old connection with a homeland; something that can be taken for granted — unless one is without it. A cultural connection provides grounding, strength and self-definition that can offset the damage done by external oppression.
Well.
We see here that progressives aren't the only ones trying to weave a new narrative. You can always tell a Black Conservative by their insistence we replace efforts to get some justice in life with "personal responsibility" instead of adding to the efforts to get justice…
Pointing out this uniquely black American phenomenon is not to excuse current behaviors due to a difficult past, because if a true leader were to emerge, she or he would do well to begin anew under the theme of personal responsibility. Individual responsibility becomes a collective strength, as much a part of the group dynamic as language, religion, values and other customs. Each person defining his or her own healing process is the first step in assuming that responsibility, like diagnosing an ill in order to find its appropriate treatment.
…and an effort to displace "so called leaders" with "true leaders" of their own philosophical extraction.
And they haven't actually done a bad job of weaving. It's clunky here and there but that's because they're jamming incompatible concepts together but to do it as well as they have takes quite a bit of skill.
Anyway. Healing.
A good idea, A necessary thing. If we're applying the right cures.
I've written many times on this, using Abraham Maslow's analyses as a framework. I would like to know what illnesses Messrs. Counts and Evans see, and what cures they envision. Because if I break your arm and bind it to you broken, the pain will stop and you'll be able to function with a right angle in the middle of your forearm. I wouldn't call that "healing," though.