The State of Black America vs. Tavis Smiley vs. Rev. Al Sharpton

Black America was shaken up a couple of days back when PBS journalist Tavis Smiley cast a searing commentary on the popular, nationally-syndicated Tom Joyner Morning Show, accusing several self-appointed Black leaders of singing strange tunes in the mainstream press following their early February White House meeting with the first Black president. "Some of us, who call ourselves Black leaders are making the wrong choice," Smiley said. "It's time for a course correction; not now, but right now--because leadership without followership is a sinking ship."

In but a little over a year, Smiley lamented, these Black leaders had gone from assuring the world their tenure was far from over (that Black America still needed public advocates to lift its voices loud), to suggesting President Obama "doesn't need a Black agenda ... He's not the president of Black America, he's the president of all America, and he need not focus specifically on the unique challenges Black America is facing."

Of importance to Smiley were quotes captured by the New York Times and other popular presses in which certain affiliates of the Black leadership bourgeoisie ran from Race faster than Tiger Woods at Spelman. "In these times, it didn't make sense to talk about race-based initiatives," current NAACP President Ben Jealous mouthed off. "Mr. Jealous and Mr. Sharpton said much of the conversation involved how to get Republican leaders to support Mr. Obama's jobs proposals," the New York Times also noted.

In a separate news report, the Rev. Al Sharpton praised Obama's Race-neutral policies-- "the president is smart not to ballyhoo 'a black agenda'." Acclaimed Harvard professor Charles Ogletree, whose work in the past (and I'm sure present) certainly held high the Civil Rights banner, expressed puzzlement at "the idea that a president who happens to be black has to focus on black issues." Civil Rights veteran Dorothy Height concurred: "I am not one to think that he should do more for his people than for other people. I want him to be free to be himself."

In the interest of full disclosure, I like Tavis Smiley. I hardly miss his PBS nightly program. I find his interviews of a high caliber of soothing dialecticism and dialogue mainstream news punditry could never aspire to even with all the help world-class masseuses can offer. And I also think many a-times Tavis has taken unpopular stances and stood his ground even when the 40 million Black people in America wanted his head smashed open over a wooden slab. But Tavis is not without fault--as most of his critics gleefully point out. His corporate sponsorships, for one, should trouble anyone. And I notice some of the same snowball self-promotion and obsequious opportunism from him that torments men like Dr. Boyce Watkins (one of his toughest critics).

In this instance, while I agree with his radio remarks, and in fact wonder why he stopped so short, the March 20^th "We Count!" bonanza he's organizing obviously had much--if not all--to do with the excoriating commentary leveled at Sharpton, Morial, Ogletree, and Jealous, etc. And this is Tavis' shtick--for good and bad. But in times of uncertainty and ambivalence, count Tavis out as one whose lips would swing both sides.

Black America isn't comfortable with men and women like that. Most Black people, living under the shadow of White supremacy, engage in a searing self-sensorship and self-monitoring that confirms Carter G. Woodson's timeless theory:

If you can control a man's thinking, you don't have to worry about his actions. ... If you can make a man believe that he is inferior, you don't have to compel him to seek an inferior status, he will do so without being told; and if you can make a man believe that he is justly an outcast, you don't have to order him to the back door: he will go to the back door on his own; and if there is no back door, the very nature of the man will demand that you build one.

The Obama phenomenon is plenty proof. Most Black people feel deep incense from the neglect of all Race-specific, Class-specific, poverty-specific, bottom-up programs once alluded to by the guy 96% of the Black electorate threw support behind enthusiastically, and shoveled themselves through ice-cold, snowy weather on January 20, 2009, to see sworn in. The economic recession that rocked the nation had long been a depression for the "darker brother (and sister)," they dare not deny. And Barack Obama's refusal to address these frightening conditions squarely--instead clinging to farcical fantasies that "a rising tide lifts all boats"--just brings their level of anger one inch closer to tipping point. 

But most Black people wouldn't even entertain thoughts of civil disobedience, marches, protests, or anything of the sort for a second because of two specific, though thoughtless, reasons: 1) they hate to grant the Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs of the lunatic Right any additional ammo in blasting away at the President for just about anything (like crossing his feet on the table--something most presidents before him had done without even a murmur of outrage); 2) they've convinced themselves any popular backlash from the Black community against the first Black president would seal the fate of all Black aspirants for at least another century--that White people (especially the liberals) would be let off the hook and feel no more guilt-infused pressure to push another Black person in there as a sort of saltwater reparation.  

As you can tell, both excuses smack of civic and political illiteracy--if not plain eccentricity. But that has hardly stopped Black people from summoning the wrath and rage of heaven upon anyone--like Smiley in early 2008; like Dyson in mid 2009; like West and Malveaux in mid 2008--who even dares question the unquestioned loyalty Obama has enjoyed from the Black community without one committed program toward social and economic uplift, and even when he invoked Ronald Reagan (at least twice!) as a political inspiration, and even when he singled out Black fathers on Father's Day for calculated chastisement on national stage.

Black people have kept mute as Obama calls for spending freezes--code word for "fiscal responsibility"--on domestic policies that slice open the safety nets with which many communities of color have kept their heads above muddy waters, having fallen off the sinking ship Smiley talked about. Not one note has escaped the lips of most of their leaders as the Black president demands billions more to afflict Brown people in middle eastern countries. And when he whacked the whole of Africa for making an art-form of corruption and failing to imitate the political perfection of the West, it was such joy, many Black folks announced, to watch a Black president spare those illiterate savages no mercy.

I rest my case.