We must challenge the entire edifice
of corporate Black leadership-creation, which is a
function of finance and media. Yet that cannot
occur unless activists return to the basics: What
we believe, and What we demand. "Bright lines"
must be drawn, to sort out the panoply of actors
that are paraded before our eyes and ears. This is
an internal struggle and challenge for Black
America, since African American institutions have
also been infected and deformed by the corporate
media virus. They, too, seek authenticity from
sources other than their own.
Black Leadership Apes White
Media
There is an historical Black
consensus on social justice, peace, and human
advancement. It is shared by the vast majority of
African Americans, and is decidedly left-wing, by
American standards. (See BC,
"Where the Left Lives," October 6,
2005.) The University of Chicago’s
Professor Michael Dawson, the nation’s preeminent
Black demographer, describes most African
Americans as behaving politically much like "Swedish
Social Democrats." Yet Black
political gatherings and so-called "news" programs
insist on creating a "balance" of political forces
that does not exist in Black America - aping white
corporate media such as the New York Times.
For example, Armstrong Williams, the
(finally) discredited so-called political
commentator - actually, a subsidized shill for the
Hard White Right - was for years a fixture on the
syndicated TV show "America’s
Black Forum." Ostensibly, Williams
was placed there to "balance" the views of NAACP
Chairman Julian Bond and commentator Julianne
Malveaux - whose opinions generally matched those
of most of Black America. Armstrong Williams
represents a statistically negligible segment of
African American opinion - about 2 percent,
according to Professor Dawson. Yet, there was
Armstrong Williams, every week, giving the Black
and white public the impression that he spoke for
a significant section of African Americans.
Black political gatherings also
often create as much confusion as clarity, mixing
luminaries of various political stripes into the
same venue - usually based on "name" appeal that
is a function of finance and corporate media,
rather than their actual political work and its
relationship to preponderant Black aspirations.
Real activists are shunted to the side, because
they have no "Black faces in high places" value,
no media attraction. Thus, these gatherings serve
to reinforce the corporate media’s design of what
Black leadership should look like, and devalue
organizations and individuals that actually
struggle in the Black community, and whose views
conform to the vast majority of Blacks.
False Unity, with the Wrong
People
The deepest current in Black America
is the imperative to unity. In fact, African
Americans are overwhelmingly united on issues of
peace, social justice and mobility, and the
obligation of government to ensure that
inequalities are eliminated. There are no data
that indicate a sea change in Black public opinion
on these fundamental issues, despite the vast
changes in socio-economic stratification among
African Americans over the past four decades.
Actual unity is not the problem; African Americans
are politically the most unified group in the
nation, and possibly, in the entire African
diaspora. Our leadership structures are the
problem, because they react as much to outside
forces as to their own constituents’ needs and
desires. These forces are overwhelmingly
corporate, and they have used their money and
muscle to intrude on the internal dialogue of
Black America.
In the last decade or so, the
pressures of white corporate money have increased
exponentially, creating great fissures in Black
institutional structures - outside of Black
popular circles of discussion. A huge wedge has
been driven between the people and their assumed
leaders, many of whom see great value in
association with Blacks who are embedded in Wall
Street - which drives and finances gentrification
and the impoverishment of the great mass of
African Americans. In a larger sense, the
integration of modest numbers of Blacks into the
corporate class, where they pursue both their own
and their companies’ interests, has caused great
confusion among presumed Black leaders, who would
prefer to interact with the few Blacks in the
enemy camp rather than fight the enemy.
Let us be clear: you cannot unite
with the enemy and fight it at the same time -
even if the face that is presented is Black.
It is what BC
editor Bruce Dixon calls "the
Black-business leadership class"
that has caused this consternation and confusion,
as they seek to integrate their dreams with
corporate America’s schemes, which are
antithetical to the interests of Black America.
When they call for Black "unity," it resonates, as
it always has, among our people. But, unity with
whom? For what reason? Under what program, and for
whose purpose?
"Unity" of this kind defeats us,
totally, because it is not unity of the Black
polity, which has long been unified on fundamental
issues, but unity with surrogates for those who
hold none of our essential values, and will
continue to work against our interests.
Drawing the
Lines
None of this rot and mess can be
resolved unless "bright lines" of political
behavior, based on broadly held Black opinion, are
held aloft as benchmarks that any aspirant to
leadership must address. The CBC
Monitor has begun this task with
the Congressional Black Caucus, which has allowed
itself to be destroyed as "the conscience of the
Congress" by a futile quest for unity while
infested with corporate surrogates who will not
unite with the historical Black consensus. The
result has been that the Caucus cannot take a
position that the (distinct
minority) corporate-bought members oppose. The CBC
Monitor has created a score card that penalizes
members’ for their most egregious votes against
the interests of their people. However, the
Monitor will have to go further, and give guidance
and warning to the 43 members of the Caucus about
the allowable limits of their future behavior.
They will have to declare What we
believe, and What we demand from our
legislators.
BC introduced the
"bright line" concept of Black political
evaluation in our four-week
interrogation of then-Senatorial
candidate Barack Obama, back in June of 2003.
Obama had seemed to be having dalliances with the
rightist Democratic Leadership Council, so we
asked him point blank to respond to three "bright
line" questions to assure our readers that he had
not crossed those lines:
