Visionary BLACK LEADERSHIP

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VISIONARY – BLACK LEADERSHIP—-By Frederick A. Hurst—

Well, New Years has come and gone without me having written a word about the coming year which is unusual but deliberate because I’ve been contemplating a shift in emphasis that I really needed to think hard about. As I reflected on my past articles, I distinguished trends. Some were just general articles about things like “digging a ditch” and “getting through the bureaucracy” of the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles. And others were just plain biographical. But many more were conversations about race.

The race conversations started with conversations with Black folks about White folks and ended up with conversations with White folks about some of their complex relationships with Black folks. There wasn’t a sharp line between the two but I understood the difference and the distinct impact that each could have and I understood that both favored the Black point of view, which, I was very much aware, would enlighten some White folks and make some very uncomfortable, which was not a problem with me because it has always been my opinion that White ignorance and White comfort-level have been the biggest obstacles to resolving race problems in America.

But I’ve always felt a slight twinge of guilt because I knew that I was avoiding the most difficult conversation, which is an open conversation with Black folks about Black folks’ responsibilities to Black folks. It’s the one conversation that many Black folks don’t want to hold and certainly not in public.

And we have good reason to be leery of open dialogue. Too often White folks snatch any negative out of its human context and parade it as absolute proof of their own superiority and preconceived biases. But, White conceit notwithstanding, I’ve become convinced that the need for open Black-on-Black dialogue is too important for us to allow it to be held hostage to White bigotry. Besides, my experience has been that when you encounter certain Black leaders who operate covertly – under the table, sort of speak – who also encourage (and often compel) other Black folks to do the same, altogether too often they are doing so for selfish reasons that run counter to the best interest of those they claim to lead.

African-Americans have made some great gains at both national and local levels. And we at Point of View have highlighted many of them. And we will continue to do so. But the fact is, we’ve got some real problems too; leadership problems, unity problems, crime problems, absentee fathers problems, incarceration problems, drug problems, employment problems, education problems, skills problems and the problem of over-reliance on charity in all forms from our over-reliance on government charity to our over-reliance on nonprofits to the neglect of profit-making ventures that fuel effective economies – to name a few. And to add to these problems, in Western Massachusetts Black folks have a problem of increasing irrelevancy as we watch the steady erosion of institutions we once controlled and find ourselves more isolated than ever before as our relative numbers shrink and as gentrification looms over us like a dark cloud.

Often we shift the blame for our problems onto White America. And for legitimate reasons. Failed government policies that fueled the breakup of the Black family that were so well chronicled in the ‘60’s Moynihan report on the Black family that was so maligned accurately predicted the consequences that we are now living with. And misguided law enforcement policies that gave rise to the invidious prison industrial complex that has led to more Americans (substantially and disproportionately Black and Brown) being incarcerated than in any other country in the world haven’t helped. And rules that make felons who serve their time second class citizens with minimal job opportunities serve to exacerbate this harm.

And of course, much of what goes on in Black communities today can be traced back to the rampant racism and discrimination that impacted every aspect of Black life. Slavery, Jim Crow laws, the resulting “Great Migration” that ended up with Black folks deliberately packed into Northern ghettos, right up to the current low-key, often under-the-table, persistent discrimination that keeps an unacceptable number of African-Americans locked out of the economic mainstream of America which is made easier by continuing discrimination in housing patterns and employment and a far-too-long neglected educational system that serves teachers’ unions and their members far better than they serve our kids. But the fact is things have also changed in America for the better. Black folks can buy homes almost anywhere in America where there is a vacancy for a price. Employment opportunities for Black Americans have diversified and expanded dramatically. Problems in our educational systems are being attacked with a brand new vigor. Portrayals of Black Americans in movies and television have dramatically improved as have opportunities for Black actors, actresses and television commentators. And Black folks are more integrated into more parts of the American economy than ever before. Sure we have a long way to go. And White resistance is still an obstacle. And we should keep pressing that point. But, all that said, we can continue blaming the condition of our communities on White folks until the cows come home and it won’t change the vital fact that much that needs to be done, we must do for ourselves.

I’m always concerned that the down side of our placing blame for too many of our remaining problems on White folks is that it tends to push us toward overreliance on White paternalism, which – wish as we may – can’t bring fathers back into our families, can’t provide our infants with that portion of the early educational foundations that can only be provided in our homes and can’t reduce the incidents of our children having children they don’t know how to raise and too often, can’t afford and can’t stop our young men from killing one another. And White paternalism certainly has a well-demonstrated inability to rid our communities of crime and illegal drugs. White folks can help but they can’t make us start and successfully operate businesses within our own communities or make us save our money or distinguish between income and wealth and the value of accumulating the latter so we can put it to constructive use and pass it down to the next generation. And they can’t take care of our older folks the way we used to do or make us safeguard our own health. And above all, though some may try, White folks cannot develop our so badly-needed visionary leadership for us.

I must admit, I worry that, to a great extent, group obfuscation has taken hold of us and we’ve gone from hiding our deficiencies from White folks to, altogether too often, hiding them even from ourselves. It seems that our absence of openness in the name of self-preservation may have led us into a cataract-like blindness that has clouded our sense of individual and group responsibility for problems in our own communities that we should be solving for ourselves. White culpability for our condition notwithstanding, if we intend to take our rightful place among those who are benefiting from the American Dream we must reconsider our own role in solving our own problems, which is why I intend to shift the emphasis of my writing for a period to discussions with Black folks about Black folks…candid discussions.

And zeroing in on the problems of Black leadership seems like a good place to start. You may notice that I saved the above “visionary leadership” reference for last. I saved it for last because it is what I wanted to discuss first because no problem looms bigger in the Black community today than its deficit of visionary leadership.

Something got lost in Black leadership between the 60’s and the present that Black folks need to rediscover. I’m at a loss for words to explain it but the words “selflessness” and “sacrifice” come to mind. If anything characterized the behavior of leaders of the past it was the selfless manner in which they sacrificed for the good of others. And it was that selflessness and willingness to sacrifice for the good of others that inspired the Black masses to action. And we all made so much progress together under the leadership of the likes of Martin Luther King, John Lewis, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), Fannie Lou Hamer and Rosa Parks and locals like Benjamin Swan, Oscar Bright, and so many others who braved the wrath of White folks for the good of the future of Black folks. So as far as I am concerned, the first and most important questions we need to address as a people is “Where did that sense of selflessness and sacrifice go?” and “How do we get it back?” Because if we can’t answer those two questions Black folks in cities like Springfield will surely continue to fade in significance.

 

(In our coming March issue, read our discussion on how so many of our “Black leaders” in Springfield and most likely in many places like Springfield, morphed from being leaders to declaring themselves leaders and how a new leadership vanguard is emerging.) ■

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