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OP-ED
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The New Negativism of “Black Leadership”
by Ron Walters
Some Black leaders are now running from being called “Black leaders.” Why? One of the results of the defeat of Black incumbent members of the House of Representatives, Earl Hilliard of Alabama and Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, is the emergence of the view that Blacks are rejecting the “old” confrontational Black leaders for “new” moderate ones.
This myth is being spun by people such as Cynthia Tucker, a conservative Black woman who heads the editorial section of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution newspaper, but it has gone far beyond that. During the recent Congressional Black Caucus annual legislative weekend, Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee sponsored a panel called “The Emerging Black Leadership.” Then, recently National Public Radio picked it up and I participated in an hour-long show asking the question, “Is there a new Black leadership?”
To go back to the McKinney election, the myth that a major reason she lost was that Black rejected her is being challenged by information coming out of her district. A new analysis of voting in the precincts reveals that she actually won the Democratic vote in her district. But because Republicans can vote in the Democratic primary, her opponent, Denise Majette, received nearly 50,000 votes from the largely White, Republican voting area of North Dekalb County. So, it was the combination of big money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that made Majette’s campaign viable, and a massive crossover vote from White Republicans that put her over.
Congressman Harold Ford’s panel during CBC weekend featured Artur Davis, who defeated Earl Hilliard in Alabama; Kendrick Meek, a Florida state legislator who who will succeed his mother, Carrie Meek, when she retires from Congress; Correy Booker, a Newark, N.J., city councilman who ran against Mayor Sharp James; Karen Carter, member of the Louisiana State Legislature; and Michael Hooks, head of the Memphis School Board. This young group was supposed to discuss what it meant to “move beyond” the civil rights legacy, but they ended up affirming it. Nevertheless, it was clear that Davis will be loyal to Israel when he comes to Congress and that Correy Booker and Harold Ford Jr. have few objections to school vouchers. Otherwise, the group sounded like their older colleagues.
There has been a consistent attempt by the establishment to create a Black leadership that would be absent on major public policy issues, that would be non-threatening on the racist treatment of Blacks and that would not march and raise hell in the “old” civil rights style to challenge the system. In order to accomplish this, a new negativism has been created by the media that equates “Black leadership” with narrow interests, puffery, corruption, extreme views and unacceptable tactics.
The tragedy is that too many Blacks have bought into this. Rather than honoring the civil rights tradition and understanding its relevance to today as a tool to continue forging progress, some increasingly regard it as a burden, something “old,” as troubling to their comfortable adjustment to the cultural and political norms of the majority group.
The task of Black leadership is to provide the vision, resources, tactics and strategies that facilitate the achievement of the objectives of Black people. These objectives have been described variously as “freedom,” “integration,” “equality,” “liberation,” or defined in the terms of specific public policies. It is a role that often requires disturbing the peace. And we constantly carry on an internal dialogue about the fitness of various leaders and the qualities they bring to the table to fulfill this mission.
In any case, while the task of selecting and evaluating our leadership should be our function, there is the constant pressure from outsiders to select our leaders and to give them a mission that is often detrimental to our interests. We should, as we have always done, resist the current attempt to foster a weak-kneed leadership on our people, that is not only divorced from our legacy, but which regards it as a burden and even a negative. To do this we must maintain the dignity of “Black leadership” and its mission.
Ron Walters is the Distinguished Leadership Scholar, director of the African American Leadership Institute and professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland. His latest book is African American Leadership.
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