So when a poll came out saying Condoleezza Rice and Jesse Jackson were our most revered Black leaders, a Black friend said, ‘We just don’t have anybody leading us.’ Depending on your ethnicity, age, and where your ‘head is,’ right now you’re either going ‘huh?,’ giving a mild shake of your head, screaming ‘NO … S/HE … DID … NOT!’, or raising your ‘right hand to God’ to slap the sweet Jesus.”
The last two are correct responses.
No other racial ethnicity has a leader, let alone leaders. They have individuals who just represent particular groups or organizations.
So why does the Black community?
Why do we tolerate Ebony Magazine’s ’100 Most Influential Leaders in the Black Community’ when over 90% of the list contains the same old Washington politicians, mayors of predominantly Black cities, and long-standing heads of Black organizations, groups, and religious denominations who generally do two things – 1) tell us ‘our community is still ‘eff’ed’ up,’ ‘so and so is to blame,’ and ‘we need so and so to give us blank to solve the problem.’ And 2) not give a detail plan with timetable of how the politician, organization, group, or religious denomination will individually or in conjunction with another use the job they were hired or mission statement they undertook to do to solve even a small aspect of why we’re still ‘eff’ed’ up.
Why are we complicit with mainstream and our own Black media to allow ‘ego driven power hungry photo grubbing’ individuals to co-op our dignity?
Why do we not hold elected representatives accountable to the communities that elect them, and when they commit criminal acts send them on their way?
Why do we tolerate this?
Because America is an institutional racist society built on our backs that, with its byproduct of white privilege, to this day, put Black folks behind before we are born, the privilege do not get a pass.
Because our behavior comes from anger, so deep in our psyches after centuries of slavery and racial psychological degradation and abuse, we don’t even realize it’s there.
Because even when we get how racism mentally victimizes us, and how some leaders in our community prostitute us with their own brand of ‘Black privilege,’ we know victimhood. And like the ho who stays with her pimp who beats her like a dog, it’s not about love, it’s about feeling safe. She, and we, know what happens if she leaves. On her own she could be attacked. Fall prey to worse than what she’s got now. Or worse, things might get so bad she’d have to crawl back … because there would be no other place to go.
Because all the above has been power in the hands of puffed-up leaders and the privilege.
Why do we tolerate it?
We don’t.
Some left home a long time ago, and are doing just fine.
Welcome to a whole new world.
