Wanted: Leaders who got our backs

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.”
Frederick Douglass

They say politics makes strange bedfellows. Perhaps that explains why so many Black elected officials and candidates today are boasting about their endorsements or associations with staunch conservative groups and individuals who despise any form of Black progress.

At one point in his “Ballots or bullets” speech Malcolm X asked the rhetorical question: “How can he be his friend and your friend too!” speaking of Lyndon Johnson’s association with Sen. J. O. Eastland, a staunch segregationist. That question is more appropriate today than it was when it was spoken half a century ago.

Association says a lot. How can you be of benefit to the Black community while snuggled comfortably in the pocket of the Rabid Right? Would these groups even consider supporting a Black person who was doing good or working to bring justice and empowerment to their Black constituents? Of course not!

Many Black elected officials today are committed to “going along to get along” with those who vigorously oppose the progress of the Black community. The question is how well does that work for us? The answer is, it doesn’t.

The result is that we see Black communities across the nation in a flat-out retreat from progress on every level. The attack on education, mass incarceration for profit, the healthcare debacle, the outright obliteration of civil liberties, disproportionate distribution of resources, gentrification and the elimination of low-income housing, our children dying in unnecessary wars; all of these things are happening with the cooperation or acquiescence of countless Black elected officials. It’s not just the schemes of white racists, but those that we have entrusted to work and fight for our interests but are committed to appeasing our opponents to increase their own electability.

Do we really need more Black faces who simply support or bow to a racist agenda? Most Black state legislators are on record supporting Gov. Jindal’s harmful, unfair budgets and policies with their votes. Then they publicly come out pretending to oppose the closing of HBCUs and other measures that they helped make possible when we weren’t looking. Most did not have the integrity or courage to even cast a protest vote or speak out on behalf of those who would be impacted. Then you have the Black senators and representatives who vigorously opposed the creation of new Black-majority districts because they felt it would harm their own individual interests.

Is this what the future of Black leadership should look like?

Heavens no.

We really need to go back to the leadership style of the 50s, 60s and 70s. Those Black officials used their votes and their voices to fight for the interests of the community. They were not perfect, but they did not capitulate and fold at the merest wind of opposition as the officials of today do. They had the intestinal fortitude to withstand media attacks and often threats of personal harm. They also had a more active and involved Black community to report back to than we do today.

Perhaps the current crop of officials should read a little Black political history this month. Perhaps they will learn that the political Stepin’ Fetchit act has never gained us anything as a group. You can’t bow enough, scrape enough, grin enough, or play doormat enough to gain progress for our communities. Past and current history both bare this out.

Frederick Douglass may have said it best: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

This article was originally published in the February 13, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper