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The authors are Glen Ford and Peter Gamble, Co-Publishers of The
Black Commentator.
The Black Commentator has gone on hiatus for August, as we did last
year, so that we can accomplish some tasks that the usual weekly toil
prevents. It has been a good year for the publication, our third. It
has been a bad year, politically, for Black people and, therefore,
for progressive prospects in the United States. Most dramatically,
the mid-Nineties corporate decision to throw dollars at rightwing Black
Democrats, in an effort to create an alternative “New Black Leadership,” has
been bearing fruit. Confusion abounds – as would be expected when a
community that has been shunned and ignored for centuries is suddenly
wooed and regaled by the corporate Right.
Inexorably, the rich solidify their rule. In the Democratic Party,
they ejected traditional Black organizations from meaningful participation
in the 2004 presidential and congressional elections, in favor of “527” organizations
run by white people and funded by super-rich Democrats. The Black Commentator
documented this “expression
of…utter contempt for mainstream African American organizations” in
our October 14, 2004 Cover Story.
Unions also defunded their minority constituency organizations, in
the 2004 campaign. Is there any mystery as to why the Republicans won/stole
the election? Racism has always crippled progressive movements in the
U.S., but 2004 was a watershed. It seemed that rich white folks had
convinced themselves that Blacks could be dismissed out of hand. If
this policy is allowed to continue, there will be a total collapse
of resistance to the crazed, race-based Republican onslaught. Corporatism
is rampant in the Democratic Party – and even in the unions, which
jettisoned their most loyal and active sectors in 2004, in favor of
rich whites who thought they knew best. And lost.
Eleven percent of the Black electorate voted for George Bush – less
than the Black vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980, but two percent more
than Bush got in 2000. The Black Commentator did the math, and found
that the real shift in Black votes was about one quarter million, nationwide – a
very expensive fraction, given the tens of millions of dollars in bribes
doled out to Black preachers through Faith-Based Initiative programs.
Our conclusion, on November 4, was that Blacks and progressives should “Concede
Nothing to Bush: Black Consensus Remains Intact.”
Clearly, the Black masses know what’s up, and vote accordingly. Many
do not vote, because of terminal disillusion with the increasingly
corporate Democratic Party. But Black Republicanism hardly exists.
We ain’t stupid. However, Black “leadership” has been seriously infected
with corporate cash, or the expectation of access to the vaults. The
Black Commentator shouted a warning , forecasting that treachery was
in the wind. The Congressional Black Caucus, which had for more than
three decades acted in unison on behalf of their constituents’ progressive
yearnings, had been undermined by the Democratic Leadership Council
(DLC).
The DLC was created by white southern Democrats (most notably, Bill
Clinton and Al Gore) to prevent the “blackening” of the Democratic
Party in the South, and to preserve white leadership. These white Democrats
were particularly disturbed by Rev. Jesse Jackson’s successes in the
1984 and 1988 primaries in the South. They were determined to stem
the flow of Black power in the party organization, and called on corporate
America to come to their aid. The response from the boardrooms was
enthusiastic – and lucrative. However, the DLC organizers knew that
they had to corrupt key Black politicians if they were to have any
credibility among the base of Democratic voters in the South and urban
centers: Blacks. Money would do the trick.
By 2004, the Congressional Black Caucus was infested with DLC members,
as we reported on December 2.
”But don’t expect the Congressional Black Caucus
(CBC) to move as a body in the right direction. To paraphrase Pogo,
the old cartoon strip: ‘We have seen the enemy – and some of them
are us.’ One-fifth of the CBC are members of
the DLC.”
Our colleague Maya Rockeymoore, who at the time was Vice-President
of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, led the way in the
resistance to George Bush’s attack against Social Security, which
included a highly organized theater of operations to subvert Black
America. Dr. Rockeymoore flipped the script on the fool, with devastating
effect, in her February 10, 2005 expose of the administration’s lies
and false assumptions.
”… his Administration’s attempts to gloss over
the existence of minority health disparities, inattention to policies
that expand affordable, quality health care to all Americans, and
efforts to slash funding for Medicaid – a health care program disproportionately
serving African Americans – have contributed to the negative health
indicators driving the black/white gap in life expectancy and will,
ultimately, contribute to the continued black/white gap in the number
of Social Security retirement beneficiaries.”
Bush, however, had a Black ally in the form of Harold Ford, Jr.,
the Black congressman from Memphis, Tennessee. Ford, a DLC member,
had spent two years meeting with rightwing white organizations to
give lip-service to privatization of Social Security. He was their
Great Black Hope.
The Black Commentator is most concerned with the internal politics
of Black America. Unfortunately, much of our politics are not internal,
but dictated by external, corporate forces. Harold Ford is one of
the worst examples. Representing one of the poorest districts in
the nation, he votes with the rich at an appalling rate. Ford is
the point man in the rightwing intervention in Black national politics,
as we explain in our March 17, 2005, article, “Why We Can’t Trust
Harold Ford Jr.” Ford showed his true colors – a Republican in everything
but name – when he said:
”…there are some things some Democrats believe that
I don't. I don't think government is an insurance program"
But the rot has spread far beyond Memphis. Georgia
Black congressman David Scott is a total sellout – in our words, “The
Worst Black Congressperson.” Elected in 2002, Scott is beloved
by the most determined enemies of Black people – and for his crimes,
is able to raise a quarter million in corporate dollars at a single
event. We detailed his transgressions on March 31, 2005:
”Scott leads the pack, having managed to vote with Republicans
more than any other member of the Congressional Black Caucus….”
It was becoming apparent that the avalanche of corporate money was
rapidly eroding Black leadership. The people were not at fault, but
their elected leadership were being corrupted. In April of this year,
the Congressional Black Caucus saw its most shameful period in history – unthinkable
only a decade before – when 15 members voted with Republicans on
one or more of three “bright line” issues: bankruptcy, the estate
tax, and energy subsidies to multinational corporations. The Black
Commentator listed their names, in our April 28, 2005 Cover Story, “How
to Fix the Fractured Black Caucus.” which displays a chart of the
CBC members that voted with Republicans on bankruptcy, the estate
tax, and energy.
Note that a number of these Black congresspersons are
also members of the Progressive Congressional Caucus – and voting
with Republicans! There is no question that we have been betrayed,
and that the Black conversation must be started all over again, so
that leadership can be made to get in synch with the people. Or get
the hell out, and go to work for a multinational corporation.
We at The Black Commentator believe that Black labor leadership
is the most fit to stand against racist, corporate rule – the scourge
that threatens all of humanity. The “aspiring” Black classes that
seized control of our movement in the late Sixties have served no
one but themselves. Working people – and people who want to work,
but are prevented from doing so – are the folks who will uplift our
people. We have been bequeathed a leadership that cannot even speak
to the youth, guaranteeing that there will be no “movement” – since
all mass movements are based on youthful action.
We are frozen by a corrupted class.
We need a full reevaluation of our political conduct since 1972,
when the Gary, Indiana National Black Political Convention occurred.
We have been misled, and now we are under massive attack, with skillfully
effective infiltration by corporate forces that engage corporate
media to pick and choose our leaders.
We are in trouble. More than a third of the Congressional Black
Caucus cannot be counted on to vote like civilized men and women.
They have been subverted by corporate dollars. We must create a countervailing
force: a Black Progressive PAC that will finance campaigns by people
who speak our people’s language, and vote accordingly.
But first, we must be clear on what we are talking about. For three
decades and more, we have allowed the hustler, “aspiring” classes
to speak for us. That must end. Bill Lucy, President since 1972 of
the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU),
has called for a national conference – “Going Back to Gary,” as it
was announced at the CBTU’s national convention in Phoenix. This
gathering will occur in March.
The conference must take fan open-eyed, objective look at the general
status of Black people since the last gathering, in 1972. Thirty-three
years ago, the mood was celebratory. Black mayors were getting elected
all over the place. We were “moving on up.” But Black people got
hijacked by a political class that was focused on only their own
mobility – and called each and every million they put in their pockets “Black
progress.” Meanwhile, the masses of us were subjected to vicious
police and prosecutorial assault, that demolished our opportunities
to build families and community. The white backlash.
There has been no effective response from the “aspiring classes” to
the massive police/prosecutorial offensive that has multiplied the
prison population six- or seven-fold in the past 30 years; that has
made it impossible to build Black families, or general Black wealth,
or cohesive Black communities. Instead, they applaud Bill Cosby and
other slanderers of Black life, blaming the victims for the ghastly
crime against a people.
Only a mass movement will solve this problem. Mass movements create
leadership, and we need new leadership in the worst way. It will
come, and it will be young. The “business class” of Black politician
must be put out of business. We must set the engine running, again,
as BC Associate Editor Bruce Dixon wrote on June
30, 2005:
”A mass movement aims to persuade courts, politicians and other
actors to tail behind it, not the other way around. Mass
movements accomplish this through appeals to shared sets of deep
and widely held convictions among the people they aim to mobilize,
along with acts or credible threats of sustained and popular civil
disobedience.”
America is a sick society, corrupted to the core. Sadly, integration
has allowed a certain strata of opportunistic Negroes to bond with
the worst elements of the predatory, white corporate class. They
also call that progress, as if shared criminality equals upward mobility.
We are now witness to Black candidacies invented wholly in white
corporate think tanks and board rooms, such as Cory Booker, the aspirant
to the mayor’s job in Newark’s City Hall, and to the throne of “New
Black Leader.” The Black Commentator outed Booker, the corporate
functionary, in 2002 – and beat him. Now, he is running again, with
massive corporate backing. (See “PBS Shills for a Black Trojan Horse:
The Cory Booker Propaganda,” July 7, 2005.)
We are battling corporations that have unlimited funds to fight
the people. And we have a huge political education project in front
of us. The first thing we must do is change the language, which has
been shaped by a corrupt group of Negroes and their white sponsors
who are in business together. They are engaged in serious business,
and we must be just as serious. We cannot let them take our language
and values from us.
The “aspiring classes” among Black folks have designated localities
that are amenable to their ambitions as the “best” places for African
Americans to locate. They draw a twisted picture. The NAACP convened
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, this year, despite the fact that the city
is the worst place possible to be a Black male, with the highest
per capita incarceration rate in the nation and the highest child
poverty rate – tightly related figures.
At the same time, the NAACP boycotted South Carolina for five years
for flying the Confederate flag – a symbolic insult to Black people.
But the disparity in incarceration rates in South Carolina doesn’t
come close to that of Wisconsin, Minnesota and New Jersey, and many
other northern states. Black people on the street, whose sons and
daughters are prey to police and prosecutors, are not being served
by a “leadership” that cares only about their business opportunities
and the existence of prime Black housing markets.
Bruce Dixon laid it down, in a July 14 article title, “Ten Worst
Places to be Black.”
”…public policy in America only moves in the direction
of addressing human needs when under the insistent pressure of mass
movements. Where will the mass movement come from to change
America’s racially selective policy of mass incarceration? What
will be its first tasks, and what will it look like? These
are among the key questions before black activists between now and
the time we “Go back to Gary.”
We must measure the quality of life of Black people based on how
the masses of folks live, not on how the “aspiring classes” gauge
their chances of getting a contract or a corporate job. Mass incarceration
is the great blight on Black life, that may disrupt the aspiring
classes intermittently, but preys upon the Black masses, relentlessly.
Those cities, states, and counties that incarcerate Blacks at obscene
rates must be punished – not rewarded, as was Milwaukee by the NAACP.
And we must compile lists of cities that are the worst for Black
children, Black elderly, those who are sick, and in need of education.
If we are to have a productive dialogue in the next “Gary” – wherever
it is, in March – we must speak a different language. The Black Commentator
will attempt to speak for the masses of our people, not just the “aspiring
classes” who seem so happy while the gulag swallows our communities.
We must overthrow the existing order. That includes our own.
Have a good August,
Glen Ford and Pete Gamble, Co-Publishers
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