Recently, a well-known Black pastor in Los Angeles said that certain activists who had taken a position in support of Tennie Pierce, the Los Angeles Firefighter who has eaten dog food, were “B-list” leaders.

The comment got me to thinking that if the people in question were “B-list” leaders, who were the “A-list” leaders in our community and are we creating elitism in leadership?

To me, leadership in our community continues to been defined by the following criteria: Black, heterosexual, male, and over fifty. To add to that, one’s leadership skills seem to be contingent on how many television cameras, reporters, and photographers he can get out to his events, which I might add are usually done more so for the press than the actual community.

Having participated in numerous press conferences, rallies, and protests, I find myself growing more and more disenchanted with the “leadership” in our community and feel that we are no longer addressing issues on behalf of the community but instead to see who can deliver the most dramatic sound byte and in my opinion that has got to stop.

The Black leadership today is operated more as a business venture complete with media hype, photo-ops, corporate indulgence, and cult personalities. It’s to the point now, where certain “leaders” won’t attend events where they are not the main attraction, some even go as far as to charge an honorarium for their services.

We can’t continue to gauge leadership by how many times someone has appeared on channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13. Nor should we allow people to hijack issues for their own selfish purposes.

Leadership should be defined by one’s ability to actually bring about a change and to inspire us to get involved. Bringing up an issue one day at a press conference and dropping it the next isn’t being a leader. A leader leads even when the cameras aren’t rolling.

And this is not to say that there aren’t genuine leaders in our community, because there are. But at the same time, it is a fact that we do have people in our community who suffer from massive egos. Their only motivation for taking up issues in our community is to see themselves on the evening news, thus allowing the media to dictate who our leaders are.

Our “leadership” also suffers from what I like to refer to as the “death grip” syndrome. That is they get into a position in an organization (or they create one for themselves) and they stay in it until they die, thus locking out any potential chance that new leaders will be able to come in and pick up the mantle. Which has always puzzled me because I am constantly hearing that we need to get more young people to get involved, but what for when we’ll never be given the opportunity to lead?

There’s no doubt that African Americans are experiencing a “leadership crisis,” but if we’re going to be honest about it, it’s a crisis that we ourselves created and it’s going require a paradigm shift in our thinking to turn it around.

To begin, if the youth really are our future, then we need to do more than offer lip service to them. And if women truly are equal to men then we need to do more to support them and encourage them to take on leadership roles in our community, with our full support.

As a member of Black America by virtue of my race, I reserve the right at all times to decide for myself who is a leader to me and who speaks for me and often times it’s not the people that I see on television or read about in the paper. It’s the people that I witness for myself who are actually doing the work in the community.

Black America does need people who are willing to advocate on our behalf, but at the same time, those people who are deemed as our leaders should represent the broad-spectrum voices and views that is our community. In order for that to happen, we must be willing to embrace people who may be lesser known than others but whose commitment to our community is authentic. We have got to move away from this trend of encouraging opportunistic leaders who have no real connection to the community other than the fact that they are Black and begin to cultivate and groom a new wave of leaders that includes women and people under 30. If we don’t, the current crisis that we perceive in our leadership will be a lot worse than its present state, and you can quote me.

About the Author: Jasmyne Cannick is a social issues commentator who was chosen as one of ESSENCE Magazine's 25 Women Shaping the World in 2005. At 29, Jasmyne writes a popular daily blog at jasmynecannick.com and myspace.com/jasmynecannick. She resides in Los Angeles. Click here to contact Ms. Cannick.

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