The Great (great) Frederick Douglass, once said,
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” Malcolm
said, “We struggle in different ways” talking about
the similarities between integrationist (access) and nationalist
(identity) struggles for progress. Former Detroit Mayor Coleman
A. Young once said, “We will struggle and there will be
progress," while former South African President, Nelson Mandela
once said, “The struggle is my life.” Martin Luther
King said that struggle on the part of an oppressed people will
never disappear until freedom is a reality for all oppressed peoples
of the world. Certainly, the great leaders and change activists
of the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, and even in the Twenty-first
century recognize the inherent relationship between struggle and
progress. Yet, more than ever, the Black community, in the collective
sense, has become increasingly conflicted about what the struggle
is and what progress has been made.
It appears the race is going more backward than
forward:
- Literacy rates are lower than they were 50 years
ago
- Poverty rates are higher than they were 40 years
ago
- High school graduation rates are lower than
they were 30 years ago
- Unemployment rates and STD contraction rates
are higher than they were 20 years ago
- College admission rates are lower than they
were ten years ago
I could go on, but I’m sure you get the point.
We need a Black agenda more than ever. Some people say we have
one. There is no shortage of organizations and activities in which
we may involve ourselves. But do they lead us to progress? We’re
all busy doing something, but our involvements gain little for
the masses. All motion isn’t progress. If it were, then
why aren’t we going forward? Maybe, it's because there is
no Black agenda pointing directly to collective progress.
In nearly every major city in America, Black communities
are suffering from a combination of poverty, economic subjugation
and police oppression. The Black community is in a constant state
of struggle and a constant debate over its progress and what we’re
doing (what we gon’ do, y’all) to bring about that
progress. Over the past few months, several significant issues,
from police shootings across the nation (New York to Inglewood),
to campus violence (elementary schools to college campuses), to
the “Black image” of other people calling African
Americans everything from Ni**ers to Hoes and everything in between.
Malcolm, we are still struggling in different ways.
And Black progress has become a mixed bag of tricks that, in essence,
requires us to be careful what we ask for. Yes, we have more Black
millionaires, but half of them got rich denigrating the race.
Yes, more Blacks are in the middle class, but they’re still
struggling to find quality schools to educate their children or
safe communities in which to insolate themselves from gang violence.
Yes, there are more Black entrepreneurs than ever but Black businesses
still face more economic discrimination and redlining from banks
and capital sources than any other group.
Yes, there are more college educated Blacks than
at any other time in American history, but they will be the first
generation to have less than their parents (and their parents
had LESS education than they had). Yes, there are more Black agendas
than ever:
- Farrakhan’s Millions More movement
- Tavis Smiley’s Covenant movement
- Russell Simmons’ Hip Hop Summit
- Many local movements in every city by everyday
folks trying to change their quality of life
Yet, it appears many of these movements are led
more by people with their own agenda than by people looking to
lead a Black agenda. Desire for personal benefit and self-aggrandizement
has made many people too cautious to lead and more cautious as
to whom they follow. Some folk even go as far as to suggest that
this generation has no leaders.
While that certainly is not true - this generation
has leaders, just not in the civil rights/Black protest tradition
- it is true that those who lead are not leading us forward.
Not when more people want to be Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent or Allen Iverson
than want to be Dr. Keith Black, Mae Jemison or Kathy Hughes.
And this generation surely must believe that progress is more
than the individual successes of obtaining a Rolex, Bentley and
a condo. It’s not about what one or two of us have, it’s
about what all of us should have. That’s progress. And it’s
about what we will or will not let others say or do to us.
Even when Black dignity and sensibilities were
under attack by Michael Richards and Don Imus, the Black community
was conflicted as to who should be “speaking for us.”
There were just as many conversations about who “appointed
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton” (suspicious of their agendas),
as there were about who should stop saying Ni**er,*itch and Ho
first, white people or us? Even Oprah, of whom it’s been
said avoids “Black issues,” weighed in on the agenda
to repair Black social standing. It didn’t stop those with
agendas from disrupting the process of achieving Black progress.
When Black stakeholders stepped up in California
to mediate who should fill the late Congresswoman Millander-McDonald’s
seat, they were called “self-appointed” and “self-anointed”
by, who else but, other Blacks. The purpose was to forge a Black
agenda to retain political power. People with personal differences
and conflicted political interests came together to forge the
process. Only those not part of the process (with agendas) sought
to criticize the process from without.
Some Black people have lost their sense of to when
it’s necessary to get on the same page, the same agenda,
as in the 1960s, when even Malcolm and Martin, who were fighting
different fights in two separate parts of the country recognized
that it was the same struggle. We may not agree with all rap.
We may not agree with all television programming. We may not agree
with all the ways that Black people make money now. But we can
agree on what’s appropriate. We can agree on what promotes
good and our standing in society, and we can agree on what sustains
our cultural longevity. A Black agenda doesn’t have to be
an individual agenda, nor does it have to be wasted motion. A
Black agenda is finding ways to move constantly toward a collective
progress, where we leave nobody behind and retain our dignity
throughout the process.
BC Columnist Dr. Anthony Asadullah
Samad is a national columnist, managing director of the Urban
Issues Forum and author of the upcoming book, Saving
The Race: Empowerment Through Wisdom. His Website is AnthonySamad.com.
Click
here to contact Dr. Samad. |