Being ‘The Covenant’ Watchdog: Does Tavis Smiley Need Watching?

YOUNG: Well, tell them to go there and try to live there themselves. We…take for granted such a high quality of life. And then we’re gonna get righteous when other people wanna live that way? Africa does not mind food. People are dying of AIDS, yes, but more people are dying of hunger… I’m very sensitive on what we change in Africa, but making food and clean water available, making clothing available…I don’t have any problem with that.

Is Wal-Mart, along with other ruthless multinational corporations, going to be the only means by which concerned African-Americans such as Tavis can actually address the endemic starvation in Africa? Gordon’s questions and Young’s replies raise critical questions on how African-Americans will be practically able to help fellow Africans across the Atlantic, who suffer a more pernicious, protracted, disinterested racism.

These questions also involve an insidious kind of racism that sees a group of people more as commodities than as actual human beings. Robert Allen describes a sort of “commodification” of leaders who are African-American in order to advance the profit margin of these corporations. In Black Awakening in Capitalist America, Allen writes that “putting Black Power into business” – which is what Wal-Mart is doing through Andrew Young – is creating “a stabilizing Black buffer class that will make possible indirect white control (or neocolonial administration) of the ghettos.” Allen further states that “this is the class that will have the closest contact with corporate America and which is to act as a conduit for its wishes.”

Clearly Andrew Young has become a conduit for the wishes of Wal-Mart. His willingness to be a hired hand – exposed by Ed Gordon – proves this, along with his refusal to be an important watchdog who could help working class employees and their children attain decent health coverage. The conflict that BC’s Bruce Dixon writes about between Andrew Young and Atlanta is crucial because it highlights the black community resisting “the neocolonial administration of the ghettos.” Blacks will not simply relinquish their right to decent healthcare in a country whose opulence shames its refusal to engage a national healthcare system.

Dick Roberts, in a seminal 1970 ISR article entitled, “The Fraud of Black Capitalism,” writes that “there is no evidence that the government agencies and private foundations of the American ruling class hope to improve the income level of whole layers of the Black population or anything close to that. Their aim is quite different. They hope to buy off a few individuals – and thereby fool the whole population. This is the essence of capitalist tokenism. It is imperative that the tactics and strategy of revolutionaries be based on a clear recognition and understanding of this two-faced operation.” Although it is clear that many in the traditional civil rights establishment have been bought off such as the Congress of Racial Equality’s (CORE) Roy Innis, whom Roberts wrote was paid off by the Ford Foundation to be involved in Black community projects that are “incapable of fruition,” we must reprimand members of the black community today that work with corporate interests to continually oppress fellow members of the Black working class.

In White Money/Black Power, Noliwe Rooks writes about the dangerous strings that the Ford Foundation attached to funding Black Studies programs at American colleges and universities:

This very narrow-minded purpose that obscures Black studies as an academic discipline partly explains the dearth of interest and the declining enrollment of Black Studies majors. In the article “Some Like It Hot,” by Chris Mooney in the May/June 2005 issue of Mother Jones magazine, CORE was identified as a major recipient of ExxonMobil funds to propagate the idea that Global Warming does not exist. The buying of CORE was most evident when CORE made of all people, Karl Rove, their Martin Luther King Day civil rights honoree. It is our duty as citizens to be the watchdog that Andrew Young refuses to be. Indeed, he is someone to be watched. As quick as we are to slap the label of “sellout,” is as quick as we must be to avoid becoming one ourselves.

We must be vigilant watchdogs for the interests of our own community. We must also be vigilant against organizations that have completely “sold out” to corporate interests. Being vigilant means questioning what you hear and challenging our popular leaders at even the hint of treachery.

In the aforementioned Tom Joyner show commentary, Tavis Smiley seemed to buy into the notion that somehow 2006 is going to be “the year of the Black Republican.” This is hogwash. The bitter truth is that the Republicans have refused to change their policy priorities to try and meet the concerns of most African-Americans who still vote overwhelmingly Democrat. Just because Republicans have put forward candidates like J. Kenneth Blackwell for governor of Ohio, Michael Steele for U.S. Senator from Maryland, Keith Butler for U.S. Senator from Michigan, and Lynn Swann for governor of Pennsylvania, does not mean that this is the year for Blacks to vote Republican.

Republicans have never earned the votes of African-Americans, and token leadership cannot change that.

What made Tavis’s commentary most appalling was his statement, “I like Kenneth Blackwell, but…” There is no “but.” This was a red flag that triggered my watchdog duty. I was thinking: How can you “like” a thief? How can you “like” the man who played the role in Ohio in 2004 that Katherine Harris played in Florida in 2000? How can you “like” the man who issued confusing registration directives weeks before the 2004 election in order to successfully confuse the voting process? How can you “like” the man who stopped provisional ballots to disenfranchise mainly African-American voters? How can you “like” the man who had voting machines moved from Democratic districts where they were needed, to Republican districts where they were never used? Like the rest of the Republican party that funds these antics, Blackwell is not to be liked, but should be punished by the African American electorate. J. Kenneth Blackwell sought to disenfranchise African-American voters of his own state.

Tavis Smiley must be more faithful to his own “Covenant with Black America” by taking Blackwell to task. He needs to know how to apply more closely what Wade Henderson said on pages 135 to 139 of Smiley’s own book: “eliminate all voter suppression and intimidation.” Clearly, Smiley’s “liking” Kenneth Blackwell does not help him engage in this necessary process.

I argue that it was perhaps Wal-Mart’s wish to validate Blackwell’s candidacy for Ohio governor, rather than Tavis Smiley’s wish. American media force what is called a “conservative” point of view down peoples’ throats – including the throats of Tavis Smiley’s audience. This is why it is essential that readers of Black Commentator.com be watchdogs and call Andrew Young out on his being a sell out and contact Tavis Smiley by phone or e-mail when he seems to be “slipping” in his ideology.

Rhone Fraser is a graduate assistant in the Department of Africana Studies at the University of South Florida. Contact: [email protected].

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