Are there any drum majors and torch bearers coming?

This year has had tremendous loss for me, my father, my best friend, my colleague, and public figures who have given me, an ownership piece of my history. I grieve the death of Dr. Benjamin Hooks. I am deeply saddened by the loss of Dorothy Height, an icon of a movement, but even more importantly, a woman of her times. You see, Dorothy Height embodied the spirit of the civil rights movement in a delicate balance with social grace and political civility. In a time when upheaval, turmoil, strife and aggression were undercurrents of the movement, Dorothy Height brought a certain grace and decorum to the movement that enabled many an angered brow to smooth and roaring voice to undulate into tones where men who were not receptive, otherwise, might now hear. She like Dr. Benjamin Hooks, represented the brilliant and the brightest, those to whom much was given, and much was expected in return (Luke 12:48). If you stop and think about it, we are watching the end of an era, civil rights leaders who answered the call of W. E. B. Du Bois' "Talented Tenth". Men and women who became drum majors in the civil rights movement, whose concerns were not with their own elevation, but the elevation of an entire race of people, of a national human condition, and of the masses who lacked the training and education to challenge the status quo. Dorothy Height, like so many of the the torch bearers of the civil rights movement, worked for the betterment of the race, with the same kind of understanding of history and faith that ignited a flame across the nation. Mary McCleod Bethune understood the role of the woman in the stuggle for civil rights. She said: "Whatever glory belongs to the race for a development unprecedented in history for the given length of time, a full share belongs to the womanhood of the race." While it has not been the women alone, we must acknowledge the role of women in the civil rights movement. The civil rights era or movement was support by the blood, sweat, and tears of many men and women, who shored it up, who pushed through when pushing wasn't popular, who took a stance when it was dangerous to stand. And I am not talking about the ones that readily come to mind, I am talking about the foot soldiers and torch bearers, the Bayard Rustin, Barbara Jordan, Cornell West, Henry Louis Gates, Shirley Chisolm, Thurgood Marshall, Benjamin Hooks, Stokely Carmichael, Phillip Randolph, Richard Wright, Nina Simone, James Baldwin, and Gwendolyn Brooks, of the movement who channeled the underlying understanding of the "Talented Tenth". These are not all of them, these are some of the ones that come to mind, that we don't think of as drum majors or torch bearers. These torch bearers shaped the minds of young African American men and women, through literature, music, art, and political thought. These fine Americans, spoke out, inspired a leader, challenged thinking, and changed the landscape without leading the charge. These drum majors and torch bearers are part of the fabric of a nation that came together to elect an African American as President of the United States. So, where are the foot soldiers to take up the call? Where are the "Talented Tenth" who serve, not for fame but for the pursuit of justice and righteousness? Where are the new torch bearers who are ready to receive the torched passed to them, so that we might continue the causes, to elevate the masses, and seek the betterment of the entire nation from less than desirable human conditions? Have we no young and fresh drum majors, willing to learn and who are willing to take the baton? Have we no torch bearers, who are not so caught up in the game of the day, the pursuit of riches, fame, and infamy as to be willing to carry the flame that was lite in this nation? Do you or I have that which it takes to carry the torch, even for a short distance for the betterment of our race and the nation? Or are we prepared to bury the last of the drum majors and torch bearers, in my lifetime..................

Why can't we talk about the elephant in the room.............

When I was younger, I did extemporaneous speaking. You see, I had a parent who was a preacher and a parent who was an English teacher. So, not only did I have command of the English language, I was raised in a home where oratory was practiced and fine tuned for a riveting, spiritual, orgasmic Baptist church service weekly. Consequently, it was not surprising that long before I joined Toastmasters, that I had honed my craft at extemporaneous speaking competitions. For those who do not know, you are given a topic and about 30 minutes to put together a speech, to be delivered orally to a panel of judges. You were graded on your grasp of current events, the ability to prepare an intellectual statement about the subject matter, and your oral delivery of that speech. Unlike Sarah Palin, I couldn't jot some buzz words in my hand, I had to know something about the topic, current world and U. S events, and some history. Oratorical trapeze art - like Cirque de Soleil, if you will, with no net. What does this have to do with the elephant in the room?

Everything and nothing. You see, we are in the midst of what will probably prove to be one of the most divisive periods of race relations in this country. Come on, you don't want to admit it, but you know that it is true. You don't want to discuss it, the Democrats don't want to discuss it and the Republicans don't want to discuss it. Why can't we talk about the elephant in the room? Here we are in 2010, HDTV, surround sound stereo and 52 inch screens. Yet, if you turn the volume off this week, and studied the TV screen, you would think you were looking at documentary footage from 1964, 1965, 1968 anti-civil rights protests and demonstrations that had occurred this county. If you turned the volume up, blacked out the screen and listened, no one would be able to convince you this was not audio from the march on Selma. Almost 50 years later and politicians may as well have dunned white hoods and march down Pennsylvania Ave. into the White House. Racial slurs, homophobic insults, and righteous rebel rousers feeling perfectly within their rights to spit upon a member of the congressional Black Caucus. And the statement from the leadership of the Republican party, that these outburst, this open and vitriol hostility, is nothing more than frustration and "isolated incidents".

How many isolated incidents will it take before we can talk about the elephant in the room? What about the incident where someone shoots into the home of a member of the House of Representatives, vandalizing the office of another, pushing and shoving elected officials or even spitting upon a member of congress. How many of those isolated incidents have to occur before we stop glossing over the growing tension, and deal with the issue that is driving this behavior? How many hate filled speeches does Sarah Palin have to deliver under the auspices of rallying the Republican base will it take before the Republican party acknowledges the elephant in the room? How much Democratic party disloyalty on issues where everyone should be in agreement will be necessary before we confront the ugly truth?

The truth is, there is an elephant in the room. And, all of the glossing over, all of the rhetoric and pontificating about "fundamental differences in ideology" really are clever euphemisms for the elephant in the room. That elephant is the systemic racial hostility that divided this county into north and south, into proponents of civil rights and anti-civil rights demonstrators. That elephant, is a growing open hatred and contempt for not just the President, but for many successful African Americans in this country, engendered in part by a profound sense of inferiority when compared to many well educated African Americans, and a sense of entitlement by the majority party. It comes out in well intentioned statements like "it is amazing how smart Obama is". Or, statements like "he is REEEEEEaly smart" as if this is some remarkable phenomenon. The under current and psychosis in that statement is that only one who is the majority party could be smart, that the President's great mind is an anomaly and that it is ok to not refer to him as the President. That elephant, shows up as statements by folks like John McCain that the health care bill is unconstitutional, excuse me? John McCain with his entitlement mindset who just barely finished college, never went to a law school, never studied constitutional law, never taught constitutional law, and now is an expert on the constitutionality of the health care bill. That elephant shows up when politicians like Governor Sonny Purdue, a non-lawyer, asks the Attorney General to explore filing suit on behalf of Georgia to opt out of the health care reform act, become incensed when the Attorney General declines to file suit, and then allege that the reason is because the Attorney General, who happens to be African American declined because he is a Democrat. So does that mean the converse of that must also be true, that the reason Governor Purdue is desirous of filing suit because he is a Republican. Of course not, according to the likes of Governor Purdue. But it is that same mindset, that same entitlement ideology, that says that the African American Attorney General who the governor praised so highly hereto for comes under scrutiny for not signing on to the governor's fight. It is that same entitlement elephant, that causes many in academia to marvel, be shocked, stunned and mezmerized by African American students who speak well, write well, intellectualize well, or analyze well. What does it say about the perceptions of the masses about African Americans, and what does it say about the possibility of continued fallout over the President's policies or initiatives? Was it that some folks who felt entitled, thought that the President achieved his heights as a result of affirmative action, and therefore, lack the intellectual agility and prowess to artfully manuver through the political halls and processes? Or is it more basic than that, that because he has achieved the successes that he has achieved, that the President is not one of "them". The "them" that the masses loath, hate, feel threatened by, and now, it is apparent that he is one of "them" too. In truth, the elephant simply represents the war underway in this country, that Gill Scott Heron spoke of, the one not officially being televised, but going on, nonetheless, the anti-Black, anti-African American, anti-dis empowerment, anti-loss of entitlement war.

So, then why can't we talk about the elephant in the room? We can't talk about it, because we would then have to admit and take ownership of the reality that we saw at the Republican rallies all over the country. We can't talk about it because to talk about it would necessitate that we acknowledge that with all of the alleged progress in race relations in this country, we have not actually gotten anywhere, or at least not far from where we were in 1964. We can't talk about it because then, we have to ask ourselves the painful question, the ugly and devastating question, at what point will Americans embrace its citizens of color, not based on skin color, but based upon the content of their character? We don't talk about it, because it makes you wonder, makes you concerned, worried even....will Martin Luther King's dream be realized, in my lifetime.........

A public and televised lynching in my lifetime......

On my old blog, I spent a considerable amount of energy speaking to the inequities associated with being an African American President. Little did I know that it is more than inequity. The institutionalized denigration of African Americans is being played out on CNN while we look on in amazement and horror. The flagrant disrespect for the office of the Presidency, the disdain and disregard for decorum, and the abhorrent indignities suffered by a man who came into office with a desire to change the status quo glaringly play out on the national news, night after night. What galls me is the fact that no matter what happens, there is a growing undercurrent of hatred for the President, and why? You have to look back at history to really get it, the have nots - folks who are not in power are resentful, angry, hostile and dangerous to African Americans who are moving up. Why? Because African Americans who achieve success are "uppity" and make some folks feel like they are inferior. So what then? What then, is an organized lynch mob, a "Tea Party", a group of hate filled, mongrel, mediocre, minimally educated, and miserable group of folks who have a need to put that uppity African American in his proper place. And, I never, and I mean I never thought I would see a public lynching in this century. But, in Congress, where the Democrats won't support him for fear of reprisal, the Republicans reject every idea he has or had, just because, and now a growing national movement growing more and more vocal daily with horrific and blood curdling outcries that would be prosecuted as treasonous if he were not African American.. We have not ushered in a new era, we have sunken to the lowest depths of the human condition, and it all points to a very public and televised lynching in my lifetime.................