Universally Speaking
Rahim Islam is a National Speaker and Writer, Convener of Philadelphia Community of Leaders, and President/CEO of Universal Companies, a community development and education management company headquartered in Philadelphia, PA. Follow Rahim Islam on FaceBook(Rahim Islam) & Twitter (@RahimIslamUC)
Rahim Islam
When do we begin to acknowledge that Black people have real and unique issues? We can no longer blame everything on others and we are unwilling or unable to look within.
Yes, so much has been done to us, but what will it take to not only acknowledge those issues, but to begin to do something about them.
When do we assume control of our own challenges and our own destiny?
I remember Malcom X once saying that the Black community doesn’t have a moral position to blame White people for all that its problems because, if immigrants can come here with no education and no resources and pool their funds together to amass wealth, then why can’t the Black man in America do the same?
Malcolm raised this question over 50 years ago. He was challenging Black leadership.
Malcom X was challenging whether we even have Black leadership and he accused Black leaders for placing more focus on Blacks assimilating into the White community versus doing what all other minorities have and continues to do in America – act as a minority and pull together its resources. Shouldn’t black leadership be an organized fight for justice?
Today, we must ask the same questions of our leaders because not much has changed and, the truth is, our problems have worsened. At the time of the Malcom X statement (1963), the Black community generated nearly $20 billion annually and couldn’t develop an economic plan.
Today, the Black community generates nearly a $1 trillion annually and yet we still have little or no capacity (infrastructure) to move the economic needle towards self-determination.
I agree with his basic premise, Blacks do have more to work with (then and now) than any other immigrant group coming to America but we have not truly understood the economic impact of this statistic.
I now understand why some consider American Blacks the highest paid slaves in the world.
Why? Slaves are people who are owned and ultimately controlled by another group and/or economic system with no capacity to free themselves and chart their own course.
Today, slavery is unlawful, but a person may still be described as a slave if a group is completely dependent upon the actions of another group and are unable to change their outcome and is, in fact, unable to chart a course for self-determination.
This is the state of Black America and this is the legacy of the American institution of slavery and, like chattel slavery, it represents a gross injustice.
To be a Black leader without addressing this glaring injustice reduces the leadership to basically being a label on an empty can.
Let us look at the facts and not be emotional about who we are and what our socioeconomic status truly is.
Since emancipation, only a couple Black people out of 45 million have been able to become rich and I don’t believe that any Blacks have achieved the title of being wealthy – wealth would indicate that Blacks would have achieved several generations of progress and future generations or family members would never have to worry about money again – ever. Sure, we have a few Black people that have become millionaires (extreme low percentage of the Black population), but it pales in comparison to the thousands of White individuals who have become billionaires and/or the documented tens of thousands of existing White millionaires.
The wealth gap between Blacks and Whites is not a gap at all its more like the Grand Canyon. Where you start matters.
I believe that Black people’s effort to emulate white people has created a class system that has further divided our community. Consider the following, Black unemployment and underemployment are at very high levels; nearly two thirds of Black people are living at or near poverty levels; and nearly 1.5 million Black men are in prison.
These numbers and statistics point to a large population of Black people struggling economically in America.
These numbers would suggest that if justice were achieved, Blacks would be earning approximately $3-4 trillion annually.
The fact that Blacks are only earning $1 trillion annually suggests that Blacks suffer from an inequitable distribution of income.
Because so many Blacks are living at/or near poverty levels, this represents that only a small percentage of Blacks are living in the higher income brackets.
Restated, we have the Black version of the one percenters. We need leadership to correct this injustice.
We need Black leaders fighting for justice for Black people.
There are several reasons why this is not happening.
First, we must consider who taught our leaders and the type of education they received.
If that education didn’t expose the hypocrisy of America; didn’t teach you how to value and love yourself over others; didn’t teach and reinforce how great you and your ancestors are; didn’t teach you personal responsibility to your own group; didn’t teach you how to use the systems and tools for self-determination; didn’t teach you leadership, then it wasn’t education that you received.
What you got was a bunch of information that validated white supremacy and Black inferiority and perpetuated assimilation of our more economically mobile Black leaders.
Too many of the more successful Black people have followed the path that their success is defined by how far they are removed from their own people. In fact, being the “only” Black around all white people has become a true measure of success for Black elite (i.e. the only Black on the job; only Black living in the neighborhood; the only Black children at a school; the only Black admitted in the social club; the only Black being invited, etc.).
This has physically removed many of our more talented Black people from being in direct contact with the struggles of Black people.
Many Black people are extremely detached from the struggles of their own people.
In addition, this behavior has further confirmed the concept of Black inferiority (Black neighborhoods are inferior) and white supremacy (white neighborhoods are superior).
Even with limited individual success, Blacks are at the bottom of the economic ladder.
Black assimilation has threatened and compromised Black leadership and undermined the Black economic base.
Unfortunately, many of the more affluent Blacks, because of the positions that they hold or the titles they have, are viewed as being the leaders of Black people, but they are unable to fight for Black causes.
This dysfunction has caused the Black community to lose significant ground in nearly every category of positive demographics decreasing and nearly every negative demographic increasing.
These “silent” leaders refuse to speak out against the injustices and the consequences of not being compensated for nearly 300 years of free labor.
Where you start matters and the start for Black people continues to cripple Blacks today in comparison to whites, (the playing field is absolutely unfair). Black leadership should never let America forget what she did to Black family and the Black community, but when you assimilate completely within their culture and systems, you are unable to speak out or fight for justice for Black people.
The more I examine why we continue to languish behind as a group, the more I come to the realization that we have been significantly damaged, not just socially and economically, but we have been damaged emotionally and psychologically.
How else do we explain our situation? How else can we continue to justify doing nothing?
Why is it we are unable to do for ourselves, why aren’t we able to fix these issues? Black families and the continent of Africa have definitely been damaged by the brutal and forceful kidnapping of millions of Black people (children, mothers, fathers, etc.) from Africa, which has yet to recover (Africa still suffers from this travesty) and the injustice has never been rectified.
If the kidnapping weren’t traumatic enough, Blacks were treated to the worst form of transportation to America, trapped in the hulls of cargo ships experiencing serious medical infections, physical health issues, and deaths of hundreds of thousands of Africans (Blacks didn’t come as immigrants).
Furthermore, there were a number of captives that choose to jump into the ocean and face absolute death rather than endure the inhumane conditions of the travel. Upon arrival to America, the trauma would continue and the horror would take on another level.
Blacks would suffer for the rest of their lives by working nearly 85% of their life spans. This inhumane treatment of chattel slavery, representing the worst human trauma in documented history, would continue for nearly 20 generations helping to build America.
Where is the justice for Black families and who will fight for it? We need Black leaders to fight for Black justice.
During this period, Blacks were systemically stripped of nearly every aspect of our culture, history, language and knowledge of self. It is no wonder that the Black community in America carries with it the scars of a past and is now trapped in every aspect of Black American life.
The psychological damage of this experience has yet to be acknowledged and, remains incomprehensible to American society.
Sorry, I forgot that this whole ordeal was justified by the belief that Blacks are animals and unable to scar emotionally.
If we refuse to even acknowledge this human trauma, it is no wonder that this sentiment prevails today. Sadly, some Black leaders also feel this way. Where is the justice for Black families and who will fight for them? We need Black leaders to fight for Black justice.
While emancipation ended “formal” slavery, it did not end the pain and trauma that the Black family continued to endure, including the terror inflicted by the KKK on Black families with the lynching of thousands of Black men. This trauma has been compounded and grown exponentially and even today, there has been no treatment or healing.
Unfortunately, it did not end there. The Black family was thrust into the American societal race as an equal while uninformed, uneducated and without any resources, only to experience a series of events that have seriously undermined and interrupted the development of the Black family even more (i.e. abduction, transatlantic passage, slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, integration, public housing, welfare, South to North to Midwest migrations, the collapse of manufacturing jobs, fighting in U.S., wars, Brown vs. Board of Education, school busing, heroin and crack cocaine epidemics, mass incarceration, gang violence, riots, welfare reform, gangster rap, the 2008 economic recession, and Black reality shows).
In spite of all this, our ancestors fought against and overcame very powerful foes and the attempt to place Blacks into a permanent second-class citizenship status, even achieving limited civil and human rights with the landmark legislation of the 1960s.
This progress should be viewed as an awesome accomplishment when you consider the lopsided start the Blacks inherited during slavery and the number of outright racist plots to derail Blacks’ full integration into American society.
The reality is that this experience has damaged Black people.
Black people have suffered tremendous psychological and emotional damage from a brutal and sustained oppression.
Many of these scars remain today and our leaders are not exempt.
In spite of these odds, Blacks have made tremendous individual progress but individual progress does not equal group progress.
The fact remains that nearly two thirds of all Black people live at/or near poverty and a good portion of the other third of Black people trail significantly behind their “middle-to-high income” white counterpart in every category, specifically wealth.
As a group, Blacks lag behind every other ethnic group in America, because Blacks have been discriminated against at every level
Did the trauma that Blacks experienced and inherited all of sudden disappear?
How is it that we are led to believe that this is not an issue?
Today, we have current, both Black and White, leaders with a severe case of amnesia who have forgotten all of the horrible things that have happened to Black people in this country.
Too many people have forgotten how America became a global superpower – these gains came with the ultimate level of sacrifice on behalf of Black people – a serious price was paid for America’s world dominance (Black blood is on America’s hands) yet Blacks are near a permanent under-class in this country.
The Black community as a group has not had a real win in nearly 50 years and our issues have become extremely complex and severe.
There is no infrastructure nor strategic planning underway to address these issues. Blacks suffer from a severe case of hopelessness and near psychological paralysis including our so-called leadership.
Who, if anyone, has the capacity to change the trajectory for Black people if not their leadership?
As I stated previously, the more I examine why we continue to languish behind as a group I come to the realization that we have been damaged significantly, not just socially and economically, but we have been damage emotionally and psychologically and our leadership is impacted the most.
Blacks suffer from a heavy dose of white supremacy and Black inferiority.
I know many of those that are doing well and some are Black leaders who might disagree that they suffer from Black inferiority. How else, then, can you explain our level of despair and paralysis?
We talk about “Black Life Matters” but there is little evidence that leaders show any real concern about the issues that are derailing Black lives.
Where is the outcry for senseless killings occurring daily by young Black against other young Blacks?
If Black lives matter, where is the mobilization and organization to fight against the injustices perpetuated against Black people?
Where is any sustained mobilization efforts of Black people?
If Black lives matter, where is the infrastructure to fight against the injustices perpetuated against Black people as a whole?
Where are the efforts to restore the Black voice and Black leadership?
Where are the strategies to build our infrastructure for our future generations?
Where is the commitment to develop strategies and plans to defend the Black community?
Where is the demand that we unite our efforts under a bigger banner?
The issues we face will not be “wished” away nor will they be “prayed” away. They will only go away when we make them go away.
No one is going to fix the problems Black people face but Black people and that’s why they’re getting worse and not better (we’re waiting for our oppressor to save us).
If we are going to make our problems go away, we will have to have real leadership; leadership that unites our people; leadership that is responsive to the needs of our communities; shared leadership with many people working together to aggregate our capacity and our resources.
Leadership must be about restoring and strengthening the Black voice.
Leadership must be about supporting other Black leaders and understanding that were all in this together.
Where is our Black leadership?
How is it that our leaders are unable to mount any real and sustained campaign to challenge the multitude of very serious issues facing the Black community?
Given our current socioeconomic condition, coupled with the history that we have faced in this country, having leadership is not some option.
It is an absolute necessity.
The Black man in America is a unique group, unlike no other in the world.
Our leaders continue to fail us by not doing the very basic things we need.
We have no Black leadership because we have no Black unity.
We see division at every level. We won’t have Black unity until the leadership begins to unite. This is real leadership.
I contend that if Black people do not have this type of leadership, given the state of affairs of Black people, then they do not have leadership at all.
This and the level of division amongst Black leaders represent the symptoms of self-hate, which is a derivative of Black inferiority.
Black leaders have spent most of their time defining and focusing on what the differences are versus what all of them have in common – being Black in America.
Everyone should have an obligation to fight for justice for themselves and their own people.
We must stop making excuses for not working together.
I say excuse because the large number of children that we are losing daily should embarrass us to do something about it.
Our children don’t care about our status, egos, or our pedigree.
Their destiny has already been determined unless we unite around a common cause – BLACK SURVIVAL.
We are greater than the sum of our parts.
Our problem is that we just don’t get to see often enough.
If Black leaders aren’t fighting for justice for Black people given our history in this country, then they by their actions, are advocating Black inferiority.
Black leaders by your very nature must support and fight for Justice or Else.
