White America will look at the current situation in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray and say, “I don’t get this! You got a black mayor, black police officials. What do you people want?”
I will give you the short answer.
The reason for these kinds of black reactions in the streets is there’s no creditable evidence that black leadership is still fighting in the suites. Over my the 35-year public career, the presence of black people has expanded into every nook and cranny of authority and influence, yet the material and moral condition of the black community has never been worse.
Even a causal review of St. Louis cannot ignore the gigantic racial disparities on all important quality-of-life indicators. The best work on this is the “For the Sake of All” study (forthesakeofall.org). Anybody black in a position of influence and authority who is unfamiliar with this work should be given their immediate and unconditional release.
Over the last 30 years – whether you’re in Baltimore, St. Louis or any other place in America – you saw a transition to a different kind of leadership.
Leaders now are generally better-educated, better-skilled socially and ruthlessly focused on personal ambition. They no longer physically live in the black community and are usually picked to “represent” black people because they know white people. They view their relationship with the larger black community as optional.
Check out how our language has changed. Successful black folks talk about “giving back” to the community. This is an optional, voluntary relationship. In prior generations, successful black professionals spoke in terms of what they “owed.” There was an inherent understanding that someone else paid the toll for you to access the road to success. Your acquired privilege always has outstanding balance – an IOU!
Black public leaders were historically indigenous to the black community. Not only did they live in the black community, but they were chosen by the black community to protect and advance the interests of that community. They understood and accepted that the mantle of leadership came with a moral responsibility: the measure of success was not personal enrichment, but group advancement.
Moral black leadership is always about demanding justice for those whom justice is structurally and systematically denied. What does it sound like?
It’s Martin at the March on Washington. Not the hopeful ending that everyone fawns over, but the demanding, powerful beginning that makes the claim for justice.
It’s Malcolm, our other shining prince, demanding freedom and justice by any means necessary.
What does moral black leadership look like?
It’s businessmen like Tony Thompson and Darryl Jones, who have used their skill to build businesses that not only employ, but also empower black people to advance their lives – and who have generously shared that financial success to advance the general interest of the black community.
It’s Jimmie Edwards, who left a corporate sweet spot to become a judge and then used the power of that position to create a school that rescues and reclaims the lives of black children that too many black have given up on.
It’s Alderman Terry Kennedy leading a decade-long fight for civilian review of city police and having the strength of character to tell the black community we won a round, not the fight.
It’s Donald M. Suggs, investing his energy and treasure into The St Louis American so that there’s still a place where we can raise these issues, even when the national media isn’t paying attention.
Lastly, it’s President Barak Obama, who gave America and us Attorney General Eric Holder.
There was a time in America when power and privilege understood the moral responsibility of public leadership. Two scions of privilege, John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt, had something to say about that.
JFK: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
And FDR: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.”
Mike Jones is a member of The St. Louis American’s editorial board.
