The Black Informant | African American Commentary, News and Community Building

Larry Elder, author of the book “The Ten Things You Can’t Say In America” does a wonderful job in explaining this who issue of “black leader”. Here is what he had to say:

And what about the expression “black leader”? Why—in the 21st century—do Blacks need a “leader”? Who is the Western European Caucasian leader? The Eastern European Caucasian leader? The Mexican-American leader? The Jewish-American leader?

How condescending for the media to constantly speak of a “black leader.” The media apparently perceives other groups as smart enough, competent enough, and intelligent enough to somehow, some way, lead themselves. Not so for blacks.

One day, a white guy walked into my dad’s downtown restaurant. “Did you hear what your leader said on television last night?”

“Who?”

“Your leader, Jesse Jackson.”

“My leader?” my dad said. “Who’s your leader?”

The white man said, “Why, why, well, nobody.”

My father said, “So, I’m intelligent enough to run my own business, but not intelligent enough to make decisions without a leader.”

The white guy said, “Well, what I meant was, you know, like…uh…”

Elder hits the nail right on the head when he basically asks why we not see other people groups having “leaders” that speak for the whole.

Practically anybody these days that is black and has some level of regular media exposure is considered to be a “leader’ in the black community. Weather they like it or not, these “leaders” are given the unspoken task of carrying the perception of an entire race on their backs. One false move, and the fate of an entire race is forever doomed (or at least so it seems to many black Americans).

Now come on ya’ll, you know what I am talking about. Maybe you can relate to the following scenario:

You are watching a game show. All of the contestants are white except one. As the show progresses, everyone is getting the right answers. Eventually, what started off as four contestants (in this case), is now down to two: a white and a black. The host reads the final question. You hold your breath because you have been pulling for the black guy to win since the beginning of the show. What started out as just a friendly game has now become a battle (although very subtle in your mind) between white and black and white. Oh no! The white guy hit the buzzer first! Sigh! He gets the answer correct and wins the money. Someone in your house in frustration yells out “Man, just turn!”

You are not just mad that this black contestant lost the game, its more than that. For a split moment in time, he represented the entire black race…and he lost. (For my non-black readers, all blacks do not think like this all the time, but most will agree that the example that I gave above is a very subtle part of our mindset.)

Since the days of slavery, it has been ingrained in our minds that their must be a person or persons that must serve as the spokesman of all of us. This mindset could possibly be traced to how you typically had one or two people that had the ability to read. What is just as important to note here is that the interpretation of what was read obviously came from the person doing the reading.

Unfortunately, you see this same phenomena today in the black community as people such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton (self-proclaimed black “leaders”) will stir up a crowd with a whole lot of rhetoric with very little hard facts to back it up. Now add the fact that roughly 31% of US actually pick up one book to read within a 12-month period (much of critical thinking is developed in reading) and you have the recipe of a people who are perpetually reliant on the word of these self-proclaimed leaders (at a later date, I will get into how emotionalism is used to further perpetuate this cycle).

As I have said many times in the past, in order for modern Liberalism to have meaning and purpose, the struggle against oppression must be the main part of its message. By constantly addressing blacks in highly visible positions as “our leaders”, what is being implied is that without these individuals, we are lost and doomed.

So the next time you address these highly visible blacks as “our leaders”, what you are doing is keeping a people in a perpetual slave mindset. And if you are black, you can include yourself in that “enslaved” group.