Al Sharpton Does Not Have My Ear: Why We Need New Black Leadership Now

Those limitations emerged almost immediately in his sermonic remarks as he stood in a pulpit over Michael Brown’s casket. Unable to resist shaking a finger at “looters and rioters,” he told them “this is not about you. This is about justice.”  Justice apparently is not about us. Taking a page from the standard conservative Black preacher playbook, he goes on to rail against a Black community that mistakenly thinks the “definition of blackness” is “about how low you could go.” Among these misguided Black people, there is the apparent sense that “it ain’t Black no more to be successful.” Thus he concludes, that “we have to clean up our community so we can clean up the United States of America.” We have to do this because, “nobody is going to help us if we don’t help ourselves.” Thus, we must quickly dispense with our penchant for “ghetto pity parties.”

To quote Philip Agnew of the Dream Defenders, when asked recently about the helpfulness of clergy to the work in Ferguson, some of the clergy have been “problematic.” Problematic is putting it mildly. Sharpton’s words should certainly put to rest those critics who suggest that Black people are never outraged about “Black-on-Black crime” and the ills that plague Black communities. These sermonic turns of phrase rise to the level of cliché when set against any number of sermons preached from Black pulpits on Sunday mornings.

The idea that Black communities can be saved through self-help is an idea that emerged during the immediate moment following Reconstruction, when Northerners and the federal government, weary of helping Black people get on their feet after centuries of slavery and tired of being at odds with their White Southern brethren, abdicated all sense of responsibility to fledgling, newly freed Black communities. In response to this massive depletion of government resources, Black communities turned inward, touting a politics of respectability, hoping that if they merely “acted better” and “more fit,” the nation would accept them.

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