These young people, some more militant than others, some whose understandable nihilism and “don’t give a f___” attitudes show up as militancy, are looking for leaders with the courage to tell the truth.
The inconvenient truth is that the continued machinations of racism and its devastating and traumatizing impact upon Black communities will be the undoing of our country. Sharpton stuck to safe truths, convenient ones, about the problem of militarized policing, particularly in Black communities. Sharpton chose not to be a prophetic voice for the people of Ferguson but rather to do the work that the Obama administration sent him to do. That work entailed the placating of the people by ostensibly affirming their sense of injustice, while disaffirming their right to a kind of righteous rage in the face of such injustice. If the nation does not believe in and protect its people, we should not be surprised when the people no longer believe the idea of the nation itself. Absent strong federal intervention, this is exactly what should and will happen.
A recent New York Times poll found that 20 percent of African-Americans disapprove of Obama’s anemic response to the crisis in Ferguson. That disapproval rating is incredibly high when you consider that the president’s approval rating in Black communities usually hovers at or above 90 percent. While Eric Holder’s presence and the Department of Justice’s civil rights investigation are welcome, a visit from the president would be, too. Nobody is trying to hear excuses about the separation of powers. The civil rights that African-Americans have enjoyed for fleeting moments across the centuries are a direct result of strong federal action, often in the face of obstructionists wagging fingers about the infringement upon “states’ rights.”