I also must say to you that more and more I am seeing or understanding your position on Obama. Why? More and more or shall I say every time he is pressed on a black issue he either denounces or distances himself from it. Every single time. And no one was caught up in the Obama-mania more than I. We have had many heated(to say the least) exchanges on that topic. In this case the term “Listen to your elders” has never been more true.

I am still backing him but not behind the rose-colored glasses that I once wore. Thanks to your insight elder. My best friend’s father always used to tell us when we made quick, rash analysis or decisions that turned out not the way we wanted and I quote, “Young man, you have to be able to see a long way!!”

I have been engaged in furious dialogue with a member of Obama’s inner-circle. He will be making a presentation in Africa within a month or so that will be used to build solidarity between the African Continent and the exiled nation in America – ironically, he hasn’t discussed his plans with any of us! His intentions are good, although his purpose and the mechanics have not been well thought out. At the core of his plan is the idea of making money western style, in other words capitalism all over again!

Blacks, those who are willing to, are going to have to do some critical analysis and work in order to come up with a viable plan to release us from our victim and second-class status not only in America but around the world. I suspect that western macroeconomics is not the solution for the majority of blacks. However, if what we come up with will provide us with the quality of life and the equity that the Sovereign intended, in addition to the associated feelings of healthy self-esteem that will replace the sense of nihilism and despair in our communities and homes, isn’t that what we ought to be seeking?

Too many of our people will never feel good about themselves, if they persist in pursuing an ‘American Dream’, a dream that was never intended for blacks en masse in the first place.

We will need to analyze all that worked under black leadership, and what did not work in a divine plan; then we will need to understand the reason why some things did not work that perhaps should have! Consider our nations, 59 in Africa, and even the black nations in the Americas (why aren’t they working), given that the Sovereign placed everything in these locations (I don’t mean to apply that none of them are working) to make them work.

And I suspect that we will have to deal with the number one institution that has thrived in America and is responsible for furnishings capitalist clergy and a few at the top with plush homes, mutual funds, Bentley’s, Porsches, Benzes and Cadillac’s, while their parishioners languished for centuries in the ghettos of the religious institutions that they presided over. Afterward, we will likely have to move right into the living rooms and on the airways to get the message out that that we are ready to move forward!

If it is God truly speaking to me, I suspect that he will show me the steps to take. Thanks for your understanding and support, and you are correct, kudos should go out to all blacks who have been able to thrive in a system that had all of the stumbling blocks built into it, that were intended to either prevent them altogether from participating, or to stop their progress. Now we have to lift the rest of our wonderful once most powerful race!

I ran into a woman just outside of Oaktown California last week who implored me for HELP. She said that we need our ministers to pray so that the problems in our inner-cities could be solved. I didn’t tell her all of what I thought, however, I believe that we have prayed sufficiently enough, we simply are not acting on those prayers that have already been answered.

Why? Too many of us are seeking to benefit from a flawed system that has held those who can’t pull themselves up, down! We can pray that God move the mountain, or we can get some dynamite just as is being done all over the world today and detonate the explosives and turn that mountain in rubble!

Always pray for me, for I know that I am a radical – but I believe that Jesus, Mahatma, Garvey, Jesus… and all in between were radicals too!

I agree with you that black male leadership our community has not carried the ball, held our own, protected our families and so forth. To me, victimization is the gift that keeps on giving in our community. We have been dealt a hand that has no trumps in it, yet we still cry about cards instead of trying to create a better hand next go round.

Our problem is so complex that the only way to solve it is to go basic for years and years. If you bring a child in the world….man take care of that child. No more clubbing, no more buying a bunch of garbage(expensive clothing, bling, cars) that your child has the birthright to. By purchasing that stuff and neglecting the child, paternally and financially, you are placing a mortgage on the future of that child and our community. And right about now it looks like the adjustable rates(kids without fathers) are doing whatever and coming back to haunt the feel good purchasers(nights of plasure without thinking about the next day) and the fixed mortgage rates(kids that are in a stable environment) at least have some stability in these hard times.

An animal will take care of its own. Let me say that again to emphasize how far as a people we have sunk. An animal(dog, cat, bird) will take care of its own and fight to the death to protect their young. What in the hell is wrong with us???? For black male leadership, fail may be to good of a word. Catastrophic is more in line.

P.S.
Much and all respect to the brothers who are holding their own. This post does not apply to you as you well know and the weight is heavy but you must continue to carry it. Our race depends on it.

I am as a black male willing to acknowledge the historical successes as well as to admit to the long-term historical failures of black male leadership (in deference to what the white races may have or not done to our race dating back to antiquity), and this is not to say that the Nordic/Aryan/Teutonic races have not made some obviously colossal blunders themselves.

I keep asking myself, why haven’t we been strong enough to overcome our challenges and to stand upon our own two feet? Our failure to do so only gives vent to their feelings of mental superiority? Why are blacks so dependent on whites, even in black nations around the world that ought to be independently wealthy nations given the valuable resources underneath their feet? It is scandalous when you consider how oftentimes those resources are to make whites and other races rich?

My God, blacks and some Arabs too, have sold everything in order to benefit others, even their own sisters and brothers, and still the African continent which ought to be the richest continent on earth, lags behind other inhabited continents, even a small by comparison country the United States of America, which would not be what it is if not for the African Continent!.

Our dependency upon the white race to provide jobs, education, healthcare, comestibles, enterprise systems, technology, leadership, even vaccines to stop the spread of disease (consider Ebola and Aids) … must stop. Why is it that we euphemistically push the idea of acquiring a western-centric education as an elixir that will solve our youngster’s problems in the world? Aren’t we teaching them to retain their dependence upon someone else’s system, a system that was never created or designed to benefit them in the first or second place? When will we devise our own viable systems that will inure to the benefit of our own, as well as others who want to be a part of a truly equitable system?

Our boys in America have given up simply because white America has not provided jobs for them, and because no matter what they do (and many have tried), they are not being accepted in a system that was never designed for them in the first place, other than to be used as servants and garden utensils. Did the white man fail our kids? Should we put that burden on their backs, or have we failed our kids, and aren’t our kids also failing themselves? White conservatives will love what I am writing, but frankly, we are dependent on the white man for our living and dying?

Isn’t the real failure reflected in our communities, particularly among our boys (who are to be the titular heads of their families) because all of us together have been waiting on the white man to rescue us? The white man, even the racist ones have provided more opportunities (jobs) for our kids and for us, than we have provided for our kids and ourselves! A child raised in a welfare home, is unwittingly taught to depend on the system, and that dependency lasts for some from the cradle to the grave, even the ones who find a job that was provided by someone else! And when things go wrong, who do they blame? Of course, they blame the man!

And don’t misunderstand me getting an education can be a fine thing, but it shouldn’t be done just so that one can get a job, aside from an education, every person ought to devise a way to take care of him or herself. I would argue that if every black American were to garner a doctorate from Harvard let’s say, our community would still experience a disproportionate rate of high unemployment, ala El Hajj’s question, what do you call a black man with a PhD…? Like most groups in America, as you have pointed out, there is a leg missing on the community/economic/enterprise stool in the black community!

We must create our own models that work wherein our own people have an opportunity to rise to the top, just as other communities are doing. Otherwise, we will be lost or exploited even more in the burgeoning global economy as we continue to beg for jobs and for other hand-outs, healthcare, retirement…! Our ideal model may not have anything to do with currency for it is not money that we need outside of the current system, but a means of providing a successful quality of life for ourselves and our young! Why did W.E.B. Dubois return to the motherland where he was willing to live and complete his life as an indigent by western standards? Was he indigent mentally? I think not!

Who failed? We certainly cannot blame the black women for our historical failing because in 70% of black American households, black women are raising the kids (Bishop Jakes’ comments aside that black women can’t raise children – obviously, they are raising the children and oftentimes without any assistance from black males), they can’t do it all. If the black women weren’t raising them, the kids would be abandoned to the streets, the grandparents, or to the white man’s adoption or child-warehousing system. Why? We don’t have one of those either!

The fact is that our kids should not give up, but on the other hand we must lift ourselves as a race and create a commonweal/system, currency-based or not, that works for our youngsters as well as for us. And, our youngsters who have been taught to be dependents must create their own sense of community in addition to enterprises that will sustain them as well as their loved ones. The killing off of each other, selling drugs and going to prison by our young is a cowardly a cop out, one in which the end result is still dependency upon the white man’s penal system to take care of them for 20 to 40 years, or to bury them.

It is time for us to come together and to fix what is broken within our psyches and within our communities. I watched a program on television the other night, about the sub-Saharan females who were doing back breaking work in order to reclaim portions of the desert in order to plant crops. And those women accomplished their objectives, and as a result, they have reinvented a system that is working to provide for themselves and their families.

But I thought to myself, where are the men? The men, as it had turned out, went off to look for jobs, of the kind that they will likely never get anyway. Why couldn’t these black males create opportunities for themselves I wonder, why didn’t they help to reclaim the land and create an agricultural system to feed themselves and their family. I know that we are getting in to the area of cultural anthropology here, but the question still begs to be answered.
Who needs a job anyway? Isn’t a job today, simply a western invention? What humans need, is what took place in Eden I believe, a method or way to create, security, sustenance and fulfillment for individuals and for their families, and there are people around the world who are doing just that and without currency. They may not drive a Lexus, Cadillac or BMW, but their lives seem to be living fulfilling lives!

The only thing that I can say about a 3-rd Party System, an idea that has viability with me, has to do with what God apparently spoke to Jeremiah thousands of years ago, when the Hebrew system was system not working, by God’s standards. See Jeremiah the 1st Chapter.

Then the LORD put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the LORD said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth. See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant.

Even God recognizes that at times that there is nothing else to be done but to put someone over a nation (ethnos), who will root out, pull down, destroy, throw down and then build and plant all over again.

We need to start again, instead of hoping to repair a system that is apparently doomed either to failure, or to serve the needs of only certain groups or individuals who choose to thrive in this type of system. Some of us might have to remove ourselves to cooperatives or to our own reservations where we can begin again, and restore dignity and fulfillment to the lives of our youngsters, and bequeath something to them that works, something that they can build upon!

And I will end on an educational note, knowledge without understanding is a waste, therefore Solomon wrote, get knowledge (education), and get an understanding. We have a lot of people in our communities with degrees (knowledge), but many still do not have an understanding sufficient enough to help solve the problem in our communities!

Hasn’t black male leadership or the lack thereof been an abysmal failure?

I suspect that blacks are on the way to an even higher rate of displacement around the globe, given the way that things are happening in today’s global economy.

If you think about it, the only time that blacks in America have experienced full employment in the current system was during a time when all blacks had jobs without pay. We appear to be headed back in that direction now, I believe, and to a time when each of us might have a job but it will be without pay and the dwindling social safety net! If you were to think about it, your wages today do not in many instances meet your household needs.

Furthermore, if every black in America were to somehow acquire a PhD. from an elite University, I suspect that the unemployment rate among blacks would still hover in the high 40′s. Why? Not because of racism, but because we have not created a viable system for ourselves that will provide opportunities or sustain us! We cannot blame others for what we will not do ourselves. At least they hire 50% of us, when we haven’t in most instances provided 1% employment for ourselves.

The American Economic Idol/god, that too many of us have been conditioned to rely upon for survival, will not take care of us any longer. In fact the trickle is being cut off more and more each day!

We must recover and create new methods whereby we take the responsibility for our lives and our own survival, (without waiting for whites to provide solutions for us)! Black Americans may have to eventually withdraw from the current economic/political system that we depend upon, and work to create our own systems that will meet all of our needs!

We are going to be forced into doing so anyway, so we might as well get busy. How many times have you heard a black man or a youngster say, I can’t find a job? My question: Is it a job that they really need, or are they in need of creating a system for themselves that will sustain them and their loved ones?

We should have stayed with the ‘divine commonwealth system’ in the first place I suspect, but some of us got greedy too, and lusted after what the slave masters acquired through theft, forced-labor and confiscation! We need a new people’s Party and a whole new way of thinking, for in the 21st Century – we are also experiencing ‘the god that failed’!!

I suspect that the eunuch was not permitted to sit in the upper room with the others during Pentecost, so Heaven engineered a private session for him, having sent Phillip along to assist. Since we began with the Holy Spirit…, well, I will leave that alone.

However, it would appear that the Spirit has been exiled and exempted from many religious places today, just as the eunuch and the rest of us have been exempted from many gatherings at one time or another! What spirit is our nation of today?

And isn’t it interesting that the same area that the eunuch was passing through at the time when the Spirit was dispatched, is still one of the political hotbeds of today, a place where 3rd world people are still being persecuted and violated with the help of the USA and Israel? I suppose that anyone can tell that I do not agree with venal American foreign policy-mixed with religious dogma, particularly, as it relates to the M-E.

I believe that Paul’s assumptions about Israel stand true today. Israel has never tolerated correction for long! I often remind Christians that the angel that personally appeared to Mary and Elizabeth also appeared on an individualized basis to Hagar. Was Paul, a Hebrew himself anti-Semitic, or was he being truthful about his own nation?

I believe that we need men like the Wright Reverend who will stand up and speak truth to power in America just as the Prophet Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Jesus, Dr. MLK and others had to do with their own people and nations. Bless Senator Obama’s heart, but he is waffling all over the place, and he wants to preside over a foreign policy apparti that will continue to place America and Israel’s agenda above justice for all people.

Jesus spoke in the same manner that the Wright Reverend did when he explained to his disciples that not one stone in the Temple would remain on top of the other. And how about his other prophetic phrasings? To speak against the Temple was blasphemy you know!

I was struck by something that I read last night and our place of importance in the historical and world-wide scheme. I was examining a book at the MLK Library yesterday. The title of the book is, African Presence In the Americas. Consider this opening phrase: The African Diaspora is the primary demographic and cultural product of the present world system, now five hundred years old! I knew it, but it hit me even harder when those terms jumped up off of the pages in front of my eyes.

I was thinking Nat Turner, William Frederick Douglass, W.E.B Dubois, Dr. Martin Luther King and now Obama. I don’t know folks, but I will have to wait and see – there appears to be a dropping off from what I can see. I doubt whether any of these men would fall for what Obama appears to be accepting outright!