LIVING FOR CHANGE

More on African American Leadership

By Stephen Ward

Michigan Citizen, Sept. 16-22, 2007

I would like to respond to Junius, a reader who disagrees with my analysis of African American Leadership in the Aug. 26-Sep. 1 Michigan Citizen. In that article I argued that the debate over John Conyers and impeachment reflects an emerging vision of black leadership and a struggle that recognizes both the contributions and limits of previous models of leadership.

As I see it, the willingness of Lennox Yearwood and others to challenge John Conyers shows that they have taken responsibility for tackling the deep crisis that we face in the nation and the world, even if this means challenging our own established leaders.

Junius called this “a justification for attacking John Conyers” and “another argument for ‘diversity’, this time in politics.” “Before we come out to play with other people,” black people “need effective organization, and leadership from within. That’s why it’s wrong to attack a man like John Conyers who of all the Congressman I know has been one consistently on point for Black People.”

This sounds to me like the notion of “closing ranks” and “black unity” from the 1960s and 1970s. As the Civil Rights movement was transformed into a struggle for Black Power, these were powerful ideas. They helped us reformulate our social, psychological, and political objectives, and the activists and organizations which organized around them greatly advanced black politics.

But these ideas do not meet the needs of black politics today. As we confront the unique circumstances and challenges of the 21st century, we must revise old ideas and develop new ones.

What does it mean to close ranks when the nation and the world face an environmental crisis that can only be resolved by transforming our nation’s consumption patterns and the materialistic culture in which black people, although materially less well-off, are complicit?

What does “black unity” mean today when black communities across the country are suffering under the weight of devastating violence?

I do not think that Black Nationalism, at least as articulated and practiced in the 1960 and 1970s, is enough to build our communities and political movements today. We also need a progressive political analysis that takes into account the changing realities of our troubled times and we need leaders with the vision and the courage to face these realities.

I have no desire to attack John Conyers. I respect him and the work he has done for over forty years. But I do not think he should be beyond challenge and I also recognize his limits. As Yearwood, Bruce Dixon of the Black Agenda Report, and others in this debate have made clear, Conyers can and should initiate impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney (and possibly others), not simply as a punitive measure but as a constitutionally-mandated intervention into our degraded political culture. Yet he refuses to push impeachment forward because he ultimately represents the Democratic party and its interests. And that is why Yearwood and others rightly challenged him. “If Hip Hop Politics is about attacking someone like Conyers,” Junius writes, “who does it define as worthy to hold up the banner of leadership?” To this I have two answers. First, Yearwood and others did not “attack” Conyers; they challenged him to make a principled political decision to initiate impeachment (which, before the mid-term election, he promised to do). Secondly, there are many young people who are claiming leadership (Grace has written about some of them in this column; we see many in our neighborhoods and churches and organizations). They are leaders not by virtue of position or status, but because they exhibit leadership in their community work and activism.

The fundamental issue is this: we must envision a concept of black leadership for the 21st century. As Dixon wrote in discussing Conyers, “It’s high time that we, as African American progressives, stopped confusing elected officials with movement leaders” (Black Agenda Report, Aug. 14). Conyers was elected to the Congress in 1964 and came into prominence during a period when black elected officials clearly represented (and were the product of) the struggle for black political participation. But that struggle for access and power has created a new era in which our struggle has moved beyond simply participating in the system or claiming positions of power within it. Our struggle is to transform the system. And that takes leaders who are willing to struggle not only against the obvious manifestations of power and privilege but will also challenge people, like Conyers, who fail to extend their leadership to the next stage of the struggle.

Stephen Ward teaches at the University of Michigan and is a member of the Boggs Center board.

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