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African American disunity brought about by leadership crisis |
Why do we continue to allow our open enemy to use his tools to keep us divided? The religion of our oppressor and our acceptance of his god head has kept us looking for a pie in the sky and the promise of a heaven after we die. This belief in the oppressor's god gave him dominion over the earth while he was around; yet we had to wait for god's blessing until we were six foot underground.
There were those of us who religion failed to fool; and the tyrant switched his plans and used education and integration as a double edge sword. Due to the lack of our economic stability then and now the dictator planned a program of rural and urban dislocation. This devised migration for jobs undermined the dynamics that stabilize commitments to the family and dehumanized us.
Two major themes were propagated by the preacher's leadership of our people. The success or non-accomplishment in the eyes of our enemy was due to the preachers' ability to keep us passive and non-violent.
Until 1968 and the assassination of Martin Luther King, religion was the major force that confused us. As people we allowed aliens to dupe us into worshipping them and their physical image as the god head. Even when god's physical color was changed, we still maintained a brainwashed concept that the creator had favored others in the creation over us.
Robert Sobukwe, founder and president of the Pan African Congress of Azania (South Africa) in quoting Marcus Garvey said; 'You cannot grow beyond your thoughts. If your thoughts. If your thoughts are those of a slave, you will remain slave. If your throughts go skin-deep, your development will remain skin-deep.' Those of us who continue to accept the religious training of our archdeceiver are impeding salvation and liberation for the world.
With the planned migration of people especially Black people due to our poor economic condition, the family structure began to disband its mutual aid characteristics and took on the role of 'I got mine you get yours if you can'. As Dr. E. Franklin Frazier stated, 'When the Negro moves up in economic and social status he tends to slough off his folk culture that was developed mainly in the southern United States.' This moving away from the land and our productive culture in the south brought about a shift of respect from our elders, whose duty was to pass on what they knew to the young to a worship of youth culture.
When the planned economic crash of October 1929 and staged depression of the 1930's occurred, Negroes were suffering from historical economic exploitation since chattal slavery. The Works Projects Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps during the depression til World War II were a major agent in taking males away from families.
Here again, we failed to heed the timely programs of Marcus Garvey that demonstrated we must do something for ourselves in all areas of power, especially economics. The Moorish Science Temple of America, the Nation of Islam and other organizations are those who are utilizing the foundational work of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League.
With the desegregation of public schools in 1954 and the further destruction of cultural ties that committed us to our ideas toward family, nation and Black people's interest, our disunity was the major instrument that prompted our open enemy to use Civil Rights organizations to confuse us.
The period after 1954 accelerated the counterproductive differences that we as people fostered in our thoughts but did not have the outlets to express. Those Negro organiations largely supported by alien monies especially the financial giants are responsible for our continual genocide.
In retrospect we can point to the 'Big Six. Negro leaders who sold us out for pieces of silver as Malcolm X analyzed the March on Washington in August, 1963. This march on Washington suggested to the nation and duped the less critical of our people that the government and white religious handouts had amended their evil practices against Black people. The initial rebellions of the '60's across the country was the response that the masses of our people had tested this hypocrisy run on us again by our oppressor through their stooges, alien thinking 'Kneegrows'.s
Within the devised civil rights movement, the major progressive force was the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee which moved from its integrationist position during the mid-sixties toward nationalism as their benefactors cut funds in proportion to their move.
With the imminent break of Malcolm X with the Nation of Islam in 1963, SNCC, other organizations, and students were greatly encouraged by Malcolm's rhetoric, as they needed a leader with Malcolm's credentials. The organizations and students needed Malcolm's black nationalist position to spring from because they had no concrete program of their own.
With the departure of Malcolm X, Harold Cruse stated "No matter how nationalistic Malcolm X remained after his break, he was forced by circumstances to swing closer to the civil rights-integrationist forces in order to participate more fully in the broad struggle.'
Many so-called intellectuals, students, and political opportunists fell into Malcolm's camp to associate with him as a way of becoming leaders without building a strong foundation through consistent programmatic work.
These instant revolutionaries and their parties latched onto Malcolm as their savior of the progressive forces in the world.
As a matter of fact the Socialist and other parasites used his zeal to propagate their own programs. Malcolm X wanted a broad base audience before he and his organization took the time to build a strong foundation.
In developing the organizational framework as Malcolm did, he made the serious and costly mistake that many leaders make when they equate charisma with control and popularity power. The use of alien media can give a striving leader a sense of power when in fact our open enemy uses his media to give us a false sense of power. To note two leaders of the past, Marcus Garvey and Elijah Muhammad minimized the use of alien media. They used their own media to develop and sustain their organizations. All leaders must be vigilant as the agents against our rise are present internally and externally.
This leads us to our present situation. In the past we had at least one national organ that spoke to the direct needs of people of African descent in the United States. With the change of the Muhammad Speaks to the Bilian News and the direction of the newspaper, African-Americans lost a valuable organ that spoke to the aspiration of oppressed people around the world. The 'Negro World'; and its successor newspaper 'Garvey Voice' is on the move to becoming the news organ in circulation and progressiveness that our founder Marcus Mosiah Garvey demonstrated during the early days of the UNIA.
In like manner the forces that opposed African and people of African descent's redemption in the past are on the scene today to continue the division of the contemporary nationalistic organizations from teaching and practicing the productive knowledge of pioneer African nationalist organizations. The new generation of black spokesman tend to move further from his historical antecedents and this unpreparedness makes his vision superficial.
This limited scope fails to create a new identification and a scientific theory for action. As this will lead the recent generation of nationalist who do not remember their past to repeat the major and costly mistakes of disunity.
*originally published in the Garvey's Voice March-April 1981
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