Specifically, Harvey was critiquing the Poverty Tour organized by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, as well as their vociferous criticism of the president’s leadership, as it relates to the needs of the poor in particular.

Referencing Tavis’ suggestion that the president should sit down with him and West for two or three days to discuss poverty in America, Harvey said, “Who in the hell got two or three days to sit down with your ass?  I ain’t got time to sit down with your monkey behind for two are three days, let alone the President if the United States.  We got three wars going on the economy is crashing, and we going to sit with Tavis’ ass for three days?”  Harvey also alluded to a more sinister motive for the West, Smiley Poverty Tour asking, “Where are you getting the money for the buses?”

The black political rift began many months ago when Tavis Smiley and Al Sharpton traded political barbs on their respective radio shows, and it quickly escalated into a public confrontation on the radio airways.  The rift between the two men centered on a critique by Smiley that Sharpton was carry water for president Obama, and was letting him (the president) off the hook concerning advancing the “black agenda.”  Sharpton responded in kind to Smiley’s political critique, and the controversy quickly became politically airborne.

Enter Cornel West, a political confidant of Tavis Smiley, who is a controversial intellectual/political figure in his own right. The Smiley versus Sharpton political rift was taken to another level when Professor West took issue with Sharpton’s relationship with Obama, during a panel discussion on a popular MSNBC television talk show that ultimately deteriorated into a public TV spectacle.

Professor Boyce Watkins, founder of YourBlackWorld.com, entered the political fray following the MSNBC political spectacle, and positioned himself as a moderating voice, but was clearly espousing the Sharpton narrative and criticized Smiley’s point of view.  Interestingly enough, Watkins simultaneously seemed to modulate his political attack relative to West.

More recently, in the context of Steve Harvey’s critical political analysis of the West, Smiley Poverty Tour, Prof. Watkins delivered a political broadside attack against Harvey, among others.  Watkins said, “He (Harvey) ended his rant by saying that he spotted an Uncle Tom driving a bus and then Harvey accused Cornel West and Tavis Smiley of being “poverty pimps.”

Watkins continued, “While listening to Harvey, I could not help but get the impression that he’s concluding that by speaking on behalf of the poor, and challenging political leadership to modify economic policies, you are pimping the poor rather than helping them.  I guess that would make me a poverty pimp too, so perhaps I’d better just remain silent.”

“Steve Harvey is doing a good job of campaigning for President Obama. Harvey was recently invited to President Obama’s birthday party, putting him squarely in the camp of Black public figures that have been recruited by the White House to help discredit anyone who speaks ill of the Obama Administration. Rather than asking whether or not Smiley and West’s issues are relevant, Harvey, Tom Joyner and others know that it’s easier to simply smear the credibility of the messengers.  In American politics, character assassinations are typically preferred rather than actually dealing with the issue itself, Watkins concluded.”

This sophomoric serial political saga would be laughable if it were not a pathetic treatise on the state of black political leadership going forward.  The advent of black celebrity political leadership has infused infotainment, comedy and political sensationalism into the realm of serious political discourse and it compromises the legitimate political aspirations of the masses of black folk.

These competing black political leadership neophytes are in the process of squandering the political capital and opportunities associated with ascension of the first black American to the presidency of the United States.  Apparently, the unelected neo black political leadership is attempting to engage president Obama into a political accountability scenario.  However, they had no meaningful role in the making of the first black American president, other than the popularity contest of the general election, and an Amen…

As this writer recalls, candidate Senator Barack Obama defied the conventional political wisdom of the black civil rights leadership orthodoxy, both elected and unelected, and ultimately prevailed in a very contentious party presidential primary process.  Having won his party’s nomination with only esoteric black political support, coupled with his personal political sensibilities, presidential candidate Obama gave the multitudes of black Americans the opportunity to vote for him in the general election popularity contest.

Now, some notable and well placed prominent black political leader aspirants are attempting to corral the president into an agenda for black Americans and the poor.  What and whose “black agenda” are they speaking of?  The black civil rights agenda, or are they talking about the black political power agenda?  Likewise, what agenda for the poor are they referencing (White, Black, Latino, Asian etc), and have they advanced any written policy recommendations?  Or is it simply political rhetoric?

The president as well as the congress, respond, react to, and are animated by, “political power relationship groups” or individuals that represent respective political power relationship groups.  Real-time hardball electoral politics is not personality driven!  This writer suspects that none of the above mentioned prominent black Americans represent a real-time political power relationship group.  It appears as though the individuals that are engaged in this politically superfluous controversy are prominent within their respective genre.  And in some cases they are informally organized in disparate black groupings competing against each other for the ear of the president, fifteen minutes of political fame and an illusion of power.

The last time that this writer checked, there was no definitive black civil rights agenda, nor is there a cohesive political power group organized and raising money for the purpose of advancing that specific political agenda.  Likewise, there is no definitive black political power agenda in place with organized advocates raising funds to move that agenda.  There are only ad hoc political formulations with short life spans.  Therefore, what black agenda are they espousing that the president can address?

On the other hand, what political interest group is raising money, organizing and lobbying on behalf of poor people?  Are any of these vociferous advocates for black and poor folk engaged in any activities on the Hill, advancing policy positions on behalf of their target group?  Are they engaged in voter education and registration activities during and between elections?  Or is it only an exercise in black rap?

Some in the black community advance an argument that ninety-five plus percent of the black community voted for Obama in the general election, therefore the president must address the needs of his principal constituency.  Accordingly, the president must address our political demands!  Well, making political demands, and speaking truth to power without, organization, strategy, tactics and a budget for achieving specific short and long-range objectives is political power 101.  When all the pieces to the political power puzzle are in place, very little needs to be said on radio and television talk shows, or other intelligence gathering forums.

Relevant links:

http://www.harlemweekly.com/?p=546

http://www.harlemweekly.com/?p=494

http://www.harlemweekly.com/?p=467

http://www.harlemweekly.com/?p=481

Harvey Interview:

http://yourblackworld.com/2011/08/16/dr-boyce-speaks-in-nyc-about-pres-obama-smiley-and-west/

The ongoing black political saga in America was animated to greater heights in this 2012 election season by a controversy that was ignited on cable TV with the glib tongues and quick political wits of Professor Cornel West and Rev. Al Sharpton, on a recent MSNBC Show hosted by Ed Schultz.  The clash of these popular political Titans is the latest rendition and spectacle of the internal debate that has been percolating beneath the political correct surface, since the election of President Barack Obama.

Reference to a previous iteration of this contemporary black political saga is relevant to the West vs. Sharpton argument because the previous political attack on Sharpton was levied by TV host Tavis Smiley during a popular radio talk show.  A political nexus occurs, as Smiley and West are publically and programmatically the best of friends.  Moreover, both Smiley and West have respectively, challenged Sharpton’s apparently cozy relationship with President Obama, as inimical to holding the president accountable to the illusive “black agenda.”

The vociferous MSNBC debate on the “black agenda” by West and Sharpton is getting mixed reviews in the black community.  Some in the black community say that “those two heavy brothers shouldn’t argue in public like that because it portrays the black community as divided politically.” In another black political quarter they hold, “the political debate on the black agenda going forward is a healthy development and should be encouraged.”

The “black agenda” is a perennial political debate in the black community at all levels but unfortunately when it is discussed in the public by members of the celebrity leadership and anointed leaders in media forums the black agenda is ill defined, and synonymous with the civil rights agenda, and civil rights leadership.  There is a political dichotomy between the “black agenda” and the “civil rights agenda” that has roots in contemporary political history and has an application in 21^st century black American politics.  Unfortunately, the designated black American political leadership has not articulated the texture that is black internal politics and thereby, may be unwittingly promoting political disinformation along with MSNBC.

Dr. Boyce Watkins, a neo-African American public voice, is quoted on his blog post entitled “Cornel West, Al Sharpton Argue About President Obama.”  Boyce said, “I knew the conversation would be volatile, and I was concerned about the imagery of two black men going to war on MSNBC.  Ed Schultz was the MSNBC host of “A Stronger America:  The Black Agenda, a show that allowed a few voices to air their perspective on what a black agenda should look like in the age of Obama.”

“As I expected,” Boyce continued, “the argument came to a predictable boiling point.  Consistent with the views of his close colleague, Tavis Smiley, Cornel West fought hard to short-circuit the partnership between President Obama and Rev. Al Sharpton.  Al Sharpton, a man not known to back down from anyone, defended his position well and also challenged those who sit in their ivory tower and talk without taking action.”

Dr. Boyce, a confidant of Rev. Sharpton continued, “I watched the entire exchange shaking my head, primarily because I knew that such a fight was simply inevitable.  As I wrote on the Huffington Post a couple of weeks ago, the Obama Presidency has created a divide among black public figures that I pray will not cripple our community.”

Unfortunately the episodic public political debate relative to the “black agenda” is seen in binary, black and white optics, while at the grassroots level the saga of the black agenda going forward is in living color and has an eclectic political diversity.  However, as the comments of Dr. Boyce highlights some blacks’ belief that varying political positions articulated in the public by black public figures is perceived as potentially crippling the black community.

Although the issue concerning the nature of the black agenda in the age of Obama is a relevant and significant subject in need of a broad based public political discourse, we consumers of popular TV media are only exposed to black celebrity political leadership with a myopic or circular political discourse…

Gary James, chairman of the National Black Grand Old Party (www.NBGOP.net ) said, “Mainstream media always rounds up the usual suspects to discuss the important issues relating to the black community, such as the black agenda in the age of President Obama.  Consequently, the substance of these engagements and exchanges tends to be politically sophomoric, parochial, generating much heat, but shedding little light and understanding going forward.”

“Interestingly enough, none of the anointed black American leaders tapped by MSNBC to discuss, explore and define the “black agenda” offered a contemporary context wherein the notion of a black political agenda resides…   James continued, “The black agenda is separate and distinct from the civil rights agenda.  Accordingly, the black agenda and the civil rights agenda are not interchangeable as the spokespeople for Ed Schultz have represented.”

According to James, the black agenda was methodically eclipsed by the civil rights agenda during the 1960’s and 70’s in the context of a sophisticated political disinformation campaign to marginalize emerging black power politics and its “militant” community based advocates.  The era of Obama demonstrates that black America has entered the post civil rights period.  Hence, the dormant black political agenda of the civil rights period is emerging.

James concluded, “In the future I hope that mainstream media reaches out for black American political input beyond the usual designated leadership suspects.  Should they need some help going forward I was be happy to offer a list of potential participants.” Reference the relevant links:

http://www.blackpt.org/?p=480

http://www.blackpt.org/?p=434

http://www.blackpt.org/?p=409

http://wp.me/pDSzo-1

Inspired by the preemptive firing of a mid-level employee of the US Department of Agriculture, Mrs. Shirley Sherrod, the ensuing political debates, conversations and media coverage has again raised the prospect of a teachable moment relative to race in America.  The “Sherrod episode” was ignited by a political duel based on charges of alleged racism between the emerging Tea Party movement and the NAACP, a century old civil rights organization.

The NAACP President made a public announcement of a resolution calling on the Tea Party leadership to denounce the “racist elements” within their movement.  The resolution was directed to persons who brandished at Tea Party rallies, political posters, signage and rhetoric linking President Obama with the likes of Hitler, Carl Marx and Lenin, as well as portraying the President as an “uncle Tom.”

For their part, the members of the Tea Party, in response to the NAACP’s public admonition for the Tea Party to call out its racist elements, leveled accusations against the NAACP’s leadership for alleged acts of racism and reverse discrimination.  Subsequently, a political tit for tat between the two organizations was enjoined.

The Tea Party (conservative) vs. the NAACP’s (liberal) political conflagration was crystallized by an edited video tape engineered by a conservative blogger, was positioned to inflame the political wedge issue of “race” as bate for the Obama administration.  The Obama administration and the NAACP took that bate and Mrs. Sherrod was summarily fired by her boss, the Secretary of Agriculture, and the NAACP vociferously announced its support for Mrs. Sherrod’s firing from her employment.

The controversial firing of Mrs. Sherrod was exacerbated when the doctored tape was viewed in its entirety.  The tape was ultimately exposed as a political butchering job orchestrated by the conservative blogger hit man, in the first instance.  As a consequence of the political expose Mrs. Sherrod received across the board apologies from the NAACP, the Obama administration among others, and was offered her job back or another position, if she so desired.

In the wake of this unsuccessful political hatchet job, Mrs. Sherrod has become a media celebrity and was feted around the media circuit as a glowing example of racial sensitivity and personal growth relative to the race issue, that she deservedly represents.  Hence, the “race” conversation remains a predominant subject of the media among others, and the much touted teachable moment continues to be a hot topic engaging the usual political and civil rights suspects.

Interestingly enough, the plethora of media coverage and vociferous rhetoric between competing political positions is generating a substantial amount of heat, but very little light in the context of the teachable moment.  Thus far the apparent teachable moment is being squandered by partisan arguments that only attempt to advance respective political perspectives.  These race based political juxtapositions only serve to demonstrate how allegations of racism are hustled by competing interests from all quarters, whether substantiated or not, particularly during electoral political seasons.

Needless to say, the intellectual integrity of the race conversation has been thoroughly compromised in the balance, leaving the public at large completely disillusioned concerning the fact of race.  The media as well as the typical political hucksters, both conservative and liberal, are all culpable for undermining the intelligence of the American people.

In the media’s zeal for higher ratings and in the quest by the Tea Party, NAACP, among others for political brownie points, they continue to hoodwink the public, by hustling intellectually outdated information, regarding race.  At some point the teachable moment relative to the race conversation must be based on 21^st century scientific data and academic scholarship.

However, the NAACP and others who are sustained by the civil rights industry continue to engage in race based politics.  Policies and political minority juxtapositions that serve to sustain their position are the only issues under discussion.  The NAACP’s victorious and glorious legacy of advancing America and the African American community during the dark history of the 19^th and 20^th century is laudable.  The NAACP integrity remains essentially unquestioned as a stalwart entity that helped to deliver the virtues of the America experiment to all Americans.

However, the critical political needs of Black American’s are no longer relevant to the orthodox civil rights agenda, vis-à-vis, its race based and partisan political sensibilities.  Yet, kudos extended to the NAACP and the respective leaders of the storied civil rights movement, for their achievements are appropriate.  But now, Black America requires a new political paradigm going forward, in the context of a coherent and politically sophisticated Black agenda…  The contemporary NAACP has effectively positioned itself to address the advancement of “all people of color” which is inimical to the particular needs of Black Americans in the quest to be politically and economically competitive in the 21^st century’s global community.

On the other hand, the Tea Party movement has positioned itself as a political conservative initiative, but masquerades its race based politics in policies, and positions, with political buzz words and hot button wedge issues that are abhorrent to most Black folk.  By way of the “modern conservative” movement, special interest groups have effectively hijacked the Republican Party base and articulate a revisionist Republican history, in order to reposition the party of President Lincoln.  However, the Grand Old Party (GOP) in fact has no organic conservative roots associated with its founding.  The founding of the GOP was based on progressive eclecticism, and served as a cornerstone of the victorious civil rights advances that characterized African American communities successes of the 19^th century.  The political achievements of African American’s during the first civil rights period, remains unparalleled in comparison with the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.

The conservative movement in the Republican Party had its ignominious birth during the early 1960s and it was based on the fact that African Americans, by way of the modern civil rights movement (20^th century) successfully infiltrated the Democratic Party of the Jim Crow era.  As a consequence the Southern Democratic conservatives for the most part, infiltrated the Republican Party and rendered it conservative during the early 1960s.  Hence, the conservative wing of the Republican Party was and continues to be a race based phenomenon that has positioned the GOP accordingly.

Moreover, America was born with the birth defect of “race” based inferiority and discrimination.  Unfortunately, racial dichotomies are a part of the fabric of the American political and social sensibility.  But the notion of race and the idea of multi-racialism is a delusion as a matter of fact.  Race as a distinguishing factor among human beings is a false and contrived construct that was designed and imposed to achieve social, economic and political objectives on behalf of the white ruling elite.  The political page relative to the multi-racial delusion must be turned, in order to end this infamous and bygone era.

Fortunately, the advances of science has totally and unequivocally discredited race as a factor that distinguishes human beings.  This writer remains confounded as to why the teachable moment regarding the race conversation is not based on current scientific data and scholarship.  However, he remains hopeful that at some point, hopefully in the near future, the fourth estate (media) will rise to the occasion, step up to the plate and disclose facts that will stop the race based political hustle…

Apparently, the prevailing political leadership in both parties and their respective operatives are too vested in minority based political juxtapositions to turn the corner on race motivated electoral politics.  Perhaps we the people must raise the intellectual quality of the race conversation beyond the partisan rhetorical political diatribe…  Maybe we the people will ultimately have to raise the political, social consciousness going forward.

Gary James is a former civil rights staff organizer in New York City, under the leadership of the late Dr. George Wiley, President of the National Welfare Rights Organization, (NWRO) from 1966-70.  James is a freelance writer, author, political analyst, and consultant.  For more information visit: www.garyjames.info

Should there be a “black agenda” in America? And if the answer to that question is ‘yes,’ what is the black agenda?

These are the questions that black leaders and black people have been discussing more and more since President Obama took office.  Reverend Al Sharpton hosted a leadership summit addressing this very issue.   Recently, a group of black leaders got together on an MSNBC special to talk about this issue in more detail.   And many will remember the on-air argument that Tavis Smiley and Rev. Sharpton had a few months ago about this topic.

Tavis believes that Obama isn’t doing enough.   Sharpton believes that Obama need not ‘ballyhoo’ a black agenda.   Most agree, though, that something needs to be done.

With a 16.5% unemployment rate (compared to 9.7% for white Americans), an education system that is under serving black children, higher than average rates of death from diseases like breast cancer, and continued social issues, it is hard to disagree that there is need for some kind of targeted and focused approach to dealing with the issues that affect  African-American.   But many are divided on whether or not the president is doing enough for black people, whether or not it’s incumbent on him to do anything at all, and what should or shouldn’t be done.

For perspective and insight on this continuing discussion among black people and leaders, click Here…

This article originally appeared in the December 2009 issue of Aspenia, the Italian journal published by the Aspen Foundation Italy.

Don’t let the virulent hatred of Obama’s presidency – veiled in “policy differences” – fool you. Just ask someone raised around bigotry. Carlos Dews  is an author, a professor of English literature, and chairman of the Department of English Language and Literature at John Cabot University in Rome.

” ‘The nigger show.”

I first heard this expression used to describe the Obama administration during a visit to my hometown in East Texas during the early summer of 2009.   I understood what the epithet meant: Our minds are made up, the president lacks legitimacy, and there is nothing he can do that we will support. I was  not surprised to hear such a phrase.

I grew up in the 1960s during the ragged end of the Jim Crow era, where many of the books in my school library were stamped Colored School, meaning they had been brought to the white school when the town was forced to integrate the public school system. I recall my parents had instructed me, before my first day of elementary school, not to sit in a chair where a black child had sat. And I remember my sister joked that her yearbook, when it appeared at the end of her first year of integrated high school, was in “black and white.”

The outward signs of racism of my home state have now disappeared, but racial hatred remains. My father and his friends still use the word nigger to refer to all black people, and the people of my hometown don’t hesitate to spout their racist rhetoric to my face, assuming I agree with them. I hold my tongue for the sake of having continued access to this kind of  truth. I learned long ago how not to accept the hatred I was being taught and how to survive not having done so. More recently, I realized that I also learned another lesson: how to recognize racism when it masquerades as something else.

More than 40 years after my first experiences with racism, I am thousands of miles away in Rome, but surrounded by ghosts. Last year, I received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for a community program called the  Big Read, which sponsors activities to encourage communities to come together to read and discuss a single book. I chose Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, in part because I thought that some of the most salient issues in the novel – racism, classism, xenophobia, the Jim Crow era – were perhaps relevant to an increasingly diverse, contemporary Italy.

That there is racism in Italy is obvious to anyone who pays attention to current affairs. In fact, during the first week of the Big Read Rome, a story in one of Italy’s national newspapers detailed the experience of a  Nigerian woman being called sporca nera (essentially, dirty nigger) by two women she asked to stop smoking on a Roman bus.

But I never imagined that consideration of the novel would prove so relevant to a country that had just elected its first black president. Ironically, until the election of Barack Obama, my discussions of racism in the United States seemed historical. I felt that with the passage of the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s, the country had turned a corner,  that the slow evaporation of overt racism was perhaps inevitable. Now, my personal experience of Southern racism feels current and all too familiar. A  news story about the Big Read that appeared in La Repubblica on Sept. 20 (unaware that my grant was awarded during the Bush  administration),  presciently brought Rome, Obama, To Kill a Mockingbird, and racism together in its headline: “Obama brings antiracist book to Rome.”

Jimmy Carter was lambasted for having recently explained that the vehemence with which many Americans resist Obama’s presidency is an expression of racism. Carter was accused of fanning the flames of racial misunderstanding by labeling as “racist” what on the surface could be perceived as legitimate policy differences. Like Carter, as a white Southern man, I can see beyond the seemingly legitimate rhetoric to discern what is festering behind much of the opposition to Obama and to his administration’s policy initiatives. I also have access, via the racist world from which I came, direct confirmation of the racial hatred toward Obama.

The veiled racism I sense in the United States today is couched, in public discourse at least, in terms that allow for plausible deniability of racist intent. And those who resist any policy initiative from the Obama administration engage in a scorched-earth policy that reminds me of the self-centered white flight, the abandonment of public schools, and the proliferation of private schools, that followed the 1954 Brown v. Board of  Education decision to desegregate public schools. The very people, like my own rural, working-class family back in East Texas, who stand to gain from  the efforts of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress are,  because of their racism, willing to oppose policies that would benefit them  the most. Their racism outweighs their own self-interest.

Unfortunately, racists in the United States have learned one valuable lesson since the 1960s: They cannot express their racism directly. In public, they must veil their racial hatred behind policy differences. This obfuscation makes direct confrontation difficult. Anyone pointing out their racist motivations runs the risk of unfairly playing “the race card.” But I know what members of my family mean when they say – as so many said during the town hall meetings in August – that they “want their country back.” They want it back, safely, in the hands of someone like them, a white person.  They feel that a black man has no right to be the president of their country.

During a phone conversation a few weeks after Obama’s election, my father lamented that he and my mother might have to stop visiting the casinos in Shreveport, La.: Given Obama’s election, “the niggers are already walking around like they own the place. They won’t even give up their seats for white women anymore. I don’t know what we’re going to do with ‘em.”

My students often ask me how I managed to avoid accepting the lesson in racism offered by my family. From the time I was 4 or 5 years old – roughly the same age as Scout Finch, the narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird – I recall knowing that I didn’t agree with racism. More important, my paternal grandmother provided me with the encouragement that I could ignore what I  was being taught. She provided me with the courage to resist.

My grandmother hoped that my father and his father represented the last  generations of the type of Southern man that had shaped her life – virulently racist, prone to violence, proud of their ignorance, and self-defeatingly stubborn. It was a type of Southern man that she hoped and prayed I could avoid becoming.

However, my father and his father were not the last of their kind; their  racial hatred has been passed on. My grandmother, if she were alive, would recognize the same tendencies among many of the people who shout down politicians and bring guns to public rallies. She would also see how the only change they have made is to replace overt racist epithets with more euphemistic language.

Rather than seeing my home state and its racist attitudes, slowly, over time, pulled in the direction of more acceptance the country as a whole has become more like the South, the racial or cultural equivalent of what is called the Walmartization of American retail.

It might be easy to see literature as impotent in the face of the persistence and adaptability of racism. But I continue to believe in the transformative potential of literature and its ability to provide an alternative view of the world. And for children who are not lucky enough to have grandmothers like mine, I believe that books like To Kill a Mockingbird can provide inoculation against the virus that is racism.

The master narrative has in fact facilitated and enabled the subjugation of indigenous peoples and cultures around the world in the context of empire building and the western domination of the Christian religion.  The international slave trade, colonialism, and European cultural and economic imperialism around the planet are well documented.

Despite the advances in science and DNA technology that have thoroughly discredited race as a biological fact that distinguishes various types of human beings, race based notions and discrimination remains consequential.  The multi racial narrative continues to punctuate professional language as well as in the common vernacular.

Although the Judeo-Christian biblical injunction discusses all human beings as children of God, and explores the transgressions of our parents Adam and Eve, there is little leadership on the part of clergy to transcend to race based paradigm.  Hence, the master narrative of white superiority remains a cornerstone of human relations in the 21^st century.  As such, the master narrative is a consequential factor to resolving the manifold problems plaguing America and the world.

Some have posited that racism is the basis of the master narrative and racism is at the core of America’s internal problems as well as foreign relation issues.  Also it is argued in these same quarters that European imperialism, in the context of slavery and colonialism is the basis of the intractable conflicts in the Middle East, and other hotspots in the world.

Are racism and the doctrine white supremacy the basis of human relations problems and unfolding world tensions and wars?

To read the entire click here

The Black civil rights leadership archetype may ultimately be ill fated, and its race based political paradigm will be left in the dust of 19^th and 20^th century African American political history.   Moreover, the civil rights agenda as a practical political matter is only pertinent to a “minority” community socio-political sensibility.  This African American socio-political sensibility was relevant during days of the civil rights movement only.

The advent of the Obama era has sealed the ultimate fate of the civil rights agenda and leadership in terms of its domination and definition of Black American politics going forward.  During Senator Barack Obama’s successful campaign for president, he skillful navigated his way beyond the political reach of the Black civil rights leadership orthodoxy, and the race based political paradigm.  Now, traditional Black political leaders and neo-Black leaders are seeking to negotiate a political relationship with the president, based on race.

Barack  Obama, the first Black American President is a classic example of the seriously diminished civil rights leadership and agenda, as it relates to its increasingly marginalized political status.  The first Black American president was successfully elected to office without genuflecting to the Black orthodox leadership or subscribing to the civil rights and Black American political agendas.  Despite the political machinations of Black elected officials and civil rights leadership, President Obama gained the nomination of his party and was impressively victorious during his election to the presidency.

Now that President Obama is in office, the popular civil rights organizing tactics and strategy are being deployed by the conventional Black leadership in order to advance their respective agendas.  Typically, the civil rights political maneuvers include, making political demands, using demonstrations and numbers in the streets, direct action tactics, and manipulating media.  Apparently, in media celebrity Smiley’s quest for political leadership stardom, he is deploying classic civil rights organizing tactics, which generate limited outcomes.

On the other hand, although Sharpton’s political leadership may be precarious, his political instincts are sophisticated enough for him to utilize the ebbing civil rights political tide to seemingly negotiate a safe, relevant landing, and made a wise transition in his political rhetoric accordingly.

While the political epitaph of virtually all other Black New York political leaders are in the process of being written, Rev. Sharpton’s fortunes appears to be on the rise.  But, the once civil rights boy wander, may represent the last Black leader of the civil rights orthodoxy.  The civil rights movement has lost its cutting edge in the Black community, particularly among youth and has undermined its competitive advantage in electoral politics.

Click here to read the entire piece.

The contentious dialogue was rooted in Smiley’s recent attack on Rev. Sharpton for a New York Times article in which Sharpton was quoted as saying that he feels the president is wise not to “ballyhoo” a black agenda. In a platform granted to him by The Tom Joyner Morning Show, Tavis put Rev. Sharpton, NAACP President Ben Jealous, Urban League President Marc Morial, Harvard Professor Charles Ogletree and even Dorothy Height on “super blast,” arguing that these individuals have not shown sufficient evidence that they care about the interests of the African-American community.

Bad move Tavis. Very bad.

The conversation was rocky from the start, and you could tell that Sharpton was livid. Tavis Smiley was a bit calmer, and deserves credit for calling in to Sharpton’s show to have the discussion. Smiley kept saying the words “I love you,” to Sharpton, which is usually another bad sign. When Smiley says, “I love you,” that typically means that he’s apologizing for attempting to remove your testicles. Sharpton, like other New Yorkers, won’t say he loves you if he doesn’t, which made the conversation that much more awkward. What is also interesting is that Smiley, for some reason, is convinced that he can present himself as an objective observer of the Obama administration when he has spent the last three years doing everything he can to undermine Obama’s political progress. Rush Limbaugh couldn’t have done a better job.

Rather than following the lead of Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has embraced passionate advocacy over obsessive confrontation, Smiley has chased President Obama to every corner of the globe, like a 12-year old pursuing a bully who stole his bike.This has not worked to Smiley’s benefit, and I am not sure if the “anti-Obama” crusade is something that even his fellow Obama critics can understand or support.

The great black divide appears to be a spillover from hard feelings in the Democratic primary, where “Team Clinton” was tossed to the side in favor of the new black face on the block. Smiley and others had access to the Clinton White House, and now a separate team of coordinated civil rights leaders have access to President Obama. Like most politicians, Obama prefers to deal with those who didn’t undercut his rise to the White House, which makes Al Sharpton, Marc Morial and Ben Jealous preferable to Jesse Jackson, Tavis Smiley, Michael Eric Dyson and others who’ve been critical of his political decisions. I don’t agree with this approach, but that’s what politicians do. While I’ve rarely heard Rev. Jackson say a negative word about Obama (other than the infamous slip of the tongue nearly two years ago), it seems that Smiley has made a career out of criticizing the president.

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