When a billionaire wants your old time civil rights organization, your historically black college, your morning drive-time deejay, or your black congressman, there ain't nothin' you can do. These Janes and these Joes who make up the current black political class, from the preachers to the so-called civil rights leaders to the Congressional Black Caucus, they just ain't loyal to the masses of African Americans they purport to represent.
The current black political class, with the Congressional Black Caucus at its highest level, was raised up in the wake of our people's historic Freedom Movement against racial segregation and domestic apartheid. Fifty years ago, most of us imagined that having more black faces in high places would mean a better life for all of us. We were wrong.
We've gone from six or seven black members of Congress to a crew of 42, from few or no black behinds in the big chairs of City Halls, the speakers of state houses, and few in the leadership of big county governments to more than 13,000 black elected officials, and thousands more in appointed offices. At the same time, relative black unemployment hasn't moved an inch, black family wealth has fallen off a cliff, gentrification is still the only urban economic development policy, and the nation's black 13% accounts for over 40% of its prisoners. Far from representing our people's urgent needs, wants and desires in the halls of power, the supposedly powerful black political class has nothing but contempt for ordinary black people and excuses for its impotence.
