Archive | February, 2010

Sunday Morning Coffee Break: Eddie Glaude’s “The Black Church Is Dead?”

28 Feb

This is a piece forwarded to me by one of my readers and Twitter followers @tsboddy on a piece that Princeton professor Eddie Glaude, Ph.D. wrote for the Huffington Post entitled “The Black Church is Dead.”  Clearly this is up my alley and I plan to have a response to this later on this week.  But I think this is good food for thought on the last day of Black History Month 2010.  Stay tuned for my response.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

The Black Church, as we’ve known it or imagined it, is dead. Of course, many African Americans still go to church. According to the PEW Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life, 87 percent of African Americans identify with a religious group and 79 percent say that religion is very important in their lives. But the idea of this venerable institution as central to black life and as a repository for the social and moral conscience of the nation has all but disappeared.

Several reasons immediately come to mind for this state of affairs. First, black churches have always been complicated spaces. Our traditional stories about them — as necessarily prophetic and progressive institutions — run up against the reality that all too often black churches and those who pastor them have been and continue to be quite conservative. Black televangelists who preach a prosperity gospel aren’t new. We need only remember Prophet Jones and Reverend Ike. Conservative black congregations have always been a part of the African American religious landscape. After all, the very existence of the Progressive Baptist Convention is tied up with a trenchant critique of the conservatism of the National Baptist Convention, USA. But our stories about black churches too often bury this conservative dimension of black Christian life.

Second, African American communities are much more differentiated. The idea of a black church standing at the center of all that takes place in a community has long since passed away. Instead, different areas of black life have become more distinct and specialized — flourishing outside of the bounds and gaze of black churches. I am not suggesting that black communities have become wholly secular; just that black religious institutions and beliefs stand alongside a number of other vibrant non-religious institutions and beliefs.

Moreover, we are witnessing an increase in the numbers of African Americans attending churches pastored by the likes of Joel Osteen, Rick Warren or Jentzen Franklin. These non-denominational congregations often “sound” a lot like black churches. Such a development, as Dr. Jonathan Walton reminded me, conjures up E. Franklin Frazier’s important line in The Negro Church in America: “In a word, the Negroes have been forced into competition with whites in most areas of social life and their church can no longer serve as a refuge within the American community.” And this goes for evangelical worship as well.

Thirdly, and this is the most important point, we have witnessed the routinization of black prophetic witness. Too often the prophetic energies of black churches are represented as something inherent to the institution, and we need only point to past deeds for evidence of this fact. Sentences like, “The black church has always stood for…” “The black church was our rock…” “Without the black church, we would have not…” In each instance, a backward glance defines the content of the church’s stance in the present — justifying its continued relevance and authorizing its voice. Its task, because it has become alienated from the moment in which it lives, is to make us venerate and conform to it.

But such a church loses it power. Memory becomes its currency. Its soul withers from neglect. The result is all too often church services and liturgies that entertain, but lack a spirit that transforms, and preachers who deign for followers instead of fellow travelers in God.

Black America stands at the precipice. African American unemployment is at its highest in 25 years. Thirty-five percent of our children live in poor families. Inadequate healthcare, rampant incarceration, home foreclosures, and a general sense of helplessness overwhelm many of our fellows. Of course, countless local black churches around the country are working diligently to address these problems.

The question becomes: what will be the role of prophetic black churches on the national stage under these conditions? Any church as an institution ought to call us to be our best selves — not to be slaves to doctrine or mere puppets for profit. Within its walls, our faith should be renewed and refreshed. We should be open to experiencing God’s revelation anew. But too often we are told that all has been said and done. Revelation is closed to us and we should only approximate the voices of old.

Or, we are invited to a Financial Empowerment Conference, Megafest, or some such gathering. Rare are those occasions when black churches mobilize in public and together to call attention to the pressing issues of our day. We see organization and protests against same-sex marriage and abortion; even billboards in Atlanta to make the anti-abortion case. But where are the press conferences and impassioned efforts around black children living in poverty, and commercials and organizing around jobs and healthcare reform? Bishop Charles E. Blake Sr., the presiding bishop of the Church of God in Christ, appears to be a lonely voice in the wilderness when he announced COGIC’s support of healthcare reform with the public option.

Prophetic energies are not an inherent part of black churches, but instances of men and women who grasp the fullness of meaning to be one with God. This can’t be passed down, but must be embraced in the moment in which one finds one’s feet. This ensures that prophetic energies can be expressed again and again.

The death of the black church as we have known it occasions an opportunity to breathe new life into what it means to be black and Christian. Black churches and preachers must find their prophetic voices in this momentous present. And in doing so, black churches will rise again and insist that we all assert ourselves on the national stage not as sycophants to a glorious past, but as witnesses to the ongoing revelation of God’s love in the here and now as we work on behalf of those who suffer most.

An Open Letter To Tavis Smiley and Rev. Al Sharpton

27 Feb

Dear Tavis and Al Sharpton,

I am writing this open letter to you two because I am confused.

The way I heard it, you, Brother Tavis, called out Rev. Al on the Tom Joyner Morning Show earlier this week and criticized him for not being open about what was said when President Obama met with him, NAACP Chair Benjamin Jealous, National Urban League chief Marc Morial and a host of other “black leaders.”  Then Rev. Al, you, decided to make it more public and had Brother Tavis on your show later on that day and you two decided to have it out on national radio.  And now this clip has been heard round the world.

I’m confused, because I really thought you two were better than this.

As a young African American male at the age of 25, I can’t help but wonder is this the legacy that you all are leaving behind?  One of a public discord amongst each other?  Come on now.  I’ve followed both of you all in my short post-high school existence and both of you all seem to care deeply about those of us who are a part of the black community and, daresay, both seem to push a “black agenda” at one point or another, so why turn this into a battle of the egos and neither one backing down on the other.

Rev. Al, you claim to “keep it real” on the radio show, but yet you’re mum on exactly what was said following the White House meeting with Obama–which ironically was held under the cover of the white snow from Snowmeggedon II.  Seriously, given the tenor of your radio program, for you to be quoted as touting Obama’s race neutral policies and being smart to not “ballyhoo a ‘black agenda’” is somewhat irresponsible to me on your behalf.

Brother Tavis, it’s becoming harder and harder to defend you by the day.

You can’t go around calling the meeting of the minds of the “Popes of Blackness” on a nationally syndicated talk show without telling the panelists when the meeting is, that’s just bad PR.  Moreover, you didn’t want to back down when Rev. Al pushed back on your comments.  Seriously, you should have seen this coming.  And all of this amounted to you speaking before you thought.  You’re a journalist, and have been doing this for a while, you know how media works and the potential of this. I supported you last year when the rest of black Americans were calling for your head on a platter when you simply asked for “accountability” from our elected officials, but when you go around throwing you’re weight as if you are the “Pope” of Blackness, then me and you have a problem.

And if this rumor I keep hearing about you publishing R. Kelly’s book has any validity, then SHAME ON YOU SIR!

I think it’s interesting that two individuals who supported Hillary Rodham Clinton through a significant portion of the Democratic Primary in 2008 would fall out over an issue such as this.

Just because the president doesn’t or maybe even can’t cater to a “black agenda” (whatever that looks like) doesn’t mean that you’re not supposed to. If we don’t speak up for ourselves, the history and present state of affairs clearly shows that no one else will advocate on our behalf.  But we can’t have two black public figures fall out on national radio programs over such a petty issue.  Thanks to you two, I’m not writing a blog about the work accomplished because of job creation from the White House meeting, but rather writing an open letter telling you two to get it together–not now, but right now!

I hope this is not the legacy that you’re leaving me.  And by the same token, why is it that whenever these meetings take place no one is ever bringing along the twenty-year-olds to sit in on these meetings and learn from the wisdom of the elders?  We’re left having to forge our own path and pray that you two will notice us hollering in the crowd “Pick me! Pick me!”  Just because your predecessors worked on the old system of “paying your dues” doesn’t mean you  have to make the same mistake.

But seriously? Where’s the mini-me Sharpton’s and the mini-me Tavis’?

Granted, neither of you two will be exiting the stage any time soon, but don’t make the same mistakes, enough of us have to last us a lifetime.  I’m just tired of not hearing any new names come onto the stage.  And when I do, its usually someone who’s knocking on the door of 40.  I know it’s not because we’re an apathetic generation. I’ve met far too many young women and men my age who clearly have an opinion and are more than qualified, so I have to believe it’s because neither of you are doing an effective job with training young activists and you all are sadly, focused on self-aggrandizement.

Guess what, it’s really not about you.

Either of you.

I say this in love, but get it together and zip up your egos back in your pants and look at the bigger picture.  Rather than sword fighting amongst yourselves, realize that it’s bigger than just you two and that there are a whole host of others of us who have serious issues that need to be addressed.  Anytime both of you feel so compelled to jump between radio shows just to prove your point means you’ve missed the bigger picture.

I hope I don’t have to write a letter like this again.  So, next time, someone take the high road and do what’s right.  Get it together.

Sincerely, JLL, The Uppity Negro

Jesse and Al or Al and Jesse

22 Feb

This should be easy.

If you’ve read my blog regularly, you know how I feel: for the most part I’m pro Jesse and Al. Perhaps Jesse does have a bit of a more “tainted” past if you want to call it that.  But, I still personally believe that Jesse has always publicly said what was right and appropriate (notwithstanding his castration comment).  And as far as Al is concerned, I definitely find no fault with him.

So….this is easy for you all.  Just comments from you all to the question:

Are your for or against Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? Do you just like one of them and not the other? Why or why not? Are the two synonymous with each other, or are they separate.

What say ye?

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

The Failure of Black Elitism: An Armchair Case Study of Morehouse College

17 Feb

In the words and tonality of President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address let me be perfectly clear that I hate elitism in the black community with a burning passion.  It has done nothing but separate us economically and rendered us even further divided on class boundaries.

That being said, I’m over the Morehouse mystique.

Yes, I said it and I’m not taking it back.

I know I’ve historically drawn the ire of some readers who attend Morehouse or who have recently graduated when I wrote my piece “An Uppity Negro Response to Robert M. Franklin’s ‘Soul of Morehouse and the Future of the Mystique’” when I directly challenged the elitist and somewhat Victorian values that he was asserting.  I went so far as to call them “pseudo-assimilationist” and speaks to what author Ricky Jones in What’s Wrong With Obamamania? posited as “the soulessness of the talented tenth.”

And yeah, I definitely got some serious push back on that one.

One commenter began his comment “Dear Uppity Fool.”

And of course the black blogosphere was on fire following the implementation of the dress code of there.  I weighed in of course and the comments seemed to be much more in order, but of course on other blogs I visited, I heard much of the same meme that somewhat confirmed my thoughts on the Robert Franklin commentary.  At worst it reeked of assimilation, whereas some Morehouse students seemed to buy into the idea that one must dress a certain way for the mere sake of “getting a job” as if going to class or eating in the cafeteria was interview practice.

Well, here, you can read what I said, I don’t want to go off on that tangent again.

And let’s not forget when I took Morehouse and the black community to task over Joshua Packwood being the first valedictorian to graduate from Morehouse.

My point is that in the black community, we have put ourselves in a position where elitism or rather social and class divides are going to be yet another nail in the coffin of moving forward as a black race.  Perhaps I am invoking this slightly antiquated and Civil Rights era belief about being unified as a race in order to “move forward” and whatever that is or may look like, but I am quite clear that we have a problem, especially here in the Atlanta University Center.

The main sardonic and caustic response many Morehouse students added at the end of their diatribes in favor of the dress code was that “if you want to dress any old kind of way, you can go on down to Clark Atlanta.”

Clark Atlanta University is treated like some bad step-child of the AUC and Morehouse and Spelman are the evil parents.  I even have a female friend, who’s my age and went to Clemson in South Carolina but is at school with me here in the AUC, actually comment that you can tell the difference between a Morehouse or a Clark student by how they dress.

For real?

We’re really doing that in 2010 as if it’s okay?

And when I looked at her like “Are your serious?” she refused to engage me on the absurdity of such a statement.  Moreover, for one to make that statement be they a student of the AUC or not is a result of the intellectual negligence that far too many blacks engage for the sake of “sounding deep.”  It is also a result of the failure of black elitism.

Yes, W.E.B. DuBois was an elitist.  Very much so.  So much so, he only went to Fisk because in 1884 he had limited choices, but clearly he went on back up North to get his classical education.  But, this same DuBois–who taught at Atlanta University and neither Morehouse nor Spelman I might add–kind of stumbled onto something with his idea of the “talented tenth.”  In a nutshell saying it was the job of the black middle class to help those who were not as socially and economically stable and advanced, respectively. Of course a century later, DuBois’ classical education and modernist approach to doing this cultural critique are painfully evident and I’m not sure how I feel about the similar assimilationist feelings to such thought–and these are the same predilections I had toward Franklin’s speech.

But even with that, somewhere over the last few generations as we saw the recognizable black middle class form in the 1970s, the “us vs. them” ideals within our race were just ghastly.  This was the era when blacks had to put up some kind of “safe” image in order to get a corporate job.  Men had to shave their facial hair so as to not give off too much of a “Shaft” vibe of a bad-ass black male.  And black women were now straightening their hair once again as they entered the workforce so as not to offend their white counterparts.  What became markers of assimilation for blacks into white American culture became signifiers of their middle class status.  They turned their assimilation into elitism and began to drive the wedge in between the classes.

So I asked the question to my friend the other day “Do you think that some of these young men who are graduating from Morehouse are just coasting on the name?”  To which he replied “some.”  What ensued was a conversation that it’s a combination of the Morehouse culture, which I actually applaud, that seems to give entering young men the cultural capital that they are someone simply because they went to Morehouse and the pedestal on which the black community as a whole places Morehouse College.  I went so far as to say that when a young man says that they are a graduate from Morehouse (damn what other degrees they may have attained) that in the mind’s eye of your average black person, we project onto them that this young man is going to be the next so-called “black leader.”

And, be prepared, I’m about to pull back for this following punch at Morehouse men:

While I really applaud Morehouse for creating a culture that is on par with no one (thanks Benjamin Mays), have you ever talked to some of these Morehouse graduates?

I stress some and not all, but for some it’s not much going on upstairs.  They’re arrogant, pompous, blowhards who think everyone should be bowing and scraping at their feet because they went to Morehouse.  As if they’re education and world view and outlook on life is superb to that of many others.  However, when you push them on certain ideas and thoughts, one can tell it’s not much going on up there.  But for some of these guys, they’re clearly about to coast on the name of their alma mater and use it as a name-dropping tool that allows them to be heads above the rest.  And they know they can get away with it because we in the black community have bought into the idea of elitism and assimilation for dually appeasing to the nebulous sense of some Civil Rights era feeling of “unity” and the idea of presenting a relaxed picture of a well-groomed black male to larger white society.

Hear me out.

In the black community, when we think Morehouse, it’s not a hard jump to invoke the image of Martin Luther King.  While we may not expect the next graduate from Morehouse to be the next MLK per se, we are comfortable producing an image in the likeness of King.  So in some respects, this has just as much to do with the collective culture of the school and the culture of the black community as a whole.  While I may have issues with some of that, it’s really not the end of the world, what does become a harbinger of the eschaton is when we act as if only Morehouse, or even a Spelman are capable of producing such individuals.

It’s so bad that when I went to Ebenezer Baptist Church for the first time and stood up as a visitor, with my undergraduate degree already handed to me, many persons walked up to me and point blank asked “Oh, do you go to Morehouse?”  As if to say Georgia Tech, Georgia State, Clark Atlanta or any of the vast array of junior colleges in the Atlanta metropolitan weren’t an option for me if I stepped foot in the grand ol’ Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Black elitism has failed because it divides us versus them.  When a Morehouse student looks down their nose at a Clark Atlanta student simply because they went to Clark, then we have a problem.  When members of the black community give someone a pass simply because they went to Morehouse, then we have a problem.  When a Morehouse graduate coasts merely on the name of their alma mater for political reasons, then we have a problem.

Please believe, however, this problem is not relegated to Atlanta, nor the AUC nor Morehouse.  The same goes for those who live in Nashville and have to deal with the Fisk University versus Tennessee State argument that continues.  Or for the “real HU” be it Hampton or Howard.  Or even the dark-skinned blacks that go to Dillard University versus the light skinned blacks that go Xavier University down in New Orleans (which I might add begins even in the high school years with a St. Augustine all black boys school and Xavier Prep for the young women versus sending your child to McDonough #35 public school).  And please believe, the HBCU Ivy League list is real–the private HBCUs versus those sponsored by the state.

Going to Morehouse is fine, not knocking it, but let’s be realistic.

To the current students at Morehouse, as a fellow black male, I challenge you to not look down on your fellow AUC students at Morris Brown and Clark Atlanta.  They are in school just as you are.  They may have chosen to go to go to those institutions for the same reasons you chose yours, for the academics or maybe because of legacy or because of a scholarship.  It does nothing to help humanist relationships if you’re looking down your nose because someone went to Clark Atlanta.  No one likes an arrogant person just because they can be arrogant.

To the Morehouse Men who have graduated, as a fellow black male, I challenge you to not fall into the pitfalls of resting on your laurels and merely use the name of Morehouse for political advantages: know what you know and back it up.

And to the larger black community: just because a man says he graduated from Morehouse does not make him any more enlightened than the rest of us or even yourself.  Stop falling into the trap that cultural signifiers such as an image projected are proof positive or someone with substance.

An Elitist Negro sees a demarcation between “us and them” even amongst the black community.  Because far too often their approach once a degree is obtained does nothing to bridge unity even amongst fellow elitist and most certainly not the establishing community amongst each other, let alone outside of the alma mater, all it does is give an ultimatum of “love it or leave” which echoes highly of the jingoistic nature of American capitalism gone awry.

Uppity Negroes don’t give their fellow sister or brother an ultimatum, but rather an understanding ear and they try to engage in a dialogue that finds the best way for them to move forward.  An uppity Negro would echo the sentiments of this quote from W.E.B. DuBois at Howard University’s 1930 Commencement Address:

To increase abiding satifaction for the mass of our people, and for al people, someon must sacrifice something of his own happiness.  This is a duto only to those who recognize it as a duty.  It is silly to tell intelligent human beings: Be good and you will be happy. The truth is today, be good, be decent, be honorable and self-sacrificing and you will not always be happy.  You will often be desperately unhappy.  You may even be crucified, dead, and buried and the third day you will be just as dead as the first.  But with the death of your happiness may easily come the increased happiness and satisfaction and fulfillment for other people–strangers, unborn babes, uncreated worlds.  If this is not sufficient incentive, never try it–remain hogs!

What say ye concerning elitism and assimilation?  Did I go to hard on Morehouse and did it just come off as general hatin? Sorry wasn’t my intent, but much of what I’ve observed here over the past four years is just wanton hubris and downright irresponsible on behalf of Morehouse and Spelman concerning how they view Clark Atlanta and their students.

Keep it uppity and keep it truthfully radical, JLL

North Versus South: Social Awareness Versus Black Elitism

15 Feb

I just came from spending the better part of my afternoon with my friend, The Critical Cleric after I dropped off my application to Emory’s Candler School of Theology and somehow as we were sitting at Landmark Jr. cafe, and we were discussing this one young lady who went to our school (now his alma mater).  He was saying about how she’s probably looking for a relationship, and I said true, but she’s from Philly and that knowing her she probably won’t find someone here in Atlanta.

And that’s when the diversionary conversation began.

I’ve long made the claim that Atlanta is a “fake” city.  That is that many of the black people running around here, living and existing, are a part of a reality that is more concerned with material things.  So much so that when individuals are attempting to be in relationships, they are more concerned with what type of car one drives, what’s their address, what type of job they have, what type of clothes they wear et cetera.  My friend countered back that that’s probably true of any northern city with a black urban professional sector.  I responded that that’s probably true, but I said specifically for blacks from up North who move down South, that there lacks a certain level of “social awareness” of those down South.

And of course, the ish hit the fan.

Here’s my point: blacks living down South do indeed have a certain cultural and social awareness, but I must say given my experiences hopscotching across the eastern half of the nation, that by in large blacks living Down South have a social awareness that is lacking.

For instance, various Pan-Africanist thoughts concerning Africa and even other Afro-centric thought as a part of African American culture are not even on the minds of many individuals living in the South.  Case in point: If while sitting in a freshman required course at Dillard University on African World Studies, a one semester course, that when the professor said “Africa is not a country” and you could see the faces of many of the students light up as though this were a novel thought, somewhat proves my point.

Remember, Dillard University is comprised of students from largely middle class backgrounds with a high student populations from both Texas and Louisiana, but still middle class which means that they went to decent high schools and somehow and someway they were able to pay the $20,000 tuition–Dillard was not some community college.

So as the conversation proceeded, I told my friend that I never got challenged by my peers intellectually until I got to Fisk University.  I never had some deep intellectual (well, deep to us as college students) conversation on the Yard with fellow students about some social or political issue until I got to Fisk–and yes, I was making the argument that Fisk had a higher student incidence of people from the North.  And that’s true, Fisk’s highest out of state student come from Chicago and Detroit and next was California from the population centers of Los Angeles and the Bay Area. And for the record, my more memorable conversations with persons on the Yard that challenged ones varying world views from topics to politics to what characterized a “Fisk Man” or a “Fisk Woman” to even the role of black men versus black women in a relationship had a higher incidence of those individuals not being from the South.

We came to the conclusion at this point in the conversation that this had to do more with religious and social conditioning.  My friend made the argument that because of the religious institutions being so dominant down south that a certain level of freedom was not possible down south, but was able to be achieved up north.

But, he still wasn’t ready to concede that indeed the social awareness was wider.

We kind of went off on a tangent concerning black preaching and specifically the modern Civil Rights movement.  He said the the infrastructure of blacks had a social consciousness (not awareness) in the South that the North did not have that was able to produce a CORE and a SNCC and various other organizations that helped the movement.  He used the argument of Bayard Rustin coming to the South to observe the movement.  Now, I responded be that as it may, but the type of movement in the South wasn’t needed in the North because of the de jure segregation in the South and de facto segregation in the North.

He didn’t buy that argument.

And we also disagreed on the issue of blacks having a population mass that’s still heavily southern. He said population numbers are exclusive from the ability to have an infrastructure that was able to produce the modern Civil Rights movement.

Well, I guess we’re just going to disagree on that.

So the conversation meandered around preaching and the difference of a northern black preachers and southern black preachers and their content–which again, I pointed to the vast difference of social awareness historically and contemporarily.  Although, I was quick to point out, at least in Chicago, the southern Baptist preaching style that’s so prevalent in many northern black Baptist churches.  Which of course he acknowledged.  He then went to note that generally, the rap music that hip hop has produced has generally produced more “conscious hip hop” in northern enclaves.  His example was that D4L’s “Shake Your Laffy Taffy” would have been laughed out of the studio if they had been in New York.

And then finally, I was mentioning to him that I somewhat fell out with some friends from Fisk when I passed through because I was trying to tell of my various experiences of living in New Orleans for three years for college, my one year at Fisk in Nashville and my nearly four years in Atlanta for school that lead me to concretely say that the level of social awareness in the North surpasses that of those in the South.  And between these two other soon to be Fisk alumni, one from rural Arkansas and another from Atlanta, both began using their family legacy and their own social location as means for their awareness.

Hear me out.

The one from Arkansas used his family history and being fifth generation college educated, and his parents professions and him studying overseas as reasons to discount my general argument.  The one from Atlanta was countering that I my experiences were based on a “new Atlanta” and that I couldn’t possibly understand the “old Atlanta” that had birthed Auburn Street and various other Atlanta institutions that are black cultural highlights of Atlanta.

As I was retelling this story to the The Critical Cleric and I turned the phrase that my two Fisk colleagues were using their elitism to cover for their social awareness.

And my friend cut me off in the conversation and said, “I take back everything I just said about this whole argument.  You’re right.”

You know that was music to my ears, especially because usually this is the friend that challenges my logic and not the other way around.  And he went on to tell a story that he went to the house of one of his members, an established gentlemen who’s a known lawyer here in Atlanta and that in midst of the visit that this man said to him that because Africa (which I guess was a country in his mind) has never sent one boat or one plane back to the Americas asking for blacks to come back that he doesn’t want anything to do with Africa.

This was his logic.

Which more or less proves my point.

Black middle class persons down south generally, don’t acknowledge the Afro-centric part of African American culture.  Because of that, many black southerners push back when persons are seen wearing African garb and please don’t bring up Kwanzaa to black  folks living in the South.  My issue is not that blacks need to ascribe to these schools of thought or that their “blackness” is called into question because they don’t practice them, but dammit, at least be aware of it!

As my friend posited, blacks in the South seem to be dismissive of certain cultural and social links that bring about awareness; they are self-affirming in their own “blackness” in so far as they can see it.  I would like to further add (this is me and not him), that this is a result of bourgeoise and westernized assimilation and acculturation.

This, let me first say, is not the end of the world.  To my fellow Fisk men, please believe they do have a world view and a social awareness that surely far surpasses many others, but I would still say that on certain Pan-African and Afro-centric thought that they fall short.  Let the record show that in certain circles writers like Molefi K. Asante, John Clarke, Asa Hilliard and Cheikh A. Diop are household names, but far too often those names are a complete foreign tongue to those living in the South.  Yes, this is not to say that the Pan-Africanist does not exist in the South, but just here in Atlanta.  Between First Afrikan Presbyterian Church of Lithonia, Ga. and The Shrine of the Black Madonna in the West End, one does not have much of an outlet.  This in stark comparison to a cultural capital enough in the city of Chicago that the annual Malcolm X Kwanzaa celebration gets news and air time every single year along with many other Afro-centric cultural events.

And of course, I’m not saying that every black Northerner is “enlightened” to a social awareness of which I’m describing.  But by in large, the northern “concrete jungles” have provided an atmosphere for which one can receive a larger social awareness–particularly those afforded the privilege of the black middle class.

If you are black and middle class and living down south the following is especially for you:

If you’ve made it this far through this article and haven’t totally written me off, and still your immediate reaction is to recite a full list of accomplishments that you’ve done and that you’re family or your friends have done that qualifies you as having a world view that is broad, or, your inclination is to cite the horrible statistics of crime and under-education and projects of northern cities like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland or Rochester, then this entire post has been lost on you–please resume what you were doing before this.

That is simply to say that if one fails to engage some of the other aspects of African American life from a national standpoint simply because you were never exposed to it, don’t understand it, or don’t care to understand it is somewhat of a disappointment to me.

Then, the conversation turned to education and my friend said, well, let the record show that down south we have schools, up North there are “African American Studies” departments.  I had to laugh because it’s true, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

And the conversation turned to Morehouse–and just to what level of elitism do we in the black community expect and project onto ourselves.

Stay tuned because this conversation isn’t over.

What are your thoughts?  Do you think blacks from the North have a broader social awareness than those blacks Down South?  Does elitism at times cloud our judgment on world views and various inter-racial social issues?

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