Back Slapping & Cherry Picked Priorities – The Symbiotic Relationship Between The Black Elected Official and the Civil Rights Operative

Back Slapping & Cherry Picked Priorities – The Symbiotic Relationship Between The Black Elected Official and the Civil Rights Operative

On Saturday, July 14, 2007 the Civil Rights Industrial Complex will converge on the Douglass County Georgia Court House for a mass demonstration for justice. The local Black talk radio station has an announcement of the march which is being broadcast about every 15 minutes about the "non-justice" that is at hand with the excessive sentence given to one Genarlo Wilson, a teen-ager who was incarcerated for having oral sex with a minor while he was 17 years old.

As I listened to the local Black talk radio station, WAOK and the guest host who is an operative within the "Rainbow/PUSH" organization entertain a Georgia state senator I began to understand the relationship between the Black Elected Democrat and the Civil Rights Movement of 2007. As I sat on hold waiting to ask my "big picture" challenge question, caller after caller congratulated the state senator for going after the Douglas County GA District Attorney for releasing the video tape of this act which they have concluded was the distribution of "child pornography". The talk show host repeatedly read a report about the sexual harassment history of the District Attorney. Their tactic was to get him disbarred in the same way that the rogue prosecutor in the Duke Rape case has been disbarred.
I was on hold for more than 35 minutes and was forced to hang up because I had an appointment which I could not be late for.

My question to these two individuals was going to be:

"I want to take advantage of the presence of a Black elected official and a Civil Rights official to ask the question – How are the priorities set with regard to the focus on major problems within the Black Community from a proportional standpoint? Right now there is a full court press of all of the Civil Rights Industrial Complex standing behind this "Genarlo Wilson" case. The Black Caucus of the state legislature lobbied for a special session calling back all law makers in order to deal with the case of this one Black male who sits in jail. All the while there is Vine City in Atlanta where 68% of all Black families who have a loved one killed in this district have the killer of their loved one still walking the streets not being held accountable for their actions. The radio ad talked of 'non-justice' and had the voice of Martin Luther King Jr. in the background. How is it that there is so much energy placed on this one Black male but so much silence on the constant stream of Black people who have been laid to rest and who will be laid to rest this summer as we are at a record pace with respect to Black on Black homicide and violence? The national average for closure of Black homicides is 50%. How sets the priorities for the Black community to focus upon?”

The most disturbing part of listening to the radio interview was the pride that many of the callers took in the tactics that were being used by the senator and Rainbow/PUSH. Some called it brilliant. One caller noted that many of the callers who are younger than 35 are not aware of how things work in confronting a racist system and that only people over 45 who have seen it first hand can appreciate how to effectively deal with corrupt and racist officials.

My bottom line is that the Black elected official and the civil rights operative are allowed to define the priorities today. They are going to always choose to focus upon issues which play to their strong suit. They are experts at focusing upon external threats. These threats are the offending judicial official, police official or opposition politician who had done something which is disagreeable for this group. In the domain of problems facing Black people today is a very large and encompassing problem of internal attacks upon other Black people. This is were the Civil Rights Industrial Complex falls on its face. Regardless of the net or proportional damage upon Black people their tactics are rendered useless.

When it comes to Black on Black gun violence – rather than dealing with the assailants who have killed another Black man they are going to attempt to 'big picture' the issue and go after the gun dealer or gun manufacturer who sold the weapon. In between is the supply chain of – the person who made the “straw man” purchase of the weapon legally from the dealer, the operative who transported the weapon from the state with the liberal gun laws over to the state with a more regulated gun sale policy and finally to the illegal gun distributor who actually sells the gun to the person who needs to pack heat for protection on the streets. In many cases the supply chain racketeers are also Black. The Civil Rights Community are more inclined to see them as Black males having been discriminated against in society and thus they turn to crime as a means of survival. The same graces will never be placed upon the gun dealer though. They seek to throw the book at them where possible.

The way I see it – many of the problems that we face WITHIN the Black community are not going to be solved until we remove the notions of the QUALITY of the killer rather than look at the QUANTITY of the killings that are taking place. Of course a police killing of a Black man ranks higher than a thug on the street doing the same during an attempted robbery. The police must be held to a higher standard because of their duties and obligations. At the same time when the quantity portion of the quality/quantity index gets so far out of balance it is time that we reassess our interpretations. As it stands right now it seems rather ridiculous for the so called Civil Rights Movement (of 2007) to so passionately pursue the case of this one Black boy while being so silent as to the blood bath that is going on within our communities right now. It seems to me that in this heightened focus they are attempting to maintain their base of unity within the Black community by fighting AGAINST a force that is bearing upon them. All the while an insidious insurgent group that festers within is doing far more damage but operating with near impunity.

The Black establishment must be held accountable by the Black community for change to take place. Much of these problems are cultural in nature and thus it will take more than one full cycle of a group of Black young people, having been indoctrinated within a new culture to see fully measurable results from this change. In the mean time this tendency to cherry pick problems must be called for what it is and the community as a whole must take over the prioritization or they will continue to be used by various operatives who know how to pull the strings of Black people.