What I find very interesting about this whole "Criticize The President, Smiley-West Show" is the lack of "Self Accountability" in this process.
A little back story... When Tavis Smiley was planning the the "2007 State of the Black Union" on the campus of Hampton University.... his promotions read ... "See you in Jamestown"... Hampton University IS NOT in Jamestown... period. I called Tavis' assistant at the time ...Kimberly MacFarland and explained some of what I thought were needed location specific information and offered a tidbit of personal information about my mother & brother being buried on the grounds of the military cemetery-housed within the campus of Hampton University. You can not get to the cemetery unless you drive through the campus of Hampton University. I thought providing that information would raise awareness and help correct the information for the advertisement. Long story short... we never saw the information change nor did we see any heighten advertisement of the HBCU for this event until as time for the event got closer... it was always see you in Jamestown.
I was offended.. personally because of what I thought was on the ground information about location specifics not effecting real time information advertising...so where is all of this... whatever "THAT" is coming from now? My personal offense seems strikingly similar to what I am hearing from the Smiley-West duo today.
I, too agree with Professor Melissa Harris-Perry that much of this is personal and I will go further and say unfounded.
As a community resident of many years ... what I do not see from many of our "proclaimed community leaders and elected officials" for that matter is the empowerment language within our community. EMPOWERMENT is a long term commitment and unpopular for many short term reasons but if we AS vested stakeholders of our community can not see the value of long term collective commitments then why work in the community at all? Self Accountability should be the first rule of community work and that accountability should be reflected in the community work that one does... not the program work that one does.. because one program does not make a community... no matter how many services are being delivered.
Program specific advocacy does absolutely nothing to the goal of changing hearts and minds in order to impact generational success or community transformation.... too many attitudes to deal with and trust me on the attitude dealing part... it takes a strong commitment to stay in it to effect the desired outcome. This is where a paradigm shift will most effect transforming a community.
I long for the day when the merits of whether something will work or whether something will not work will rule the day and not whether someones background influence on it governs the process. There is value in the consideration of the influence but to have the sole basis of its success or failure on influence is a process WASTED and should not be tolerated any longer.... the facts people .. .the facts.
So... let me close by saying, running around to a bunch of speaking engagements, giving epiphany oriented dialogues, and/or representing constituents that you do not know thoroughly is not the standard for how we ALL should gird up our loins and BE THE CHANGE THAT WE WANT TO SEE. Change is developing relationship, Change is perpetual and I hope always more positive than negative. Let us BE THAT CHANGE which will demonstrate community and dissolve the need to place blame on any one person... be they president, elected official, parent and/or community worker hoping to provide some something of assistance within the community. TRUE COMMUNITY TRANSFORMATION STARTS AND ENDS WITH SELF ACCOUNTABILITY.
Webster tells us politics is the science of government; and this definition hardly implies anything related to what community is. This does however imply that senators, congressmen, lt. generals, etc. aren't the only ones "working" as politicians--or studying the science of government; but they are the ones who are trusted by the community to have their concerns presented to and properly addressed by the government. Unfortunately, when the American class system was established (shortly after the American Revolution) politians have not worked to represent ALL of the communities in the country...so a lack of empowerment for ALL communities has existed in our elected public officials since the start. Besides, many officials aren't from, don't live, and don't work in the type of community I assume we are talking about. To that end, it's not really theirs and they treat it as such. They just hustle there, like the Arab convenient store owner. And as long as we keep buying cigarettes....
ReplyDeleteTavis Smiley? C'mon man!!!