To the Editor:

Wanted: An autonomous forum for black debate.

Black people in the Americas need a forum that addresses concerns for black people. So far, most public forums are white (sponsored) forums, associated with the political left that discuss black issues.

These forums have become the primary areas for elaboration of black commentary and critical public discourse. In these forums, the white audience/sponsors dictate the terms for discourse. And often enough, the result of many of these forums leads to the creation or identification of so-called “black intellectuals” or “black leader”by the liberal sponsors.

African Americans cannot afford to adopt the notion of the black intellectual or the black leader because usually the status of such a designation is dependent on decisions made by white elites rather than on a black electorate or social movement. It presumes a condition of political demobilization. It also requires a black population that is disenfranchised and incapable of articulating their own agendas.

No individual is a racial proxy or a spokesman for the black collective. The multiplicity of articulate black voices and ideas are too many to summarize into one. What generally happens when blacks subscribe to the notion of a black leader is that they get pushed into a particular convention or activism. For example, in the 1960s, civil rights activism was the convention. The white press accepted Martin Luther King and rejected Malcolm X. They did not even give ear to the voices of Eldridge Cleaver and Huey P. Newton or Angela Davis. And we as African Americans bought into it.

If there is to be such a thing as a black leader or a black intellectual, there must be a way to delineate and authenticate the characteristics and warrants of black leadership. The current and absurd method by the white liberal presumes that any black individual’s participation in public life always strives to express the will of racial collectivity.

In white sponsored forums, black spokespersons have to address both black and white audiences. Those different acts of communication proceed from objectives that are often different and incompatible.

This undermines the examination of the black experience by narrowing the directed objective to that of demonstrating the equality of the level of humanity of blacks to that of whites.

Authentic and meaningful political engagement for black Americans is not generally expressed in relation to public institutions, for example, but in the clandestine significance assigned to apolitical rituals.

African Americans mobilize through surreptious acts and symbolism more so than through overt collective actions.

What is even more dire is that while young black people (this generation) are the least connected, the least politically attentive to the world, especially the African world at large, these are the ones that the liberal whites are most interested in.

African Americans need to begin addressing the question of our destiny. It must be debated and conceptualized so that it is articulated and disseminated to all Africans and African descendants everywhere. This cannot be left to others.

Brian Lundy

Junior

economics