Tavis Smiley 'calls out' Black leaders to challenge President Obama to address Black Issues

Tavis Smiley comments this morning on “Tom Joyner's Radio Show”
http://www.tavistalks.com/sites/www.tavistalks.com/files/TavisSmileyCommentary_2010_0223_final.pdf

Tavis full transcript: “I choose to identify with the underprivileged. I choose to identify with the poor.I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity. This is the way I’m going.

If it means suffering a little bit, I’m going that way. If it means dying for them,
I’m going that way. Because I heard a voice saying, ‘Do something for others.’”

The words of the greatest American we’ve ever produced, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., talking about the choice he made not just, Tom, to identify with, but togive his life for the least among us; the politically, socially, economically disenfranchised in America.

And so Dr. King made a choice, Sybil, and we, too, must make a choice. We, too, have a cross to bear just like Dr. King.“Must Jesus bear the cross alone and all the world go free? No, there’s a cross for everyone and there’s a cross for me.”

Some of us, who call ourselves Black leaders are making the wrong choice. I’m afraid this morning, Tom, that in so doing, we are misleading, misguiding, Black folk. It’s time for a course correction, not now, but right now.

Because leadership without followership is a sinkin’ ship.

Let me get straight to the point this morning by taking you back, Tom, just over a year ago in fact, when then Senator Barack Obama was elected our nation’s first African American President, and we celebrate that.
Black leaders were all over the news you’ll recall, expressing their frustration and their angst at the very suggestion that they were no longer relevant, simply because we had elected a Black president.

That notion was asinine and preposterous and they said so early and often. They argued, correctly, I might add, that it’s not either/or, a Black president or Black leadership, but rather both - and a Black president and Black leaders working together on an urban agenda for the Black masses.

But, my Lord, what a difference a year makes. Over the past few weeks a chorus of Black leaders have started singing a new song. I must have missed that choir rehearsal, J., because I don’t know the words to this new hymn.

The President doesn’t need a Black agenda, they sing. He’s not the president of Black America, he’s the president of all America, and he need not focus specifically on the unique challenges Black America is facing, they sing.

As you have probably deduced by now, I’m having some trouble learning my part and carrying this new tune.

Now, I know all too well, “God of our weary years, God of our silent tears.” I know, “Wake up everybody, no more sleeping in bed.” I know, “Hang on to the world as it spins around. Just don’t let the spin get you down. Things are moving fast. Hold on tight and you will last because someday we’ll all be free.”

I know “What’s going on.” I know “We shall overcome,” but I don’t know this new tune, the president doesn’t need a Black agenda.

And I’ve been hearing from other members, Tom of our Black chorale, all across America as well, who either, like me, don’t know these new lyrics or have heard the song but ain’t down with singing it. That said, it’s time for a choir rehearsal so that we’re all singing from the same page.

And so, our choir rehearsal will be held Saturday, March 20, in Chicago at 8:00am, at Chicago State University, with Dr. Wayne Watson.

Now, for all of those who can’t attend the choir rehearsal in person, this rehearsal will be broadcast on national television.

We’ve asked, Tom, some of the lyricists who apparently wrote this new song to show up respectfully and explain why they penned these strange words that we’ve been reading all across the press that the president doesn’t need a Black agenda.

I say this lovingly, they’re all friends and freedom fighters…but Al Sharpton, Ben Jealous, Charles Ogletree, Valerie Jarrett, Marc Morial, Dr. Dorothy Height, will also be joined by some other crooners who I think do want us singing a different song…Barbara Lee, Angela Glover Blackwell, Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, Jesse Jackson, just for example.

Other invited singers include Louis Farrakhan who hasn’t been singing much of late, but who has a solo I’m told he’s ready to share. Should be some kind of choir rehearsal to get us all singing the same song, Saturday, March 20, in Chicago, on national television.

You can register right now at www.tavistalks.com. That’s tavistalks.com. This come to Jesus meeting is free and open to the public.

And, finally, Tom, before you meet us at choir rehearsal at Chicago State, March 20th, marinate on these things if you will; questions, I want you to consider.

􀂙 Do we think that we can give President Obama a pass on Black issues and somehow when he’s no longer in office, just resurrect the moral authority to hold future presidents accountable to our concerns? How does that work? You give one president a pass on Black issues, but when he’s gone, you go right back to trying to hold the next president accountable. I don’t get how we’re going to do that.

􀂙 If we, African Americans, go silent, how do we keep our brothers and sisters in Africa and the Third World from being rendered invisible?

􀂙 Why is the Black agenda always framed, Tom, as exclusionary, reductionist, pejorative and negative? Isn’t the Black agenda the human agenda?

􀂙 Would America have even been America without her Negro people?

􀂙 If Lincoln, FDR, Truman and LBJ, all became iconic and transformational presidents by courageously confronting race can President Obama, our beloved president become a transformational president by avoiding race?

􀂙 And finally, if there is no need for a Black agenda, then why doesn’t the NAACP refund my life membership?

In closing, the words of Langston Hughes, “Looks like what drives me crazy don’t have no effect on you, but I’m going to keep on at it ‘til it drives you crazy, too.”