BAR | “Black Misleadership class” is not a ‘scientific” term. It is weaponized political terminology, with specific meaning based on Black historical and current political realities. Most often, in our usage at BAR, the term refers to those Black political forces that emerged at the end of the Sixties, eager to join the corporate and duopoly political (mostly Democrat) ranks, and to sell out the interests of the overwhelmingly working class Black masses in the process. It is both an actual and aspirational class, which ultimately sees its interests as tied to those of U.S. imperialism and its ruling circles. It seeks representation in the halls of corporate power, and dreads social transformation, which would upset the class’s carefully cultivated relationships with Power.
We know who these people are, based on their political behaviors. Our job, as conscious “political” people, is to expose their treachery -- so that the Black masses will reject their “misleadership.”
“Until Bruce Dixon’s recantation of December 21, all of BAR’s editors cited the sins and crimes of the 'Black misleadership class.'”
The following is excerpted from an article of mine that has disappeared from BAR’s archives, but which was picked up by the August 31, 2014 Greanville Post, titled, “Black Folks are Going Nowhere Until We Discard the Black Misleadership Class .”
“The current Black Misleadership Class voluntarily joined the enemy camp -- calling it ‘progress’ -- as soon as the constraints of official apartheid were lifted. They exploited the political and business opportunities made possible by a people’s mass movement in order to advance their own selfish agendas and, in the process, made a pact with Power to assist in the debasement and incarceration of millions of their brothers and sisters. In the case of Black elected officials, their culpability is direct and hands-on. The professional ‘interlocutors’ between African Americans and Power, from the local butt-kissing preacher to marquis power-brokers like Al Sharpton, serve as the Mass Black Incarceration State’s firemen….”
Students of Black history will immediately recognize the role played by these Black “firemen”: they are the “House Negroes” that Malcolm X inveighed against ; the aspiring or professional “type of Negro” who, when the master’s house started burning down, “would fight harder to put the master’s house out than the master himself would.” -- Malcolm X, Wayne State University, January 23, 1963.
Malcolm struggled on behalf of the “field Negro,” the working class masses. “House Negro” and “Field Negro” were not scientific terms; they were political weapons that resonated among the Black masses. They had sharp, cutting edges, designed to rebuke and isolate the internal enemy, and to discourage other Black people from collaborating with the ruling class.
Our mission today is no different.
They are the 'House Negroes' that Malcolm X inveighed against.”
In 2013, in a speech marking the first national conference of Students Against Mass Incarceration, at Howard University, I explained why BAR makes “full use” of the term, “Black misleadership class”:
“Some folks might think we mainly use it as an insult. And we DO.
“We believe that denunciation and shaming of those behaviors and politics that are destructive to our people is a good and useful thing to do.
“When people who claim to be Black leaders aid in the destruction of our people, they deserve to be insulted -- “buked and scorned,' as we used to say.
“So, of course we mean to insult these people that we call the Black Misleadership Class….
“They wanted to put their own upwardly mobile faces in high government and corporate places. That meant preserving the system -- not tearing it down.
“They wanted to celebrate their own upward mobility, not agitate for social transformation. So, after 1968, they helped shut the Movement down.
“In order to consolidate their own political power, and curry corporate favor, the Black Misleadership Class directed Black people’s energies toward the narrowest electoral politics and the crassest materialism. Their modus operandi is to treat the masses of Black people as cheerleaders for the upward strivings of a few.
“The ultimate expression of that madness, is that the Black Misleadership Class poured all of its energies into protecting a symbol of ultra-upward Black mobility -- Barack Obama -- while the bottom fell out for the Black masses.
“This is the same class that has historically been far more ashamed over Mass Black Incarceration, than outraged. They resent those Blacks who have been caught up in the criminal justice system, because they mess up the petty bourgeois picture of Black America that they like to paint.
“They have no use for the rest of us, except as props in their for-profit productions.
“So, damn right, we like to insult the Black Misleadership Class. It’s part of our political work. They need to be insulted.
“We need a Movement, not just to deal with our external enemies, but also our internal ones. Because they are killing us, from the inside out.”
Brother Dixon may be willing to give up a perfectly good weapon, but I am not.
Down with the Black misleadership class! Power to the people!
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