You're fired

Submitted by Prometheus 6 on September 27, 2007 - 9:48am.

At Prometheus 6, Lester Spence again questioned the current value of the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton to the Black community.

I've been meaning to ask. At the outset, one of the things you noted was that the coverage that sharpton brought to the issue revealed one of the major reasons you don't hate on him (like me for example).

But it's becoming apparent that, just like the cotton case, both he and jackson were late to this issue as well.

Their central role historically has been two fold.

1. Bring media coverage to issues.

2. Help those who cannot help themselves.

I used to buy the first--though I still had problems. I never bought the second.

I don't think even 1 applies anymore.

I have just recently decided to stop defending these two gentlemen. Let me tell you why.

Back when I was posting on Blogcritics, I listed several Black people I consider heroes. A couple of commenters suggested additions to the list and I rejected Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams.

Sowell and Williams are distinguished academics and writers, whether you agree with them or not.

Whether I agree with them or not isn't the point. They simply don't have the stature in the Black community to qualify. Who is presented as a hero is always a collective decision.

Basically, I've realized a lot of Black folks have decided the Reverends have got to go. Lester suggests, I think, that a Black blogosphere could serve as town crier and library, eliminating the need for Jackson or Sharpton figures. I don't think the classes that are trying to fire them are in a position to do so.

Normally a person's history is reinterpreted in these situations. That's what's going on with Rev. Jackson, and I regret it. He was integral to increasing the size of the Black middle class. He has never to my knowledge misrepresented Black folks in general or in specific. But you honor real collective decisions. I honor real collective decisions and this one is approaching the cascade point.

I got no beef with Reverend Sharpton; I think he was more job than mission, but he has never to my knowledge misrepresented Black folks in general or in specific, either.

What bothers me is the sense that reinterpreting the past for specific purposes strikes me like lying. And it shouldn't be necessary, you just do your thing without them. I can't change the way people operate overnight, though and I'm pretty tired of pointing out obvious things across the board.

So though I'm rarely the one to raise the topic I doubt ever doing so in the future. People will follow (and fight) who they will, and I actually have nothing more to add to the discussion.

Just move them to a new category: The Black Preachapundilectuals

On September 27, 2007 - 9:10pm E.C. Hopkins said:

Jackson and Sharpton are still great for bringing media coverage to issues. And, I believe they are still very valuable as quasi-spokespersons for Black America. However, their new social and media roles are not like those they filled before the 1990s. Isn’t it obvious that their roles have changed? Why haven’t we already moved them to new categories, such as popular Black pundits or popular Black public intellectuals? Maybe we should create and put them in a group labeled Black Preachapundilectuals (Preachers + Pundits + Public Intellectuals) or something like that. In my opinion, their new roles seem to be very similar to those filled by our other popular Black Preachapundilectuals, such as Dyson and West. They seem to be competing for the same media space (and clout) as Dyson and West. Yet Jackson and Sharpton continue to beat out folks like Dyson and West in this space because Jackson and Sharpton are superior rhetoricians. They are superior in the sense that they know how to target their rhetoric to their audiences.

Think about it: when Dyson and West get the spotlight these days, they often preach as much as, and often more than, they educate. And they, like other popular pundits, often hit on easily digestible bullet points as often as or more often than they extemporaneously analyze complex social phenomena or introduce us to novel ideas. That is, of course, when they are able to avoid their often humorous and entertaining yet egomaniacal and masturbatory displays of superior vocabularies during their witting or unwitting attempts to use language in order to establish their intellectual superiority or authority over their vocabularily impoverished listeners. Maybe that’s their way of flippin’ tha script on European culture or of attempting to flaunt their superior European cultural capital? But I’ve digressed.

Aren't Sharpton and Jackson simply filling the same types of social and media roles that Black Preachapundilectuals like Dyson and West fill (and quite lucratively)? If they are, should we really be concerned by the fact that Jackson and Sharpton still have more clout than all other Black Preachapundilectuals? I don’t think so. If they have more clout than we’d like them to, perhaps it’s because they earned it over decades of consistent rhetorical brilliance. Perhaps they remain eminent among their peer Black Preachapundilectuals, at least in part, because they don't have prestigious Ph.D.s from Ivy League Schools. Or, perhaps they have more pull because they’ve actually done more than talk on bunches of panels and write a few books. After all, both Jackson and Sharpton actually ran for office, whereas Dyson and West have only analyzed from afar. I, for one, would like to see West try to run for public office in New Jersey, or run for U.S. President. Didn’t he say a few things about how mediocre some of our presidential candidates were? Surely he believes that he’d make a better U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, or U.S. President than all the other folks running for office in 2008. Why is he still a popular Black Preachapundilectual moonlighting as a university professor instead of a professional politician out there campaigning for votes? And I wonder whether the fact that Jackson and Sharpton have actually done something significant in the political realm is the reason why they have not been replaced in the modern media by their peer Black Preachapundilectuals.

So close

On September 28, 2007 - 10:29am Prometheus 6 said:

You really picked the right guys to compare them to.

when Dyson and West get the spotlight these days, they often preach as much as, and often more than, they educate.

That's because they are both ordained.

You're right, they all serve the same function, but on different turns of the wheel. Jackson and Sharpton have put themselves physically at risk for those who trust them. They deal with issues for the lower economic clase, which are almost all concerned with physical events. Think "how do I get stuff?"

Drs West and Dyson deal strictly with semantic issues; middle class issues. Think "how do I get stuff without losing what I already got?"