Category Archives: POLITICS

POLITICS, RACE

What Black Millennials Who Still Believe in that “Old Time Religion” Must Do To Save Black America

Leave a comment

While putting the final touches on an essay about the Black Panther Party’s demise, Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton’s view of the group’s biggest mistake shocked me. According to Newton, the Black Panther Party’s most grievous error is Eldridge Cleaver’s unwise decision to distance the Panther Party from the Black Church.

A profound study of Panther history will implicate Eldridge Cleaver, the Panther Party’s Minister of Information, in what Newton considered an unjustifiable pattern of attacking Black Pastors in their place of worship. Making matters worse in Huey P. Newton’s mind was that Cleaver did such things in front of a startled and frightened congregation. Contrary to Eldridge Cleaver, Huey P. Newton believed that the Black Church was essential to the Black Panther Party because it was their only buffer against law enforcement agencies such as J. Edgar Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Huey P. Newton’s view of the utility of the Black Church to Black liberation struggles validates my long-held belief that our praise houses have been, are, and will always be the most important institution in Black America.

I am confident that many people will take issue with the above assertion. I ask those people to consider that the Black Church is the only institution capable of rallying millions of Black folks, votes, and dollars behind a single cause overnight. Within a Capitalist nation that rests on a system of representative democracy, there is strength in numbers. Despite wild assertions from naysayers, the Black Church is a powerful entity if guided by enlightened leadership. Without courageous visionary leadership, the power of the Black Church remains dormant.

For those who do not believe that the praise house remains an important gathering spot for Black Millennials, recent data tells us that six in ten of them pray at least once a day; less than 40% of their non-Black counterparts pray at the same rate. According to a Pew Research Center Religious Landscape Study, Black Millennials also outpace their counterparts when it comes to attending religious services by a whopping 13%. The above study also reports that 64% of Black Millennials consider themselves highly religious — believe in God, consider religion important, pray regularly, and attend worship service.

When one considers the continuing importance of the Black Church to Black America, two things should be apparent.

  1. Black Pastors need to deliver sermons focused on the uplift of Black America.
  2. Black Millennials need to either leave or execute a hostile takeover of churches that refuse to focus their energies on the uplift of Black America.

It will be difficult to find Black Millennials raised hearing that old-time religion who disagree that the gospel must do much more than prepare our souls for the afterlife. I pray that Black Millennials will be able to do what those who came before them failed to do, that being, divorcing themselves from exhilarating emotionally charged messages devoid of substance.

If we learn nothing else from the history of the Black Panther Party, lessons regarding the essential nature of the Black Church to the advancement of our people are one of the most resounding. Now, suppose we could only get the Black men of God to realize that their leadership and sermons matter mightily to those who listen to them weekly. Were that achieved, Black Pastors would recognize the true power of the hermeneutical slices of the breath of God that they deliver to starving people every Sunday. I could make a strong argument that Sunday’s sermon is the single most significant factor in positioning our people’s minds for an exodus out of their earthly suffering.

Can I get an Amen?

James Thomas Jones III, Ph.D.

©Manhood, Race, and Culture, 2021

 

 

African-American History, POLITICS, RACE

An Awakened Pen: Why We Must Reclaim Dr. King’s Legacy from the Cowardly Fools Among Us

1 Comment

I guess that it was the convergence of many issues that silenced my pen this past MLK day. This was the first time that my pen remained dormant regarding Dr. King on this day of remembrance. Now, I do not want you to jump to any conclusions that I oppose the philosophies or goals of Dr. King.

I do not.

In fact, Dr. King’s steadfast belief in The Gospel is a position that I aspire to reach. I am unashamed to admit that I have not reached that destination.

Ironically, the catalyst behind my decision to allow my pen to remain silent was encouraged by one of the many celebrations of the Civil Rights stalwarts legacy. Truthfully, the alluded to event was not much different from other celebrations I have participated in over the years.

While listening to the panelists give their views regarding Dr. King’s legacy, I became increasingly bothered by the never-ending insistence that Dr. King’s commitment to non-violence was the only path forward and not a strategy he decided to use for many reasons.  The familiar portrait being painted depicted Dr. King, and therefore Black folks, as an old reliable mule determined to travel up James Cleveland’s Rough Side of the Mountain. I am sure that you understand how troubling, such depictions are to my Revolutionary Nationalist soul. Along with many others, I view such presentations as a sly strategy perpetrated by opponents who desire and benefit from Black America’s continuing trials-and-tribulations.

In many ways, the argument is a simple yet damning one that calls for Blacks to remain “salt of the Earth people” who in the words of Michelle Obama, “go high when they (their opponents of all colors and political leanings) go low.” Trust me when I say that if awards were given out for being long-suffering and refusing to confront avowed enemies, Black America’s trophy case would overflow. Yet, no such awards are presented in this earthly realm. In fact, punishment and scorn are visited on those who refuse to confront their enemies and fight them at every turn.

In many ways, I consider it treasonous for Black leaders to spew a depiction of Dr. King that misleads our people into believing that the Civil Rights patriarch was not committed to Black liberation in ways that extend further than a pedestrian passive, non-violent civil disobedience. I do not possess the words to describe how I feel about non-Blacks who are permitted to advance flimsy revisionist history that promotes a Gandhian philosophy as the primary catalyst behind Dr. King’s actions instead of Bayard Rustin’s wisdom.  Such people are either not well-versed enough in Civil Rights history or are deliberately seeking to convince Blacks that any response to the violence (physical, political, economic, social, etc.) doled out by their opponents means that they have betrayed the legacy of Dr. King.

As always, Black scholars’ voices must stand at the forefront of Black students’ understanding of Dr. King. Unfortunately for Black America, many of these voices are untrustworthy ones seeking to convince future generations of potential Black activists that they can love their way to freedom and gain acceptance from avowed enemies by refusing to fight. I am quite sure that Black leaders throughout the annals of time, a number that includes Dr. King, would agree with Frederick Douglass’ admonishment to all that “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will.”

It is past time that Black America stops listening to those seeking to convince them that their subordination is not attributable to men who have methodically perpetrated multiple forms of violence against their kind for centuries. Blacks must awaken to the undeniable reality that the oppressive power that has worked against them will never subside because they have chosen a path of moral superiority. As Frederick Douglass noted over a century ago, “Power concedes nothing without a demand,” and the voices of multi-colored wolves in sheep’s clothing that seek to keep Blacks naïve, defenseless, and willing victims of oppression in the name of moral superiority must be muted by any means necessary.

Dr. James Thomas Jones III

© Manhood, Race, and Culture, 2021.