Peniel E. Joseph wrote for The Root Monday that “many voiceless black youths find old guard civil rights leaders’ voices indistinguishable from political white noise” and specifically pointed a finger at Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson’s forgettable Ferguson appearances as proof.
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Joseph, a Professor of History at Tufts University and the author of the Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America and Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama, argues that “what makes the current situation different from the 1960s is that we have no Stokely Carmichael or Black Panthers who can properly relate to the young people.”
“Leaders such as the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton,” Joseph writes, “have visited Ferguson, but their pleas for calm have been ineffective.”
His reasoning:
Brown’s killing is not the root cause of Ferguson’s violence. It’s merely the spark that triggered it. Poverty, segregation, unemployment and a climate of anti-black racism haunt tiny Ferguson and the wider St. Louis metropolitan area. Riots, King reminded us, are “the language of the unheard” and oppressed.
It’s no wonder, then, that local young black men and women can’t identify a single black leader or organization as the leader of the chaotic demonstrations in which they have participated.
National black political leaders from the civil rights era have tried, through organizational outreach, speeches, media—both traditional and social—marches and demonstrations to reach out to and stay connected with a new generation of young people. But this effort bumps up against the limitations of resources and outreach.
America’s racial underclass, the off-the-grid hustlers and entrepreneurs whom many black elites ignore or demonize, rarely sees political leaders of any color advocating for them.
The divide, while generational on the surface, is also fueled by class, since young people with education, networks and access tend to view politics as a long-term process—one that comes with victories but also compromise and setbacks. Millions of young blacks have no entree to the nuances of American democracy and racial struggle. Their world is more painfully straightforward and wrenching—black folks get shot in the streets with no hope of justice.
Joseph also noted an exchange where one of the peaceful Ferguson protesters was asked who their leader was. “Do we have a leader? No,” came the response from the young man.
The leaders of old, like Sharpton and Jackson, Joseph continued, are “in a tough spot.”
Why?
“They’re wary of being too critical of President Barack Obama’s track record on race and poverty, aware that the attorney general is his staunch ally and they’ve been pilloried by conservatives as ‘race hustlers,” he argues.
What’s worse, Joseph believes, is the lack of connection to “[t]he very constituency they often claim to speak for—the voiceless black youths who have come out in Ferguson over the past week,” which clearly deemed their words “indistinguishable from the political white noise that only unfettered violence seems capable of breaking through.”