Contemporary African American history 2006–2008

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Failure of the Black Misleadership Class
By Associate Editor Bruce Dixon, Black Commentator, 7 February 2006. The cohort of black business people and politicians who pass for African American leadership is at an impasse, and so is the rest of black America. Our leaders have failed to produce economic development models for inner cities and poor black enclaves that benefit the people who live there now.
Black Caucus Caves to Corporate Power: Two-thirds vote against Black interest
By Bruce Dixon, Editor, The Black Commentator, 15 June 2006. The independence of black American leadership is under assault by a tsunami of cash. Unprecedented levels of corporate underwriting are subverting black civic organizations. Tens of millions in faith-based federal grants have been deployed to suborn black clergy. Rivers of charitable and campaign contributions have been invested in subduing or silencing the voices of African America elected officials.
Where Will Blacks Find Justice? The Civil Rights Movement is Dead and So is the Democratic Party
By Roland Sheppard, Atlantic Free Press, 21 December 2006. By 1968 legal segregation, Jim Crow, was destroyed, but King and Malcolm X knew there was a deeper and more challenging economic issue. The Democratic Party started laying dollars on any potential Black leaders and grooming Black Candidates, who ended betraying hope and support for Black politicians replaced the the struggle for economic change. The kind of coalition envisioned by King is needed today. In order to survive, we must begin the begin.
Powell, Rice and Obama: Putting Black Faces on Imperial Aggression
By Glen Ford, Counterpunch, 16 February 2007. Sen. Emil Jones and the larger political current he represents would utterly gut Black politics of all substance; it is based on the assumption that African American aspirations are limited to a simple desire to see Black faces on display in high places. Would Barack Obama be a worse international criminal than Hillary Clinton? My guess is, they'd function identically as stewards of empire.
Living for change: the Jena 6 and Black leadership
By Stephen Ward, The Michigan Citizen, 7–13 October 2007. Many people view the September 20 march in Jena as a re-kindling of the spirit of the civil rights movement. The aim of today's struggles should not and cannot be to reproduce the protests of the civil rights era. Statements from young people during the Jena 6 march that they were changed through this protest highlight the central importance of transformation in black leadership.
The Black Church and the Hollowing Out of Black Politics: African America—Black Misleadership Class
By BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon, Black Agenda Report, 16 January 2008. Much of what passes for Black leadership no longer represents African American political interests or opinion, having broken from their progressive mass moorings under the lure of corporate money and “faith-based” government bribes. Black politicians dance to the tunes of Big Business campaign contributors, while many Black preachers “ape the undemocratic and bigoted worst” of their white Christian counterparts.