You can find me and the show on social media by searching the handle @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube.
Our Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd
All our episodes can be found at CTDpodcast.com.
I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode of this program, my guests and I will have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events and the broader historic context in which these events occur. This will enable you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. What are we to do when neither party is interested in representing our interests and we don't seem to be willing to demand that they do? For insight into this, let's turn to my guest. He's a lifelong activist and scholar, former dean of the African-American Studies Department at Ohio University, and former director of the King Center in Atlanta, and former host of morning conversations with Tom Porter. He's Tom Porter. Tom, welcome, and let's connect some dots.
Good morning and thanks for having me Wiler.
So Tom, there's a lot going on right now. There are certain times or moments in history when you look back at some time later and you say, wow, that was a pivotal moment. That was the time that changed the world, the industrial revolution, the first man on the moon, the assassination of Dr. King. I believe that we're in one of those moments right now, the transformation from a unipolar to a multipolar world with the US no longer being the unipolar hegemon, the US Empire and Neocolonialism are struggling to survive. Tom, with that being understood, your assessment of what I've just stated and what are we to do?
It's an interesting question. At the same time that the world is, and rightly so focused on the events that are happening in the Middle East, not dealing with it in terms of a historical context, but at the same time that this is happening, there's a big meeting in China celebrating 10 years of the Belt Road Initiative where countries from all over the world are there. We are at a pivotal moment in history and what's happening in the Middle East. It is a reflection of that. It's a reflection of something historically that was wrong from the very, very, the state of Israel was founded in 1948, not in the biblical times of old. And not only was it founded in 1948, and the question you have to really ask yourself, why did they simply allow the Jews to stay in Europe? That's an interesting question. So now if you look at what is happening in the Middle East and if you deal with the results and not how the results were obtained, that is the state of Israel is a geopolitical construct.
(03:37)
I say that because it was put where it was put, not because it had something to do with the Bible or history, but because it was a strategic move on the part of the West to solve a problem of what to do with the Jews in Europe and also to solve a problem of establishing a geopolitical body in the Middle East to checkmate the Arabs. But while this is going on, the world has moved on. It's no longer a duopoly. It is no longer the West that's dominating. It's not only China, but it's various other organizations and formations around the world in Africa and Latin and Central America, and even in Asia, all pointing in one direction that is trying to find a way to solve the pressing problems of today, which cannot be solved unless you have a multipolar world.
You mentioned the 10th anniversary of China's Belt and Road initiative in the fact that a number of countries from all over the world came to China in order to convene, and you had President Putin spending three hours meeting with President Xi, and this is a rarity. When Putin and Lavrov traveled, foreign Secretary Lavrov traveled together. Lavrov goes to meet with Wangee, the Chinese foreign minister, and they're talking about all kinds of trade initiatives. They're talking about security initiatives, all of this taking place, and the United States isn't in the room. That, in my opinion, speaks volumes about how the world has changed.
Well, the West is no longer the center of the world. The West is no longer the dominant force in the world, politically, economically and actually militarily because you have around the world, as I said, different organizations and formations and the west has been left out. I mean, take Israel for years. Yesterday the United States representative of the UN vetoed a proposition that was put on the table by Brazil, vetoed it as it has in the past, and that is whenever the subject of Israel misdeeds would come up at the UN and it would pass overwhelmingly, but it was vetoed by the United States. The problem is now that the world is not paying any attention to that veto. But what is also interesting in all of this, Wilma, is the presence of blacks out front representing this country. It was a black woman who vetoed it, Linda Thomas Greenfield.
(07:09)
Yes, it was Lloyd Austin who went to Israel, went to Israel, and then there was this deputy who I'd never heard of, this black guy who popped up and they always put us out front. We were always out front, but there's never any reciprocity, and that's one of the problems in the African world, including here in this country, is the lack of an understanding of reciprocity because there's no agenda. The last time there was an agenda was the agenda at the Gary Convention. That was the last time. I mean, for instance, everybody wants us to support their position, but we never ask them, what is your position on reparations? Not reparations in some little city out in Illinois that decides that it's going to give a few houses away, but reparations in the same sense that Israel got reparations, the Jews got reparations, the Japanese got reparations. We don't even put it on the table. Where's the black caucus in this? Do they have a position on what's going on in the Middle East? Do they really see any relationship between what's going on in the Middle East and what's happening to us in this country? Gentrification is nothing more than a move against black people to take land in the fifties and sixties.
(08:42)
They call it urban renewal. We call it negro removal when they put expressways through every major black community in this country that they could, and therefore separating not only black people in terms of communities, but also limiting the possibility that we would be able to act as a force, a unified force.
Go ahead.
So we don't make the connections between what is happening in the Middle East and potentially what could happen to us in this country as we are marginalized more and more. It's not just gentrification, but it's also the reduction of the quality of education and our school systems. It's also the quality of healthcare. It's everything that we consider the misery index,
And it's all of those things, the misery index that we keep being told that we can't afford to ameliorate or we can't afford to solve, but somehow we can find a hundred billion dollars to send to Ukraine. We can now have a president in Joe Biden who wants to send not only money to Ukraine, but now also send more money to the settler colonial state known as Israel. And you even have Janet Yellen, the Secretary of the Treasury, saying, oh, we can fight wars. We can afford to fight wars on two fronts. That's not a problem at all. Well, if we can fight a war on two fronts, then why can't we fight the war on poverty? Why can't we fight the war on homelessness? Why can't we pay teachers in this country who are supposed to be educating the most significant resource in our culture, our children? Then why can't we afford to pay them more? Why can't we fight those fronts instead of printing money in order to send to Ukraine and in order to send to the settler colonial state known as Israel?
Exactly. And the problem that I'm having in all of this Wilma, is, and as I talk with my friends, I say the fundamental question that we must ask ourselves today. What does all of this mean for us? Should we have representatives at the Belt and Road Initiative in China? I visited Palestine and Lebanon years ago in a delegation that was led by Jack odell, and one of the things that I admired about the Palestinians, even though they were in a large ghetto, they were organized. They had their own Red Cross, they had their own school system. They acted as if they were in exile. We act as if we belong to something, which each and every day is saying to us that you could stay here, but under our conditions, and we have to really ask ourselves, should we? The UN has already said that the conditions of black people in this country is similar to crimes against humanity. Should this woman who represents the United States represent us at the un or should we have our own? We have to connect ourselves to the forces that are moving forward, not continue to stay and plead each and every day for the devil to accept us in hell.
What I hear you saying there is we should be having an international Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. We should, as Mrs. Hamer did at the Democrat Convention because Mississippi would not seat black, a black delegation that we should create our own and take that to the United Nations.
Exactly. We have to act as we really are. We are people who are really in exile, whether we believe it or not, there was never any intention to free the slaves and there was never any intention when they were freed to honor that freedom in any meaningful way was never a 40 acres in a mule. I mean, there was never, they had no plan for black people of African descent in this country beyond slavery any more than they had a plan to give the land back to the Native Americans. They never had any plan, and they still don't have a plan. And we have been continuing in each generation, our politics has been focused on trying to convince the people who run this country that we are worthy of being a part of this piece of SHIT. Rather than saying, Hey, I mean it's like critical race theory.
(14:25)
Why should we be concerned about whether white people want to know about black people? We should be concerned about knowing about ourselves, knowing what our history is, what our history has been. It should be taught in every place that black people gather in the churches and the neighborhood houses and what have you, but we shouldn't be concerned about that. But if people seeking freedom would not be concerned whether or not they're enemies who have been their enemies and will always be their enemy because of the nature of the capitalistic system, they can't solve the problem of black people or the native Americans of brown people, of working people, of poor people within the confines of capitalism. It is impossible.
You mentioned putting black faces on the front of all of this. If we shift the conversation, for example to Haiti, that would be a perfect example of what you're talking about. It's Hakeem Jeffries who has been traversing the Caribbean, trying to convince Caribbean countries to join the US invasion of Haiti. I believe Kamala Harris was a part, I know she's not part of the CBC, but she was at one point that she also was down at Racom trying to convince Caribbean countries to back the US invasion of Haiti. And now they finally convinced Kenya to get on board and send a thousand Kenyan. So-called policemen to Haiti, and fortunately the Kenyan Supreme Court has said not so fast they think that this move violates the Kenyan constitution. But I just use that as an example of how African-Americans are put on the face. I call it minstrel internationalism because it's black face on white folks foolishness
Without a doubt. They haven't really asked anybody black to comment on what is happening in the Middle East. Only to say that I support the state of Israel or the state of Israel has a rhythm.
Right to exist.
Right to exist and right to defend itself. Well, that's an interesting question because it goes back to 1948. It's not like this is an old situation, and it was a land grab that the people who settled and formed the state of Israel were not from that part of the world world. Their history was in Europe. And that's why I say it was a geopolitical construct. I mean, they considered putting it where Uganda is, and then they were going to put it in Latin America. So they considered a number of different places. So there's nothing sacrosanct about the state of Israel because the other thing is they say that Israel is the only democracy in the, if in fact Palestinians were allowed to vote in elections in Israel,
They'd be outnumbered.
Yeah, they'd be outnumbered. But again, we have to ask ourselves, what does this all mean for us? Biden's making these crazy statements. What does it mean to us? What does it mean to us that we give Israel more money than we give the whole continent of Africa every year, but we take more out of the continent of Africa every year.
Go ahead, finish that.
Then we take out of any other continent.
And to that point, that's one of the things that motivated Niger to throw the French out of Niger, which was we have some of the most precious resources in our country that are extracted from our country every year and somehow some way we're one of the poorest countries in the world. And they were saying, we have to change that dynamic. And what did they do took, and you know what? I think this is a great place to talk about the difference between flag independence and real freedom. Because for example, when you look at Palestine, they have a flag. When you look at Niger, they have a flag. When you look at so many of these former colonial states, which are now neo-colonial states, they got their independence, which means they got a flag, they got a government to a great degree, they control a lot of their politics, but what they don't control was their economies. And when you control your economy, you then have real freedom. And that's what a lot of these resistance movements now are about, is controlling their, what did Gil Scott Heron say? When I control your resources, I control your world.
That's right. It's interesting because I'm constantly having to remind my friends from the Caribbean that who like to talk about we have our own flag, and I have to constantly remind them that brother and sister, that's just another place where the slave ship stop. Don't get this stuff twisted. And it's very important that we understand that because they are using, do you notice that people who were black Americans now refer to themselves as black American of Jamaican descent, black Americans, of what they were comfortable in being black Americans. And now that they understand that the country is using them, the Black studies movement was undermined by bringing reactionary Africans and people from the Caribbean into leadership. You don't have to take my word for it, do a survey. So because you can come here and don't have a commitment to the struggle of black people in this country, and you leave the real struggle that's going on in your country. So we're beginning to see that not only, but just notice this from now on, people who now say that I'm a black American and of so-and-so, but when you were taking advantage of everything that we had fought for, you were happy in being a black American.
But here's a point that I haven't heard anybody mention, and that is the Balfour Agreement from 1917, which is where the whole agreement to establish a colony in Palestine was agreed to in London. And one of the provisions of the Balfour Declaration was the civil rights and protections of the indigenous Palestinians will not be assaulted. They will be protected. In fact, if you read the Balfour Declaration, Israel isn't mentioned. All it talks about is a homeland for Jewish people in Palestine with a capital P.
That's interesting. But see, there you go, raising those vicious truths,
Connecting the dots,
Which is really so important that we understand, as Cabral would say, connecting the struggles that we understand the interrelatedness of the world in which we live, in which China talks about bringing the world together to solve pressing problems,
As does Russia,
Right? The West, basically everything is a matter of national security. They're motivated. The new justification for every dirty deeded that they want to do is it's a matter of national security. If black people really begin to push hard, they're going to say that it's a matter of national security that we have to deal with. Not that the issue that they're raising is not important. They're not even talking about unifying the world even to solve the problem of climate. They're not talking about peace. They're talking about war, strategic interests and what have you. They're not even discussing building a better world, because if they talked about building a better world, they would have to change the system. And I mean something as simple as trying to solve the climate problem. Well, you could always say that by so-and-so and so-and-So we're going to eliminate the use of automobiles and have more public transportation more. I mean, you can go some places in this country, like my state of Ohio, if you don't have a car, you can't get around. There's no rail system. I mean, one of the things about the east coast, you can go to Philly, you can go to New York, or you get in the Midwest, it gets tricky.
You can go to Europe and never need a car with trains and buses and subway systems. You can go to Europe and never need a driver's license.
It's a mess, I tell you.
But you know, I'm glad that you brought up war versus solving problems because going back to the meeting that recently took place in China, while that meeting was taking place in China and they were cutting economic deals, they were cutting development deals, they were talking about how to make the world safer and improve the world. Joe Biden was in the Middle East fanning the flames of war, encouraging Netanyahu to invade Gaza, telling him, I've got your back. Go ahead and go on in. And I found it ironic that a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month or so ago, we were looking forward to the Saudis signing a deal, an agreement to recognize the colony known as Israel. And then once Hamas went in and sent those missiles into the colony, the settler colony, Saudi Arabia said, no, that's probably not a good idea right now we need to sit back and reevaluate all of this. Tony Blinken goes to Saudi Arabia and Mohammed bin Salman makes him wait damn near an entire day before MBS sits down with Blinken sending a very clear message. The dynamic is changing
Because what the Arab nations have to deal with
Are the Arab people,
The Arab people, the Arab streets, and you got mostly all over the world. The population is getting younger and younger in Africa, in the Middle East, in Asia. It's getting young and younger, and they definitely want a better world, a world free from war. And what Biden and blinking and these people are all selling more war. Why would you send more military weapons to a country that's already just overburdened with weapons? And the thing that they don't mention in any of these discussions is that Israel has nuclear weapons that's always had them. And in contrast to when South Africa gained this political independence, the one thing that they had agreed to was to emulate their nuclear weapons. South Africa had nuclear weapons under apartheid, and one of their leading, if not leading most important trading partner was Israel. Was Israel. When people say Israel is an apartheid state, it has always supported apartheid. So that's not really, but a small step from supporting apartheid someplace else and instituting the same practices in your country. And Biden goes without any understanding, without any mentioning of the apartheid nature of Israel or in mentioning in a real meaningful, substantive sense, freedom, justice, inequality for the Palestinians. He didn't even mention the two state solution, I don't think.
No. What he did mention that he did in his last speech, he did utter the words to state solution. But what he did not do as he called for peace, he never talked about equality for the Palestinians. And he talked about democracy, but he never spoke about democracy for the Palestinians. Because if you talk, people need to ask themselves this question, what does it mean when Netanyahu or Ben or Mulch talks about an Israeli state? Nobody asks, what does that mean? And it's important for me to say right here, this is not an antisemitic conversation. This has absolutely nothing to do with Jews because this has everything to do with Zionism. And it's important for people to understand. Not all Jews are Zionists, and not all Zionists are Jews. So this conversation has nothing to do with antisemitism. It has everything to do with freedom and justice, not only for the Palestinians, because it has everything to do with freedom and justice for the world. Because if you solve that problem of the settler colonial state and the genocide that's being exercised in the settler colonial state, you can solve a lot of other problems at the same time.
Well, Israel will never be safe within its borders until it deals fairly with the Palestinians. I mean, you can't just, as Fanon would say, we rebel because we can't breathe. We rebel because we can't breathe. You have 2 million people pushed together in what is nothing but a ghetto. And then you're taking more and more of that each day. You're shooting more and more of them each day. We have to get beyond this notion that if we criticize Israel or if we criticize some behavior of some members of the Jewish community, that we will be accused of antisemitism.
(31:29)
We have to get beyond that. I mean, clearly they're going to anything that you say that is not in line with what APAC or one of those other organizations, you're antisemite. And so if you go for that, you will never say anything, even if it's in your interest. It's not in Hakeem Jeffries interest to be talking about, we got your back, Israel. They don't have your back. Where's the reciprocity? It's not in the interest of this black woman up in the UN doing the bidding of the United States by vetoing, by doing what the United States has always done. It is not in our interest. It is not an interest of black people. And you can't say that I'm doing my job because you can always leave your job. I mean, if you are doing something that's not in your interest, you're crazy.
You mentioned a world free from war, and I want to just reiterate the point that at that economic in China, they weren't talking about war. They were talking about peace. But what does Gil Scott Heron say? Ask them what they're fighting for and they'll never tell you the economics of war because you were asking about why is the United States sending more weapons into the region? The reason is Lockheed Martin makes a lot of money when they do Raytheon, which by the way, our Secretary of Defense sat on the board of makes a lot of money when they do. That's why these cluster munitions are being sent into Ukraine. Why? Because they've been sitting on the shelf for years because they've been banned internationally. They want to clear their basements and their shelves, say again,
Their inventory.
They want to clear their inventory why? So they can get contracts for new weapons. That's what a lot of this is all about. And because sending more weapons into Ukraine at this stage of the game isn't going to change the dynamics on the battlefield. That war is over. It's done. The only question now to answer is how much longer does the United States want to push Ukraine to continue to take this weapon? That's the only question.
And the fact is sitting, all these are matters into the Middle East, these ships and what have you. It's just a show and supporting the military industrial complex because the United States is not going to get involved in a war in a Middle East because it will inflame the whole Middle East and the state of Israel will cease to exist if that happens. So I mean, it is bs, but there's an old saying that capitalism can only grow under war, and socialism can only grow, can grow only in peace. And so the Chinese know that if we can build a better mousetrap, and we can't do that if we just trying to build up an army, what have you, we have an army, what have you, but we don't want to get in any kind of war at all. We're not going to get sucked into something. With Taiwan, we played a long game. The Taiwanese are Chinese people, and there's a difference between the government and people. So capitalism, the history of capitalism has been, war has been plundering, has been rape. That's the history of capitalism. It was founded
Markets and resources, markets, resources and labor. That's
We were both the market and the labor.
We, well, in fact, many will argue that that's one of the reasons why they had to end enslavement in this country was because they needed those enslaved individuals as customers.
That's interesting because that is basically what we are even in the country days, is consumers.
(36:01)
Consumers. And if we would stop, my godson has a book, the Myth of Black Buying Power, which is true. But the other side of that is that the strength that we do have is to withdraw participation in the game of capitalism except where necessary. That is real power. The guy who on the bus in Montgomery, he never quit lacking blacks, never quit discriminating against blacks in his mind. But he had to decide whether or not he was going to have a bus company or not, and he just held his nose and said, they can ride anywhere they want to ride.
Which is one of the things I always, and you were much closer to that than I was, than I ever could have been. I always felt that one of the mistakes that we made early in that game was getting back on the bus. Once we decided to not ride the bus. We should have sent the bus company into bankruptcy.
Right. And started our own.
Exactly. Exactly.
I mean, the history of black people in this country is that when we did our own, we had more power and greatest strength and greater community. You take the, I remember growing up with the Negro Leagues, it was nothing like it. And who cared about what Babe Ruth or somebody else was doing?
We had Hank Aaron, right? We had Josh Gibson.
The whole myth that black quarterbacks didn't have whatever it took to be quarterbacks, whatever were quarterbacks in every black high school to every black college in the country. They just wasn't playing in the NFL.
And look at the NFL today,
Right? And that is why the Negro Leagues, and that's a whole nother discussion about Jackie Robinson, not him personally, but the integrating of baseball had absolutely nothing to do, but fairness of being right by black people. It had to do with the fact that more people were going to see black baseball than was going to see white baseball. And whenever black baseball and white baseball meant black
Baseball, baseball won.
The same is true with the A, B, A and the NBA. More people were going to watch Dr. J and Artist Gilmore, they were going to watch the NBA. So we say we got to merge it. And it's so much that in America, it's like the difference between jazz and black music. Anybody can play jazz, but everybody can't play
Black music. Can't play black music. Well, it's interesting that you brought up the ABA and the NBA and comparing that to the integration of baseball, because when they integrated baseball, they didn't bring the black teams into Major League baseball. No, they did not. They brought the black players because if you bring the black teams, you have to bring black ownership. And I think it was Queen Mother Moore. And again, you may know that, you probably know that history a whole lot better than me, but I thought it was Queen Mother Moore in New York that kept advocating for don't take the players out of the Negro Leagues, integrate the teams. But when they went to the A, b, A and the NBA, the ABA was still, that was white ownership in the A, B, A. It was white ownership in the NBA. So what did they do with the A, B, A? They integrated players and teams instead of just players. Because if they had done the same thing with basketball that they did with baseball, a lot of those A teams would've folded.
You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. So same, we see the same thing playing out today, and they give us Jay-Z and Queen B give us Obama and Michelle. They give us all of these things. And at the same time that the life for the majority of black people in this country is getting worse because it's good that magic decides to give some black kid a scholarship, but that's not the same as quality education for all black kids. That's like a lottery. You get lucky if Magic knows you or jz. JZ gets to do the Super Bowl a halftime at the Super Bowl, but that doesn't mean anything to these black kids who are out in the street, who can't go to the Super Bowl, can't go to a local NFL game,
May not have a television in their home to watch the Super Bowl.
It doesn't really mean anything. And so this kind of tokenism and we get caught up in it. I mean, right now we're kind of caught up in what's that? Will Smith and Jada? Jada Ja
Pinkett.
I don't know what it's all about, and I don't really care because it's really not that important. It just really isn't that important. So we have to be very, very,
Or the discussion about Tyler Perry and what Tyler Perry is doing and how great it is for black people, even though he has a non-union organization in Atlanta, and we know what unions did to help create the black middle class. He made a lot of his money playing off of stereotypes of black people.
He still, I mean, I think about a week ago I saw one of his movies, it was late at night. I turned on a movie. It was why I got Married or something. And it's basically black people playing white people in black face. That's basically what it is. I mean, the kind of issues that they have and the kind of jobs that they have
And the responses and solutions that are provided are not ours. In fact, I remember Barack is saying They playing you better than you.
No question.
So here's the question, Tom, what are we to do? We're looking at 2024 right now. We're looking at Trump and Biden don't know if Trump's going to get there because he may wind up in jail. Don't know if Biden's going to get there. He doesn't really know where he is. So given that right now, that's what we have. They're talking about Robert Kennedy now has declared he's going to run as an independent. Dr. West has left the Green Party and he's running as an independent. So to those that are watching and listening right now, Tom, what are we to do in a duopoly where neither party is concerned about us and we don't seem to be concerned about demanding that they are.
One of the reasons why they had to derail Jesse's campaign had and the Democrats derailed his campaign and led by a segment of the Jewish community. People forget that when Jesse announced that he was running for president and the convention center in Washington dc, the Jewish Defense League interrupted his announcement. And everywhere Jesse went in those early days, and in those early days, he called it the road team. It was myself, Jesse, and Florence Tate, the press secretary. We were traveling from city to city, and the JDL was harassing us at every place that we went. And it was because of the nation of Islam providing us security of security that they backed off. I can remember our first meeting in New York with a Jewish community, Jewish leaders in New York. Percy Sutton met us backstage with a Yama Corps in his head explaining to us how we had to deal with how we had to relate with Jews.
(45:09)
So the Jaime thing, they never heard. Jaime and Jesse never used Jaime in a negative derogative way. I mean, the Jewish community would tell you, New York is theirs, so they don't have a problem. Ask Chuck Schumer, right? So they didn't have a problem with that. Ask Gregory Meeks. But the base of the Democratic Party was labor and the black community labor split. A lot of labor went for Donald Trump. Trump. Some went for Biden. The black community is the only community that has remained loyal to the Democratic Party. The Democratic party. There's nothing on the agenda that speaks to any concrete solution to what black people need and deserve nothing at all. So my position is I'm not going to focus on the less of two evils. That's evil. Yeah, evil is evil. And that's been going on for a very long time. And we've come up short.
(46:30)
We came up short with Obama. We came up short with Clinton. We came up with both of the bushes. We keep coming up short. The only person who sincerely attempted to address the issues of black people was Jimmy Carter. And of course it got him in trouble. So we have to begin to think it's good to run as an independent, and I'm glad to see Cornell West through that, but he does not have the base and the understanding and the clarity that Jesse had in the notion of a rainbow coalition and the Rainbow Coalition. We used to call it the domestic third world in the sixties, the unity of black, brown and yellow people and whoever else wanted to you because that's where the strength is. And so unless Cornell West could pull it off and he can't, but we must independently, we must have an agenda that says, if you want our vote, this is what we're going to do.
(47:35)
And if you're not willing to do this, then we're not voting for you because you're going to come up, which we're going to come up with snake eyes anyhow. Because when you get in, as Biden has done, he does a lot of symbolic stuff and he's got some symbolic clowns around him, Clyburn Sharp, Al, and this group and all the people. I mean, there's just some interesting stuff that's happening and we're getting left out of it. Nobody asks us what we think about any of these issues, how King Jeffries can speak about the state of Israel, but he can't speak about reparations. I mean, what good is he to us if he's not carrying our water? I mean, what good is Lloyd Austin if he's Secretary of Defense
And not defending us?
That's right. And all of these so that if they're not doing that and we have to call 'em out, we have to call out the Black Caucus. If you say you represent us, this is what we want you to do. We'd be better off without you.
And in the state of things today. In fact, I'm glad you mentioned the Black Caucus, because I've said for a very long time that when you look at the original, I think it was 13, when you look at the original Black Caucus and you look at where they came from, they came out of the struggle. They came out of the community and they came out of organizations and organic, many of them organic organizations within the community we're now a couple of generations removed from that. And I don't think that it's an accident that they are now less progressive, less effective than the original group that was known as the Conscience, conscience of the Congress
And less connected to the community because they're not funded by the community. They are funded by outside interests, and they no longer see that they have to represent us. They don't go home to their communities. You don't hear anything from, I don't know any members of the black community, somebody, I mean Meeks, I don't know anything about Black Caucus. Yeah, black Caucus. I don't even know them anymore. I used to know all of them. I used to participate, but it's nothing to participate in now. And we've got to have a whole new thinking that's in line with where the world is going, not where the world has been. So that we need to have both a domestic and international policy. We need to be connected with the Belt and Road initiative. I'm not talking about just black people in this country, and there are some African countries that are connected.
A lot of them are.
We've got to rethink what does Pan-Africanism mean today? Because it is still important. I mean, we've only been in this country a short while, so I mean, it ain't like we've been here for a long time. So as Africa is beginning to emerge, that we must emerge with it. We must have a new way of thinking about Pan Africans and what does it mean? And the Chinese are trying bit by bit to reorganize Ong and the African, Asian and Latin American conferences that used to take place in this country. I mean in the world, we have to rethink all of this, but we have to also in rethinking that realize that we need these formations in today's world.
We need these formations in today's world. And you talk about organizing, and a lot of people listening to this might say, well, what do you mean? Well, when you look at, for example, the L-G-B-T-Q community, they organized, they demanded, they got a president to come out, an African-American president to come out and support same-sex marriage. You look at the women's movement and they organized. They demanded, and they got an African-American president who very proudly and rightfully says, the first piece of legislation that I signed was the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. And now you have folks that'll say, well, why is the African-American community complaining when there are African-American members of the L-G-B-T-Q community, there are black women that benefited from the Lily led better Fair Pay Act. There's a difference between being an indirect beneficiary of a policy. There's a difference between being an indirect beneficiary of a policy and being a direct beneficiary of a policy.
Well, as I say, I believe in reciprocity. And if you come to me, and I've experienced this before in the past, people asking me to support something, I said, where do you stand on the issues that affect black people? Don't come to me and say that our struggles are similar. I mean, I don't need to tell me that your struggle is similar to mine. I need you to tell me where you stand on those issues that impact me. When Kamala Harris was in Africa recently, the complaint of the Africans is that she spent more time trying to convince them why they should be involved with the LG community. I can never say that, right? Too many letters, but they complained that that's all she was talking about, the Africans. But where does this community stand?
Lemme just quickly interject that in that issue of L-G-B-T-Q on the continent, that issue was not an indigenous issue or an organic issue to countries on the continent. That issue was brought there by white evangelicals
Who
Went there and raised that and presented that as something that mattered in countries that didn't give a damn about it.
Again, as I say, we got to have a clear agenda, and it's got to be rooted in reciprocity, and it's got to be an agenda that impacts African people wherever they are. And because if you don't think about it in a large sense, what you'll get is what's happening to reparations. I mean, I think it's Evanston, Illinois, which has for some reason, they of doing something with reparations, and now they become a leader in the reparations movement. And then we have to watch these organizations in the black community because people are leading organizations today who 20 years ago were anti-socialist, were anti-communist, Ron Daniels and your mentor, I would say your mentor, but Ron Walters, they were part of expelling Ami Baraka from the Black Political Movement because he was a socialist. And yesterday Ron Daniel's organization was in Grenada supporting the anniversary of Maurice Bishop's movement. But 20 years ago, these people were on the opposite side. It's interesting that the MacArthur Foundation gave Ron Daniels $500,000. I don't know what for, but I know a leopard doesn't change its spots either. So they're bringing all of these people back. Al Sharpton, who used to be a snitch. How do you decide that you're not going to be a snitch? You go in and tell the people you were snitching to, I'm not going to do it anymore.
(56:29)
But these people, they have to justify. How do you come from that to where you presenting yourself as a leader? After Dr. King and all of the great speakers we have, it's easy for you to become a speaker. You can just plagiarize turn around Dr. King of Malcolm and what have you. So it's not Mr. Say, Mr. Do and what have you been doing in the past? So we got to take a look at the leadership and not be afraid to reject them. I think Barack Obama and his wife looked good. They were good representation of how middle and upper class blacks should look.
But what did they do
Right? Tom
Porter, I got to thank you as always, my brother. Thank you so much for joining me today. Big shout out to my producer, melody McKinley. Thank you so much, folks for joining Connecting the Dots podcast. I'm Dr. Wimer Leon. This is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. And remember, talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share my show, follow me on social media. You can find all the links on the show in the show description. I'll see you next time. Until then, treat each day like it's your last because one day you'll be right. I'm Dr. Wilmer Leon. Peace and Blessings. I'm out
Comments (0)
To leave or reply to comments, please download free Podbean or
No Comments
To leave or reply to comments,
please download free Podbean App.