The advent of social media has created an unparalleled precedent in the history of black-powered protests and popular movements. By providing means to distribute information, black voices have reached levels of expression that were inconceivable decades ago.
But amidst the loud and desperate cries for justice, the most deafening noise of all is the silence of African-American leaders.
Conspicuously absent, black leadership has taken a backseat to widespread protests and movements driven by centuries of inequality and prejudice, reaching a boiling point once again. And while empowering black voices everywhere is undoubtedly a step forward, the absence of effective leadership guiding the way towards change can be a recipe for disaster.
But why are Black community leaders failing to rise to the challenge? The key to understanding lies in theory and history, as always. Therefore the obvious first step is to define leadership and what it means to be a Black leader.
Black Leadership in America
While there are endless profiles, theories, and conceptions about leadership, America prefers a particular type of political leaders—the so-called Great Men.
The Great Man Theory can find its origins in the mind of British historian Thomas Carlyle in the 19th century. According to him, the recorded history is not an accurate recounting of the world’s events, but merely the successive biographies and tales of the great men. They are exceptional and, regardless of their origins, they are destined for greatness. Great Men, tells the theory, are born different from the common folk.
The reductive and white-centric nature of the Great Man theory is as evident as it is vexatious. Following the flawed logic of this premise, history being focused on Caucasian men is merely the result of them being Great Men. The conspicuous absence of Black or women leaders must be, then, because they are not great enough.
But despite the flaws of this reasoning, the Great Man Theory continues to dominate American politics as a whole. The population tends to claim for a single great leader, meant to solve single-handedly every single problem experienced by every group, regardless of what may be humanly possible.
Even more perplexing is that the Black community also keeps falling for the siren call of the hero—the romanticism of the savior.
Black communities look with nostalgia at the Civil Rights Movement and yearn for the prophesied Great Man to finally lead towards emancipation and an era of change for a multiracial America. A new Martin, a new Malcolm, a new Angela.
The type of Great Man leadership preferred by Black America fits the label of “transformational leadership.” Coined by Bruce Avolio and Bernard Bass in 1991, transformative leadership involved the leader forming a deep connection with the followers, increasing their motivation to fulfill specific goals.
Regarding the African-American community’s penchant for transformational leadership, Bass specifies that it emanates from the desire to change the status quo. “They focus much on group identity and the need for a sense of community,” he affirms in his book, Handbook of Leadership, “while leaders in the white mainstream more often direct their attention to conserving resources and the status quo, leaders of minorities, such as the blacks, must more often be transformational in their concern for social change.”
As such, the Black population lives under the shadow of the past—clamoring for a Black Great Man that will perform a transformational type of leadership and motivate the current protesting masses towards general change.
But what the population claims is not what the movement needs, and what the movement needs is not exactly what it gets.
Nowadays, Black movements need two things: to stop clamoring for the Great Man and engage in more transformational leadership. While there has been moderate success in the former, black leaders have failed to engage in the latter.
The Great Man is No More: Apparent decentralization of Black Lives Matter.
The civil unrest ushered by police brutality against Black civilians, consequence of racial profiling and anti-black racism, is nowadays categorized under the Black Lives Matter movement label. In more ways than one, its widespread social media reach has made it the visible face of the pro-Black cause in the last seven years.
Originated in 2013 with the formation of the Black Lives Matter Global Network, this socio-political movement prides itself on its atypical structure. Despite being founded by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi, they do not identify as leaders of their creation. Instead, they conceive it as a platform allowing black activists and the general population to connect through shared principles and goals.
According to the official website, “Our intention from the very beginning was to connect Black people from all over the world who have a shared desire for justice to act together in their communities.”
It is evident then that the intentionality of BLM, from its conception, is to stimulate a brand-new type of Black activism, quite different from its only precedent in size and influence—the Civil Rights Movement. Such defiance against the stereotypical pyramidal structure is meant to reflect a lesson learned from past mistakes—a direct challenge to the Great Man theory.
“In terms of strategy — and this is very real that we have to be honest about this — it makes it harder for those who are against us to do what they did in the ’60s, which is to target one leader,” states Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, to Politico Magazine.
It’s simple yet brilliant enough, a sure-proof way to guarantee the existence of many active leaders willing to take charge should anything happen to one of them. With horizontal leadership, Black Lives Matter turns into the mythological Hydra instead of Anne Boleyn.
The Black Lives Matters network does its best to unify each community leader by establishing a set of principles and demands that give a somewhat-visible structure to a mostly fluid institution. Subsequently, it encourages decentralization and the rise of local leaders, guiding each community individually towards the overall goal of the movement.
However, this has proven to be a double-edged weapon. While it would theoretically resolve old struggles, it creates new difficulties in its wake.
The challenges of horizontal leadership.
Black Lives Matter is a movement that started through social media and is through these means that it continuously grows far and wide, spreading information and facts related to the oppression, assassination, racial profiling, and other injustices faced disproportionally by the Black population.
It channeled the outrage into protests and allowed fluid yet coordinated means to speak out against inequality. By giving everyone a voice to speak, it’s plausible to provide the most neglected segments of the Black population a way to express their concerns, struggles, and aspirations.
And although social media provides visibility that previous generations could hardly dream of, it came at the cost of Black sociopolitical leadership as needed nowadays.
Every Black person has the potential to become a leader within their community and social circles. However, although many agree on the principles and final goals, most differ on the methods to achieve them. As such, these Black activists keep their sphere of influence reduced to like-minded individuals. Even worse, social media may encourage hostilities with other leaders regarding the proper steps to transform the kinetic energy of the protests in the wake of injustice into tangible change.
If most community activities and leaders differ regarding the steps the movement must take, how will it be possible to coordinate a nation-wide effort?
“There is a network called Black Lives Matter, with chapters and local affiliates. It could be very confusing for some to think it’s all the same,” explains Patrisse Cullors to The Daily Beast. “There could be some that use our name, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s in alignment with our message.”
While any organization or group has outliers with actions that don’t align with the movement they defend, it’s extraordinarily troublesome for a campaign that prides itself in allowing anyone to become a local leader. It creates dissent within the movement, encourages inner conflict, and prevents small-time leaders from working in harmony.
In short, the symphony turns into cacophony.
While, in theory, horizontal leadership is an optimal solution to guarantee the survival of the movement even past the original catalysts, it seems obvious now that its premise was built on the expectation of a specific type of Black leadership—a coordinated, systematic, and proactive kind of leader. A transformational leader in each community, working together to change the world.
Transformational leaders that haven’t appeared as of yet.
The Essence of Black Transformational Leaders: Proactive vs. Reactive Leadership.
Although the new model of horizontal leadership is instrumental in defeating the Great Man paradigm, its success relies on the advent of multiple great men. Specifically, it needs each community leader to engage in transformational leadership, but actively.
It’s hard to argue against the excellence of an expansive movement—Black activism has reached an unprecedented high, and Black youth is most active and empowered. Old and new generations have found new ways to organize themselves and execute their right for peaceful protests.
But activists are not the same as leaders, and while the movement has succeeded in amassing activists and agents of change, Black transformative leaders are nowhere to be seen.
It is almost discouraging how Nathan Hare describes the current crisis of Black leadership in an article published in 1972. His words, uttered nearly 50 years ago, resonate against the current situation:
“In the stage through which the black struggle is passing now, there is a wane in the dominance of any one leader even as our leaders continue to multiply. This swarming of leaders in one sense is as it should be, for it is said to take as many kinds of men and women to make a revolution as it takes to make a world. In another sense, what we need now is not merely more leaders but a new kind of leader.”
Regardless of their numbers, the new kind of leader needed—both in 1972 and 2020—is transformational. And the key to an efficient transformational leader lies in balancing proactivity and reactivity.
Proactivity in the context of leadership refers to the leader’s ability to be prepared for eventual contingencies. It involves a degree of control and a particular capability to plan and lie down structured plans to achieve stated goals. In short, a proactive leader takes risks to be one step ahead of the situation.
By contrast, reactive leadership takes a passive role against the environment. It reacts to outside circumstances and develops strategies based on events as they come, moving from crisis to crisis.
Naturally, effective Black leadership is a perfect blend of proactivity and reactivity. After witnessing one-too-many cases of injustice and the blatant murders of Black citizens at the hands of institutionalized racism, Black leaders took a stance. They encouraged mass protests. Naturally, this is a perfect display of reactive leadership—understanding contextual needs and encouraging action accordingly.
But where is the active leadership?
Transformation requires contextual action according to the social and environmental cues of the moment, but it also needs proactive stances beyond “riding the momentum.” It needs to look forward and understand the circumstances while also preparing to bring the radical change required.
The rise of inner conflicts within the local versions of the movement has discouraged local leaders from taking risks, making them instead complacent with the common opinion to reach mass agreement everywhere. A kind interpretation of this behavior is to believe they do it to minimize internal strife, while a cynical approach can instead say they do it out of self-preservation.
Black leaders have failed to take a proactive stance, and instead, focus on echoing the clamoring of the many. But can it be considered a failure when it was never their intention in the first place?
Black Leaders & Leaders Who are Black.
Current Black leadership’s lack of active roles is undoubtedly affected by the dissent of the many leaders emerging through the horizontal approach of the movement. However, assuming that is the main reason behind their passivity and lack of innovations towards change is a significant misunderstanding.
“We are now approaching the end of the preoccupation with notoriety, the end of rhetoric, and the age of mere bravado,” says Nathan Hare in 1972. It turns out that this era has taken over 50 years to finish.
Now in 2020, the “end of preoccupation with notoriety” seems like a far-away dream, and it remains the leading cause behind Black leadership’s passivity.
The proactive aspect of transformational leadership relies on changing the status quo through a direct challenge. After all, there cannot be transformation without defying the way things are.
The most emblematic Black leaders induced change and made a difference through defying the status quo. Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Assata Shakur, and many other transformational Black leaders capitalized a context and then pushed for change by doing what no one else had dared to do at the moment—making white America uncomfortable and design a plan to defy their status quo.
But defying the status quo comes with a political cost. The majority never likes change, and those pushing towards it will always face the ugly side of the reaction against it. Blacks that aspire to lead beyond the Black community, then, cannot risk jeopardizing their aspirations.
At this point, Black leadership faces a bifurcated road—do they aim to become Black Leaders or Leaders that are Black?
Speaking of what he knows best, the former member of the House of Representatives Artur G. Davis described the dichotomy in 2005: “You have one vision that says that you have a special obligation to be an ombudsman, an advocate for black people, regardless of the majority constituency. And there’s another viewpoint that says… you’ve got to represent everybody.”
Black men and women are empowered and can choose. As such, they can select the view and road they prefer for themselves. However, in making a choice, they must be aware that both options are incompatible.
The reason is simple—”Black Leaders” are transformational by nature, and “Leaders who are Black” play within the status quo. “Black Leaders” advocate for Black people, and “Leaders who are Black” are representatives for a district or segment of the population beyond their own, and including other groups.
The previously described lack of proactivity and overabundance of reactive leaders is not a coincidence, but a deliberate choice of most renowned Black spokespersons. The current horizontal approach to the Black movement leadership remains stagnant because there are many “Leaders who are Black” and few “Black Leaders.”
Leaders who are Black are usually politicians within the two main parties, either in active positions within the government or seeking to be elected for them. In other cases, they aim for different goals that require a “non-conflictive” reputation that appeals to most. They aim to please a majority, including a deliberate exclusion of transformational or proactive policies that may alienate white folks.
Davies explains the priorities of Leaders who are Black: “I don’t think we can get caught up on this idea that says our obligation is to deliver and to use our power for one constituency because, more often than not, if that’s the logic that’s applied, you’ll be on the losing end of the stick.”
Leaders who are Black have a different task to fulfill and individual aspirations they want to defend. It is naïve to expect radical change from politicians sitting in an office, whose task it is to mediate between conflicting forces within the country and represent the interests of the majority. Leaders who are Black are needed because Black representation in political spheres is a must.
Instead of condemning them for their mild positions, the Black Movement should stop demanding transformational leadership from politicians with elections in mind. In turn, those aspiring to be Black leaders must not be afraid of facing criticism, discontent, and the disapproval of many—significant change is never free of divisive criticism.
Conclusion: The Many Faces of Black Leadership.
The new generation of Blacks should understand that while there is an appeal in the benefits of becoming a Leader who is Black, Black America urgently needs more transformational leaders that are not concerned about political correctness or appeasing the sensitivities of white America to induct change.
However, that does not mean there must be a disregard towards Black leaders who seek to be elected in office. Change happens in many areas, and the fight for justice and equality takes place in many fields and areas.
Demanding a revolution from the Black politicians in office is misreading their role in the movement. Even worse, it can be perceived as remnants of the Great Man influence—seeing politicians as the saviors that will lead Black change instead of civil servants. It’s a reiteration of the Obama paradox.
Once again, Nathan Hare explained these circumstances fifty years ago.
“We must recognize a division of labor — between those in the various spheres (economic, political, educational); between those who lead in the realm of ideas, opinion leaders, who formulate revolutionary beliefs, and those in the realm of action, who specialize in the mobilization of activists. Leaders in one situation may not necessarily be leaders in another.”
The horizontal structure of the movement allows for this division of labor to prosper. In turn, activists should stop seeking transformation in leaders that happen to be Black. Instead, it’s a must to encourage, empower, and pay attention to new Black leaders that work outside the realm of the status quo.
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