It’s no secret that Black America has gotten very complacent over the years.  Gone are the days when standing up and demanding better for your family and your community was a way of life.  If you’re looking for the objectification of women and the perpetuation of negative stereotypes to become unpopular in TV and media sometime soon, I’d suggest that you stop holding your breath.

I take the unpopular position of pointing the finger at the long-standing “leaders” in our community who may have done a few things in the 60’s and 70’s but haven’t done anything since then, the Old Guard.  The Old Guard has not done their part in cultivating new leaders and passing on the torch

Complacency and the pursuit of a dollar at ANY cost has become our undoing in our communities.  Think about it: …every African-American community has churches and a NAACP branch.  When was the last time you heard about a congregation stepping outside of their sanctuaries and knocking on doors, doing REAL outreach?  As far as the NAACP is concerned, can you name ONE program, event, or MEMBER of your local branch?

Let’s talk about this “worship” of the dollar in our community, especially by our youth.  How many Facebook statuses or Twitter updates have we seen saying “Get Money” or “Getting’ this money”…by people with NO JOBS!! Well, not legal ones, at least.  Even with that, is the chase of an easy dollar worth the deterioration of families and being unable to look our children in the eyes when they ask why you willingly and unapologetically sell DEATH to the community in which they grow up? It’s time for us to WAKE UP, plain and simple.

The truth is this: we, the Black community, have waited and suffered long enough.  Statistics aren’t getting any more hopeful, and disparities aren’t getting any narrower.  How many more of us have to be incarcerated before we decide to re-evaluate how our young boys and girls are being raised?  How many more children have to slip through the cracks of our educational system before we call for action from our local school boards?  How many of our young people with aspirations of excelling in life have to lose hope and go in the wrong direction because they lacked mentors to give them proper guidance?

If change in our community is to occur, and I mean REAL, SUSTAINABLE change, we have to make solid demands and stand by them. What demands? I thought you’d never ask.

1)     WE HAVE TO DEMAND MORE OF OURSELVES. 

Ignorance and lack of interest in current events must be deemed unacceptable from this day forth.  Whenever people become one-dimensional, they lose. Period.  How we go from a one-dimensional people to a dynamic one starts with you.  We can never stop learning or stop improving.  We can’t afford it as individuals, and we certainly can’t afford it as a community.  I will go deeper into this next time.

This also has a moral aspect attached to it.  We must learn to support each other, empathize with each other, and treat each other right. In order to do that, we must do the simplest thing that is seemingly so hard for us to do, which is SPEAK to each other. (MESSAGE!!)

2)     WE HAVE TO DEMAND MORE OF OUR LEADERS.

Just as we can’t afford to stay complacent ourselves, we can’t afford for people in leadership positions to sit and not do the work they were elected to do.  It’s time to tell these people and organizations to SHAPE UP OR SHIP OUT.  We must do away with these “cute” programs and community service projects that don’t have any true impact. 

Look at your long-standing activist organizations, cornerstones of the “Old Guard.”  What made activist organizations such as the NAACP so effective is that they were ACTING, really doing things and havingdiligently creating and sustaining a strong presence in our communities.  Today, some of these branches are more RE-active than anything, and they’re terrible at that, too.  When organizations become stagnant, we have to call the leadership to the floor and demand answers.  If they’re unwilling to get with the program, they must be replaced. B, bottom line.

3)     WE HAVE TO BECOME LEADERS.

All of us have to accept the challenge of turning around our communities.  If for no other reason, we must because we have been part of the problem at one point or another.  We’ve seen our young children model themselves after negative portrayals of Black men and women on television, yet passed on opportunities to address and correct the detrimental words or behaviors.  The reason why we’re in our current predicament to begin with is because we have collectively turned our heads and closed our ears to the things going on as if nothing was ever taking place.  That has to end, on ALL levels.

Furthermore, if we have to uproot stagnant, incompetent leaders, with whom will we replace them?  The[AG1]  We have to be able to recognize who is for the betterment of our community and who is against it, reaping the benefits of the position by doing nothing more than doling out empty promises and cheaply posturing themselves for the media.  We must step up, accept the call for us to do more than the status quo, and do the work that doesn’t just benefit us and our household, but our neighbors and the generation after us.

We can talk about gangs, drugs, economic disparities, and a broken family structure until we’re all blue in face, but what we really need to move forward is a CHANGING OF THE GUARD.  We are in desperate need of new leaders and, new ideas, …revitalizing our neighborhoods, our organizations, and, ultimately, our purpose. 

In the same way, one can’t do the same things and expect different results, the Black community cannot be led by the same people and expect our situation to get better as we move forward.

Stephen Smith is a recent graduate fromt the University of Tennessee-Knoxville with degrees in Political Science and Africana Studies.  He is currently working in Tennessee as a Field Organizer for Organizing for America.  In 2009, he created StephenJSmith.com, a fully -interactive site, featuring the latest world news, blogs, interviews, social commentary, and preferred readings.  He can be contacted at stephen.smith1911@gmail.com.

Throughout this past March up until now, I have been pondering many issues in Black America.  While there are many issues that I could have written about, why not address a topic that is avoided like the plague in the African-American community? 

I read an article the other week that raised the question of whether or not Black History Month has lost its luster.  The article basically said that, based on the importance (or lack thereof) the media placed on Black History Month leading up to and during the month of February, America has "moved on" from its harsh racial past and that the emphasis that Black History Month places on Black Civil Rights and the negative images and memories that it invokes is no longer needed in today's "post-racial" society.

I then proceeded to ask a few of my friends what they thought about Black History Month this year and a lot of them were upset that the month didn't get as much "shine" as it deserved.  When I asked them why they felt this way, they said "because White folks don't wanna know the truth about all that Black people did to get the country to where it is today."

But wait...do WE want to know the truth about Black History Month? How many of us know more about the Black struggle in America than just Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks on the bus? Who has read any of the great literary works of W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Booker T. Washington, or any of the many great minds of our past?

Black people love to talk about Civil Rights as if its a badge of honor we fight to protect daily, when, in reality, we know absolutely nothing about the struggle.  To be up in arms about the perceived lack of recognition and reverence for a month dedicated to the stuggles and achievements made by our predecessors without a single inclination to pick up a book or educate ourselves to gain a deeper understanding of those people or the social climate in which they fought is a complete show of ignorance, disrespect, and disregard for all that they stood for.

One thing about Black people is that we LOVE to meet...LOVE to discuss issues facing US.  In these discussions, gatherings, seminars, and meetings, we LOVE to refer to the past and what our pioneers did during their time.  The sad part is that if we were to go to college campuses and speak with leaders of prominent Black organizations (on my campus, that would be NAACP, BCPC, MAP, NPHC organizations, etc.), it is highly unlikely that most could tell you any more than surface-level information about those pioneers they LOVE to reference.

Take a moment to think about what this means.  Our pioneers' dedication to something greater for the future is the basis of what we do as human beings in today's world, especially as Black leaders in any capacity, on college campuses or in our careers.  Therefore, if we can't gain an understanding of the HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF BLACK LEADERSHIP through the speeches, literary works, movements, demonstrations, and lives of those that laid the foundation for us, how can we TRULY be effective in our roles leading others?

Dr. King hit the nail right on the head with this statement.  How dare we live our lives on the shoulders of these great men and women, yet never think to pay them the respect of educating ourselves about our past?  A widely-known adage states that one should only "speak on what they know."  If this holds true across all aspects of society, when it comes to Black History and the Black struggle for progress in America, a lot of us Black people should KEEP SILENT.

Non-heterosexuality is nothing new. Like any other phenomenon that goes against the grain, many look down upon it and judge those who decide to practice and indulge in the lifestyle.  In the United States, it is fair to say that members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community and their allies are waging the most modern war against discrimination and inequality.  People of all races stand against non-heterosexuality because of homophobia or because the Bible says that non-heterosexuality is a sin. From where I stand, it seems that acceptance of non-heterosexuals is slowly growing.  Within the African-American community, however, I believe that’s a different story, especially where Black men are concerned.

Recently, an article surfaced from Vibe magazine called “The Mean Girls of Morehouse.”  It discusses the experiences of gender benders, “a subgroup of the gay community,” on the campus of Morehouse College.  Dubbed the Plastics, these flamboyant and eccentric men dress as women on a daily basis; this practice of cross-dressing enhances the men’s self-proclaimed and often self-made androgyny and is frequently the first step toward transitioning into women.  The term “the Plastics” originated in the 2004 film Mean Girls as the name of an exclusive clique of high school girls who thrived on spreading rumors and tongue-lashing anyone who decided to stand in the way of their popularity.

Morehouse College is considered the premier HBCU for young Black men.  Its pedigree for producing outstanding and influential men is what brought Diamond Martin Poulin, one of the Plastics, to the College in the first place.  He dreamed of the opportunity to walk, live and learn as a “Man of Morehouse” in order to go forth and change the world.  The taunting and ridicule of fellow students eventuated in Diamond’s transfer to American InterContinental University.  Not only did  students call him a “fagot” for his decision to wear women’s clothing, the College decided to announce an “appropriate attire policy” in response to the Plastics’ presence on campus that banned women’s clothes.  As “Renaissance Men,” the students were to dress as appropriate representatives of Morehouse College and the institution’s values.  This staunch “social conservatism” came as the last straw for Diamond and some of his friends.

In response to the media frenzy that came after the announcement of the dress code, Dr. William Bynum, Jr., vice president of Student Services, stated that the College respects the “identity and choices of all young men at Morehouse;” however, the attire of some young men did not fit into the dress standards established by the Morehouse leadership development model.  However, I tend to agree with Kevin Rome, Ph.D., the former vice president for Student Services at Morehouse College, who says, “The Morehouse Man is defined by his contributions to society, [not] the way he dresses or identifies.”  The quieter niche of Morehouse’s gay community often segregates itself from the more ostentatious men on campus in order to circumvent any backlash that may arise from criticism of the Plastics.

With all of that said, I say this: judgment of anyone based on lifestyle choices is unfair, discriminatory and wrong.  However, it is possible to remain to true to oneself and push the envelope of acceptance while living in a manner that supports the fulfillment of one’s dreams.  The dress code, for instance, was only valid and enforceable “on the Morehouse campus or at college-sponsored events.”  While on campus, dress accordingly.  When off-campus, dress as a woman.  I don’t think that Diamond fully recognized the power that he had on the Morehouse campus as an androgynous, gay man.  He could have stood as a voice for the underrepresented androgynous men to the heterosexual and gay communities of Morehouse, pushing them to understand that they should not be overlooked in the push for equal rights for everyone.

Fear of change and the rigidity of tradition stop much progress in this world.  Based on the quality of luminaries and visionaries that Morehouse College has produced in its 143 years of existence, it is more than fair to say the College has stood as a beacon of “radical change,” especially when it comes to facing injustices of all kinds.  For Morehouse College to stand as rigidly as it has against these young men, it seems quite contradictory to the inherent values that the institution tries to instill in its students.  I understand the preservation of values and character of the College; however, holding to such a stiff idea of physical appearance will make Morehouse miss a treasure trove of young men willing to embody those values and transfer them into the world as upstanding, influential men of society. --AG

Autriel Galloway is a Senior at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, majoring in Public Relations with a minor in Business. Ultimately, she plans to fuse her two passions-- writing and supporting the spiritual development of others--  to make this world greater than it is today. To learn more about Galloway, check out her website -- www.autrielayne.com.