Most Black Leaders, Whether Left, Right Or

The Right Insists That Anyone Can Escape Poverty By Working Hard But That Is Simply Not The Case.

Thousand Years Ago, We All Descended From Africans Who Left The Continent. Those Ancestors, We Will Never Know Their Name. We Can Go Back 200 Or 300 Years And Actually Populate Your Family Tree With Real People Who Had Names And Documents. They Had Customs, Characteristics That, Unbeknownst To You, You Have Inherited. Almost Through Osmosis It Has Been Passed Down To You.

Very Few Black People Ever Embraced Back To Africa Movements, And Very Few Actually, A Tiny Number Actually Went Back To Africa. They Said, "we Are Going To Make America Live Up To The Ideals Of The Declaration Of Independence And The Constitution Of The United States." They Produced One Of The World's Great Cultures; They Produced Individuals Who Were Just As Brilliant And Made Contributions To The World Civilization. In Fact, They Produced A World-class Civilization, The African American Civilization, In Music, In Dance, In Oratory, In Religion, In Writing.

People Are Afraid, And When People Are Afraid, When Their Pie Is Shrinking, They Look For Somebody To Hate. They Look For Somebody To Blame. And A Real Leader Speaks To Anxiety And To Fear And Allays Those Fears, Assuages Anxiety.

The Sad Truth Is That The Civil Rights Movement Cannot Be Reborn Until We Identify The Causes Of Black Suffering, Some Of Them Self-inflicted. Why Can't Black Leaders Organize Rallies Around Responsible Sexuality, Birth Within Marriage, Parents Reading To Their Children And Students Staying In School And Doing Homework?