My life as a scholar emanates from two central experiences. Here I'll focus on one--undergrad life. I may have talked about this before elsewhere, but I thank Cobb for bringing it up in the context of organization and black politics.
For me, I had two homes in undergrad--the Black Student Union, and Omega Psi Phi. The ques were a special case, but looking at black fraternity and sorority life at Michigan what I found was that the fraternities and sororities in general were highly efficient at organizing and mobilizing folk. It was nothing to pull thousands of black students for a set. Nothing to have personal meetings with high ranking university officials. But for the most part they didn't really care much about black people...nor were they intellectually driven in any stretch of the imagination. (Again, the Ques were a special case here.)
The Black Student Union on the other hand was never efficient at organizing and mobilizing large numbers of black people, they loved black people and the life of the mind. Talking about the viability of a black state, the wonder of the philosophy of the Ancients, the 13 thirteens in a dollar bill, the ideology behind George Bush's New World Order (Novus Order Seclorum).
I wouldn't be here without both experiences. But if it is at all possible to compare the experiences of a select subset of young adults to the experiences of people within an entire metropolitan area, we've got some of the same problems. The black people with the most expertise in organizing people and capital are the least interested in black people as a whole. The black people with the most love for black people don't have a clue about organizing capital much less people for anything other than protests.
Educating kids to do both should be a central goal of black educators.
Very good LKS I remenber being invited to UofM by LKS for an MLK day celebration.There were powerful speaker's and panel discussion covering a wide spectrum of the Black expeirence; on one panel there was an Minister from Detroit Mosque #1,Bro Spence also was on that panel. A young sister got up and wanted to know how she could help the BRO & Sis left in the hood how she could organize them the Bro said succently just go talk to the elders an ask what you need.In other word the people most to benifit have the answer but not the methodology to make it happen.In order for you to lead you cannot be to far in front of the pack,they could lose sight.
Posted by: tootsie at May 13, 2005 01:21 PM