Over the past several decades in America, Black youth have endured a complicated assault of abuse, criticism and relative political abandonment by Black political, spiritual and even educational leadership. The exploitation and overmagnification of the “hip hop movement,” gang activity and the failures of American public education have all contributed to the development of an image of Black young people that is incomplete, inaccurate and undeserving.
Sadly, too many Black adults have bought into this image, and in doing so we have excused ourselves for failing to exercise the kind of adult leadership that all of our young people deserve.
While the interests of Black America were being marginalized and generally minimalized, the image of our youth from the 1960s and 1970s was also being deliberately transformed from an image of political activism and consciousness to a predominant image of “gangsta culture” and “thuggery.” This transformation coincided conveniently with the “War on Drugs,” the abandonment of the “War on Poverty” and the acceleration of a series of “blame the victim” policy initiatives. All of which costs Black families indeterminable amounts of wealth as Black neighborhoods were successfully programmed for destruction.
If one recalls the scope, magnitude and intent of the Counter Intelligence Program, little difficulty is encountered in understanding how federal, state and local governments had the wherewithal to destroy the Black Panther Party and other transformative youth organizations and Black movements and in the next breath demonstrate their complete impotence in being able to control the flow and distribution of drugs into Black communities. Not only were our young people as representatives of our “warrior class” being systematically destroyed, jour communities were being destroyed as a base of wealth and political power.
An equally tragic and unspoken aspect of this phenomenon was the evolution of the schism in thought and space that evolved between Black youth and Black adults. Seemingly, so many Black folks, who saw themselves in a “newly arrived status” or for other unarticulated reasons, began to see the continuing efforts for the solidification of recent social, economic and political gains being waged by Black youth as embarrassing. In too many cases, we became the critics of our young people and in doing so we became the unconscious surrogates for the forces resisting Black progress and Black Power. In too many instances, we functioned in this capacity more effectively than White America could have dreamed of performing. Today, we continue to wrestle unsuccessfully with the consequences of this flawed and too often selfish short-sighted strategy.
There are many legitimate indictments, for past, present and continuing conduct, that Black America can bring and lay at the feet of American society and Western political and religious institutions that account for the negative conditions existing in Black communities in America and throughout the Diaspora. However, we can no longer overlook our contributions to and support for the institutional policies and practices that create and sustain models and programs that frame and reinforce the oppression of Black opportunity structures and the suppression of Black lives.
A general assessment of some of the conditions restricting the opportunity for Black youth helps to clarify and sustain the argument.
