Dr. Boyce Watkins Continues the Tavis Smiley Pile-On and Manages to Promote Himself at the Same Time

I admit that I love writing about Tavis Smiley, not because I particularly enjoy the topic, but because people search for it extensively. Ironically although the issue is primarily pure drama, at the core of the Smiley v. “the rest of ‘black Leadership’ ” is an issue that deserves more attention:

Are black Americans moving from issues of integration and acceptance into mainstream society to that of worrying about social justice and the more general plight of the poor?

I find it amazingly interesting that black Americans are gradually becoming no longer interested in “race-based” politics and are pushing for more general solutions to help the poor, and specific issues that target institutionalized racism.

Undoubtedly a lot of this is due to the emergence of Barack Obama, and the success Obama has had at re framing issues to be more about helping middle and lower income people regardless of race. Now, it is up to organizations like the Congressional Black Caucus to ensure that geographic areas with large populations of black folks are able to benefit distinctly from this new legislation.

For example, the health care bill had unique provisions to help Katrina victims in Louisiana.

Anyway, it’s no surprise you will see a lot of articles on Tavis Smiley v. Barack Obama — people love it!
[...]

Actual commentary on air by Al Sharpton and Tavis Smiley is here:

Summary of Parts 1,2,3 Tavis Smiley’s Intitial, Al Sharptons Response and Smiley v. Sharpton.

Some other opinions I think are interesting to reference:
Dr. Boyce Watkins http://www.thegrio.com/opinion/sharpton-smiley-reveals-rift-in-black-leadership-split-over-obama.php
Roland Martin http://www.rolandsmartin.com/blog/index.php/2010/02/24/audio-roland-s-martin-tom-joyner-morning-show-commentary-02-24-10/

Point I: No monolithic black agenda.
Implicit in most of these pieces is the idea that African Americans have some pre-ordained unified agenda on the basis of shared created ethnicity.  Roland Martin actually does a good job of beginning to separate out different policies that could actually be implemented.
(Created ethnicity is a concept I’ve had since undergrad regarding Africans in America as descendants of slaves. As a result of shared experience, descendants of African slaves have essentially become a quasi ethnic group. Barack Obama importantly, by virtue of his absent father , became a member of this ethnic group.)

However, I have yet to see Tavis Smiley clearly explain what is included in his idea of a “black agenda.”  Since African Americans represent roughly 12% of the United States population, some 30 million plus people, any discussion of a unified agenda is a bit far-fetched.

What is more important perhaps, is dealing with discrete issues that affect different segments of black populations when separated by different demographic features.
Some groups might be the following:
African American males age 12-25
African American single parents 14-35
etc…

The lack of detail to the “black agenda” makes the whole idea difficult to take seriously.

[...]

I listened to all of Tavis Smiley’s initial morning show commentary, and it seemed disjointed and amorphous. It featured a strained metaphor of a choir rehearsal — although oddly including Farrakhan.

So, I could see how the show could cause a lot of trouble, given Smiley basically called out a lot of people that listeners would immediately recognize e.g. Ben Jealous, Al Sharpton and others; yet, Smiley did not do a good job of attributing direct quotable positions to those names. Worse, from the stand point of those mentioned, Smiley sort of placed them in a very awkward position of seeming to be against Smiley’s unspecified “Black Agenda.”

From the start there were several strikes against the Smiley characterization of “black leaders,” no clear “black agenda,” no specific quotes about people mentioned by name, and no real context of their leadership. Smiley just sort of went through a awkward statement casting himself on the side of Black America and basically “Al Sharpton, Ben Jealous, Charles Ogletree, Valerie Jarrett, Marc Morial, Dr. Dorothy Height” as some sort of villains — but “love-ing-ly.” ROTFLOL

Further, Smiley definitely characterizes the question “Is there a need for a black agenda,” without following up on specific outline of that black agenda on the air, while promoting the resolution of his issues against Al Sharpton and others to be decided at Smiley’s own venue.

Tavis Smiley basically said, “I’m on your side” while these guys — with all do respect “don’t care about black people” (In my Kayne voice–appropriate since the proposed site is in Chi-town).

Quotes from the Tavis Smiley Talks after the jump
[...]