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!
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I woke up this morning with the anticipation of watching part of the “Negro Superbowl” on C-SPAN featuring Tavis Smiley and his band of friends.  Interesting panel discussions that I could moderately consider, and perhaps squeeze a few articles out.

However… Because of the critical health care debate and expected vote this weekend on health care reform, C-SPAN will cover the debates live on Capitol Hill this weekend.

My guess is the Almighty Tavis Smiley appointed(?) leader of the “black agenda” is upset at being bumped for historic legislation?

James McWhorter takes Tavis Smiley to task about his Negro Superbowl Crabfest (a term thanks Weeseeyou.com) at The New Republic

Not long ago, Tavis Smiley did something I would not have expected, which is rare. He announced that he was discontinuing his annual State of the Black Union conferences. These have been powwows where the Usual Suspects are invited to make the usual points: roughly decrying racism while genuflecting to the radical idea that people are responsible for repairing their own culture too. They have had black conservatives sprinkled in for “balance,” to be sure, but we all know the drill.

I’d add that quite of the “usual suspects” are involved in a sort of quid pro quo to keep each other “relevant” by cross referencing each other in their material.

McWhorther eviscerates Tavis Smiley, and then makes a startlingly admission about the events that he has attended:

The first event like this I did was ten years ago now, at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. The last one I did was two months ago in Houston. Both were broadcast by MSNBC – and I was struck by the extent to which they were the exact same event even beyond the shared network.

Of course, as someone else put it on theAtlantic, if Tavis Smiley couldn’t talk about the “black agenda,” what would he talk about?

Since I’m a simple man or perhaps a simpleton I will concisely explain Tavis Smiley’s problem with President Obama.

The Prez is insufficiently “Tavis”.

At the very least El Presidente doesn’t seem to realize how important a person Tavis is.

Tavis Smiley is the Chuck Norris of self appointed black leaders. Cross him at your peril.

IrishPirate

In response to “Toward a Black Agenda,” @theatlantic.com by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

TheRoot.com’ Prints an Advertisement for Tavis Smiley.
TheRoot.com is the latest to conduct an interview advertisement for Tavis Smiley Enterprises.

The “interview” was a commercial for Smiley, as the interviewer did not bother to press Smiley on any of the issues people want to really hear explanations. Beyond the issues the tussle with Al Sharpton, but rather get to “the root” of the what Smiley feels his role is in the African American community, and Tavis Smiley’s own responsibility for his participation in the Wells Fargo sub-prime home loans events targeted for African American consumers. While Smiley is busy critiquing and complaining about other black public figures, he ignores his own issues. In addition, Smiley has yet to specify in interview after interview what specific policies should be created to improve (unstated) issues in African American Communities.

Like him or not Al Sharpton has created an black organization, and managed by hook or crook to become a relevant figure in both Democratic politics, African-American political leadership and gained enough of a position within the Whitehouse to have spots on various boards that are enacting policies. So, while Smiley is bitching and moaning about this that and the other unarticulated issues, Sharpton is busy working on reforming NCLB, and looking at numerous other issues.

Smiley is still caught between a role as both a talk show host and an activist, and manages to do a very poor job at both. As a talk show host Smiley tries to push a line of policy that has no constituency (unlike Hannity or Beck of Fox, which play issues to grassroots organizations) , and as an activist Smiley simply has no grass roots organization to actually implement whatever he says is the latest and greatest thing to do.

So, rather consistently Smiley is simply talking for Tavis Smiley Enterprises, and as a result it is no wonder the people who tend to stick-up for Mr. Smiley tend to be included in his events.

However, on theroot.com’s infomercial for Smiley’s book and feel good talk show tour:
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I have basically gone point by point to deconstruct the gentleman’s argument, as it has been the lone argument in support of Tavis Smiley’s behavior that I have seen. In addition, my site was initially referred to by comments of his article in some fashion at theRoot.com.

I tried to contact McAllister via twitter to get a better idea of his thoughts… anyway

(I saw the article “http://www.theroot.com/views/tavis-smiley-was-right/” in my server logs).

In his rush to criticize where the president should assist black people, Lenny McAllister either blatantly ignores the faulty premise of Tavis Smiley’s statements this week or completely misunderstood the problems with Tavis Smiley’s strawman position.  Regardless of the reason behind Mr. McAllister’s support of Tavis Smiley, the end result is a position that doesn’t seem conservative at all — support of Tavis Smiley’s unclarified race-based “Black Agenda.”

Further McAllister’s critiques of what the Obama administration are misguided. While I believe PBO needs to be critiqued from all corners, from all ideologies and all people,  the critiques should be focused on well-thought out specific policies issues, or executive-level execution rather than idle wishes.  Among these idle wishes, policies need to be detailed that will help segments of African Americans as opposed to an undefined race-based “black agenda.” So, without further ado, I’ll examine McAllister’s piece at theRoot.com.

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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.

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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
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