A vision without a plan is worthless. A plan without an agenda rooted in one’s enlightened self-interest is like a ship without a rudder only to be guided by the winds and waves of other people’s agendas. Every interest group has a social, political, and economic agenda: lawyers, doctors, unions, bankers, farmers, oil & gas, etc. What is ours? Why don’t we have one?
Black people suffer from the fear of offending our “allies” by developing and promoting an unapologetically Black agenda. Let us conduct a separate poll of each of our public officials, clergy, media, entertainers, social justice organizations, activists, and businesspersons and see if there are five to ten agenda items we agree on.
Will a Black agenda poll result in a list of proactive or reactive policies? Will a Black agenda poll result in agenda policies and outcomes of what we are for or what we are against? Will a Black agenda poll result in agenda policies and outcomes we can synthesize and put before any candidate or political party that seeks our vote or business interest that seeks to do trade and commerce with us?
We have been fighting oppression, poverty, and want for so long, we only seem to settle for the lowest baseline of so-called “success” of the “American dream” rather than to be our best in all phases of our collective existence. We either do not know or have forgotten that the 19th and 20th century Civil Rights Acts are based on the 13th, 14th, and 15th post-Civil War Reconstruction Amendments.
In other words, White women, LBGTQ, and other racial minorities have benefited from the Constitutional Amendments designed for our formerly enslaved ancestors or “Freedmen.”
My point is, what is good for Black people has turned out to be good for everyone else.
So why do we fear offending so-called “allies” by setting an unapologetically Black agenda?
I submit to you there will never be any peace for America or the world until Black people and the downtrodden, in general, receive justice. I repeat, what’s good for Black people is good for America and the world.
Let us gather, have a family meeting, and develop an apologetically Black agenda of our enlightened self-interest BEFORE we endorse anybody for public office or support commercial interests again. To do otherwise is to tie Black people to a selfish, individual agenda, not one that benefits the whole. To do so is to render Black people’s rudderless ship to the winds and waves of other’s agendas and wreck us on the rocky shores of social, political, and economic disaster.
This is ONE BLACK MAN’S OPINION, what is yours?
I am Dr. Abdul Haleem Muhammad.
As-Salaam Alaikum (Peace be unto you)
Dr. Abdul Haleem Muhammad serves as the Southwest Regional Student Minister of the Nation of Islam Muhammad Mosque No. 45, 4443 Old Spanish Trail, Houston, Texas 77021.