The Dialectics of Black Shame:
A Lack of Political Will to Build Black Foundations
[Part Three]

Frank A. Jones
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What Have We Done To Our Children?
by Frank A. Jones
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Frank A. Jones, PhD

A people who have suffered greatly under oppressive and unfavorable conditions imposed by others usually have a common pattern of societal development to safeguard against a return to those conditions; they correctly assume that past oppression and oppressors ominously lurk nearby to reassert misfortune if given conducive circumstances. In western societies and in western development, collaborative financial institutions function as one tool and voice of political and actual power. So as a people rise economically and socially, they amass as much power as possible and align it prudently to ensure their safety, the health of their communities, and the safety of their less able members.

Not only are there mutual aid societies and institutions of fellowship created to comfort and aid their communities, but to also care for their less comely and weak members. More financially strong and cognitive members know that because of the tentative nature of conditions in western societies, occasionally large sums of money may be needed under urgent circumstances. ⁽¹⁾ This is one reason why societal philanthropic infrastructural development must be an essential part of the fabric of a progressive people's community.

But more than urgent needs, there are other, more mundane and long-range needs that philanthropic foundations address as well.  In capitalistic societies money is the sine qua non of all things, and since people fall through these societies' supposed safety nets, which has become increasingly frequent, there are community based, nongovernmental agencies specifically to find and aid them. But these agencies require financial support that does not come from the government. These community based agencies provide a vital service to those who are weak, who have alcohol/drug addictions, AIDS, and other maladies and cannot find aid through social service agencies, etc. We know through years of experience, that America's rule of thumb has been and still is true that when funds and governmental aid starts drying up, for whatever reason, "Blacks are the last hired and first fired." ⁽²⁾

As sick communities breed sick children, healthy communities breed healthy children and robust citizens who contribute to society in many ways. Philanthropic institutions in communities help oversee the health and safety of those communities. They evaluate the needs of a community, host community forums to discuss those needs and a direction for tackling problems that are discovered. They have the financial wherewithal to address the needs of a specific community. This is not what a busy-with-other-things government will get around to in a timely manner. Healthy communities protect themselves and will not wait for the federal, state, or local governments to protect them.

Is there no correlation between societal health of poor Black communities and children from those areas who overpopulate social service agencies, county hospitals, and juvenile/criminal justice systems? Indeed, there is. But we as a Black people have not seen this or have not cared to address it. The need for attention to this aspect of the Black community has been passed by through needless obfuscations and meaningless political rationales that deceive our simple. Yet, this is an oversight of grave proportions.

And perceiving this grave oversight in our community’s development, Gibbs Foundation in conjunction with the Third Baptist Foundation of San Francisco assembled a number of church leaders, elected officials, community activists, and intellectuals to orchestrate a campaign to educate of our local community about the need for philanthropic infrastructural development as an essential element of a healthy and vibrant community's repertoire of institutions and how to go about developing them. The City of Oakland's Black elected officials ignored our invitations; Alameda County's Black elected officials claimed prior engagements elsewhere; only the City of Berkeley's Black elected officials joined us in this effort.

As we met and developed a strategy to develop a teaching campaign vitally needed for our local Black community and Black communities throughout the nation, we were hopeful. But our hopes begun to fade when some ministers took political positions and staked their religious territory that did not allow them to see beyond their congregations and parochial interests to the greater and broader good of the community from which their congregants come.

In spite of the parochialisms, we developed a viable plan to develop and endow Black foundations and a plan to hand that effort to Black political leaders. The plan was simple: Since there is a national thrust, employed by local Black elected officials, to discover all contractors that a particular city is using that have had historical connections with the slave trade, that action would be a viable avenue for partially endowing philanthropic foundations in our communities. ⁽³⁾ What was necessary however was for those local legislators to craft laws that spoke to Black foundation endowment. Second, we (local community based groups that were pioneering this foundation effort) would craft nonprofit corporations that would allow appointment of professional representatives from the various elected officials to sit on the board of directors and oversee a transparent and well managed nonprofit philanthropic community foundation that could be partially endowed by agencies discovered to have had some connections to the African slave trade. Third, an extensive education program directed at Black churches ⁽⁴⁾ and the general Black community about the essential nature and function of these institutions in Black and other communities. Fourth, that community foundation would then approach Black millionaires and celebrity about contributions and concerts to popularize these institutions at the local and national levels. ⁽⁵⁾

With that plan in hand, we attempted to present it to the Bay Area Black Elected Officials' Meeting, which met monthly. We went to the chairman to get on the agenda, but he never allowed us on to that body’s agenda. The chairman, who was also the chairman of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, delayed us through his chief of staff's obfuscating words and tactics that said “No” for six months, then for a year. [Attached is the request] That chair would not allow us an audience with that Black roundtable of elected officials to present our plan to help the Black community start and endow Black foundations as a demonstration for other Black communities across the nation.

Meanwhile, that Alameda County Supervisor who told us he was for the concept and understood the lack of foundation development as a problem in the Black community’s development drafted defective legislation, identical to that of Oakland City Councilman Larry Reid’s: Reid's legislation was to identify businesses the City of Oakland was doing business with that had connections to the slave trade and have those businesses help clean up blighted areas in Oakland and assist in scholarships for Oakland's needy. That legislation, was  defective in that it had no ties to Black people at all. But it allowed City Councilman Larry Reid to look like he was doing something for the Black community, when, in fact, he was doing nothing. Keith Carson's Board of Supervisors' bill was almost, if not in fact, identical to Reid's.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with that legislation as it affects all Oakland, it was defective because the very group of people most adversely and directly affected by slavery were not cited as targets for benefiting from the legislation and may not, as the legislation is written, benefit from it, especially with the rapid changes in the demographics of Oakland's population. The legislation was a Black politician's head fake to the Black community rather than a real score for that community.

Willing to attempt the same head fake and mislead political novices, the Chairman of Alameda County Board of Supervisors, Keith Carson, virtually took Reid's defective legislation, placed his name on it, and attempted to get it passed by that Board of Supervisors, but it was stopped and exposed for the deceptive nonfeasance that Black elected officials are engaging in with the Black community. It was stopped by one vote--a brilliant Chinese Supervisor, Ms. Alice Lai-Bitker, openly stated why she would not vote for the legislation as it was written.

Supervisor Alice Lai-Bitker wanted Keith Carson to amend the legislation so any voluntary funds acquired from businesses identified as having historical slave ties would be used specifically to benefit African-American communities; she specifically said, "Nothing in this ordinance guarantees that any money would go to the African American community, and they were most affected by slavery." She was correct to point out this flaw that our Black politician should have known and corrected. It was the same defective legislation of Oakland's Black politician. This time it was revealed in public to be defective and stopped based on its defect.

The Gibbs and Third Baptist Foundations’ planning group that had been ignored and not allowed access to the Bay Area group of Black Elected Officials’ Meeting wrote an extensive memo to the chair of the County Board of Supervisors showing how the legislation could overcome Supervisor Lai-Bitker's specific objection and become law: “Place within it the endowing of Black community foundations.” That information was ignored, and Keith Carson never introduced the legislation again, even though it could have overcome her objections and directly helped start a Bay Area-wide Black Community Foundation, which would be a model of other Black communities throughout the nation. But this particular politician ignored the issue of Black foundation building when he refused to use his office to properly represent a vital developmental need of his Black constituency.  

This is often what happens to many Black political leaders; like their white counterparts, they get into office through lofty promises. But once into office, they forget their promises, failing to see the real good they could do were they truly dedicated to helping Black people through the representative government process; the process for which they were sent to these City Councils, County Boards of Supervisors, State and Federal government positions. Instead, the taste of power is intoxicating and their desire to be accepted in the halls of power estranges them from the very community they were sent to represent and serve.

Like white politicians, our Black representatives seemingly cannot overcome the hypnotics of power to use it for Black good. And once in office they conform too readily to the ethos of others in office rather than the call of those who sent them there. It is understood that political cultures are powerful, but the history of Africans in America is such that for years we have been able to resist the intoxication of losing themselves to the glitter of another’s fancy. But somewhere along the way many Blacks’ immune systems have become weakened and vulnerable to the thunder of America's herd; resultantly, we have cast to the wind our history and the lessons of caution and prudence it taught us.

White America has done its share to harm Blacks, ⁽⁶⁾ but the acts above are harms, behaviors, and putrefying sores we have inflicted upon ourselves.

Read Part One & Part Two

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1.) Hurricane Katrina is the most obvious and eloquent  case of catastrophes and urgent problems  requiring an infusion of massive amounts of financial aid to save our people from the nightmare they were prey to, as President Bush flew over and only looked down. Black America should have had foundations that could have immediately put $100million in New Orleans and the region that was struck by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. It was as one young Black man said: “The end of the world came, and they left us [to die]!” And this is a pattern that repeat itself in America.

2.)    This is folklore of Black America, but it has shown itself alive even until now; for there is a racist and harsh conservatism rekindling in America under the banner of the Religious Right. That conservatism is justifying bitter and harsh decrees through an angry and tilted US Supreme Court system bent on reversing all the gains achieved through Black struggles.  

3.)    Of the Bay Area cities, San Francisco, with its 7% and decreasing Black population, is the only one pursuing this option—unlike the failed attempts in Oakland, a city with a population of roughly 40% and decreasing Black population.

4.)    Black churches that hold most of the Black community within their hands have traditionally been the tip of the spear for Black leadership and actions. Today, however, many have become more political than spiritual. That political tendency has harmed the church as it did the early church in 325AD, when Emperor Constantine took the reins of the church and decreed that “No one could be a member of his administration unless he joined the church.” Christians thought that was good, but it proved to be disastrous.

5.)    There are many Black millionaires and millionaire celebrities who could be approached and presented with a very sound approach to foundation enhancement, and they would be amenable to assisting such a community enhancement effort because its makes sense.

6.)    Martin Luther King, Jr., once wrote that systems of aggression have been set up against Black people in this society. Those systems still exist. They are not as blatant, but just as potent in many instances, and because many of these systems have existed so long and are so widespread, they are invisible to the undiscerning observer--that is the alchemy of ubiquity and continuity of an entity.

7/23/07    

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