DC Mayor Vincent Gray’s arrest over the budget debate shows again the dysfunction over what Black America will and will not fight over.
Sorry.
Some may see Washington
DC Mayor Vincent Gray’s recent arrest while protesting budget cuts for his city
as heroic, noble, and necessary.
I don’t. In fact, I view
it as quite the opposite in many ways. Couple this with the recent arguments
coming from much of Black America – including the recent protests here in
Chicago over billboards and the fight by African-Americans to continue federal
funding of Planned Parenthood while education funds are being cut (and often
agreed to by both political parties) – and it all seems to epitomize the very
essence of what’s wrong with Black America today.
Too often, we stand up
for the wrong things for the sake of political correctness and doing what we
are expected to do without looking at the long-range impact for the communities
due to our stances. Gray’s recent protest a few weeks ago was against the
current deal cut by politicians on Capitol Hill. This deal highlighted two big
items: a cut to federal funding of abortions in Washington, DC and a return of
the DC School Choice/Voucher program - both initiatives spearheaded by Republicans
in the House of Representatives. Both items are vehemently opposed by Gray. Of
course, upon looking at the issues, one would have to conclude that this has
nothing to do with people but has everything to do with politics.
Standing up for government-funded
abortions and protesting against school vouchers in educationally-failing
Washington, DC has less to do with
values within the collective Black community than it does with the political
allegiances of the collective Black community. In following lock, stock, and
barrel with the whims of two of the biggest lobbying factions of the Democrat
“progressive” base – the pro-“choice” lobbying base (a base that, ironically,
only seems to push the choice of abortion to our communities) and the teachers’
unions- too many of us are willing to forfeit our future in order to win
today’s political battles.
And, in essence, we are
willing to be both pro-choice and anti-choice all at the same time, a
contradiction that rapidly leads us down the road of irrelevancy and, quite
possibly, practical civic extinction.
It’s not a coincidence
that the biggest fight on Capitol Hill – the one that almost shut down the
government to the chagrin of the nation and to the heightened dismay to the
Black community that disproportionately relies on the federal government for
basic living from employment to benefits – centered around the pro-Planned
Parenthood funding debate. Of course, to get most of us on-board with this
fight, the context was wrapped in the guise of being another civil rights issue
that Black Americans should run to the rescue to, all while ignoring one of the
primary civil rights issues from America’s past – educational equality.
Lock, stock, and barrel
– we collectively fell for it again.
At some point, when do
we ignore the partisan altar calls coming from Washington, even when they are
conveniently labeled “basic rights” issues that basically do not change the
conditions found in most Black working class communities today?
Funding of Planned
Parenthood or abortions in Washington, DC are not paramount issues that will
overturn the culture of crisis and death within Black America that is
strangling our youth. Educational
inequalities and ineffectiveness do. Unless more Black Americans are willing to
exert the same amount of vigor and veracity of concern with items of education
as they are with the liberal voting agenda, we will continue to follow down the
path of the partisan pied pipers that come along, all while leaving the
American political and social landscape in the near future without much more
than a song and a dance and nothing else for our future – if we are even so
lucky to have one.
Lenny McAllister is a syndicated political commentator and the
host of “Launching Chicago with Lenny McAllister” on The Talk of Chicago 1690
AM WVON (www.wvon.com). He is a featured guest on the My50Chicago
website for the show "Perspectives" with host Monique Caradine. He
will host “LCWLM – The Big Show” this Saturday starting at 1 PM (2 PM EST / 11
AM PST). He is the author of the upcoming edition of the book, “The Obama
Era, Part I (2008-2010): Diary of a Mad Black PYC (Proud Young Conservative).” Follow him at www.twitter.com/lennyhhr and on Facebook at www.tinyurl.com/lennyfacebook
.
