>Although the odd thing about the article is the whole animosity to
>recognizing leadership based on actually receiving votes by blacks.
That's not his argument at all:
>This is exactly the HNIC syndrome, in which maverick presidential
>campaigns and Million Man March franchises are high-profile symbolic
>actions instead of real programs or policies. Like Jackson's
>campaigns or Farrakhan in the afterglow of the MMM, Sharpton will
>become a nationally known entity, the putative "president" of black
>America, the titular head of a purported progressive insurgency.
...an insurgency that has no consequences other than the role as HNIC:
>The question remains: Can Sharpton's candidacy improve the lives of
>blacks and others by bringing certain issues to the table? There are
>currently more than 9,000 black elected officials across the nation,
>and while their election to public office is a testament to the
>political franchise won by blacks, there is a widespread feeling of
>unease among black voters about the efficacy of their votes in the
>American political system, especially in regard to their
>relationship to the Democratic Party.
[...]
>But Adolph Reed, a New School professor of political science and a
>Labor Party organizer, argues that incumbent black officials have
>had an incentive not to organize. "It's not in their interest to
>mobilize new voters or mobilize any dynamic force [in] black
>politics. Like with the leadership of the civil rights groups, part
>of their legitimacy historically has been that they can function as
>alternatives to chaotic or disruptive protest politics."
>
>Part of the current problem, says Reed, is that the class of black
>political officials who were elected during the 1970s could
>"reliably get incremental programmatic benefits for their
>constituents." But what was true under the Nixon, Ford and Carter
>administrations no longer holds. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and the
>Republican risorgimento brought a hostility to the civil rights
>movement, and neither black America nor its leaders were ready for
>the new regime of race relations. Nor were they willing to mobilize
>as before in response to it.
>
>"[Black leaders] haven't been able to respond since then," he adds.
>"They haven't been able to get much in the way of payoffs."
>
>Consequently, since the 1980s, black politics has been faced with a
>conundrum: it has a leadership class that has institutional means
>but is unwilling to risk to them in order to mobilize its
>constituents. Freelance racial spokespersons have sensed this
>political timidity, but have basically used symbolic mobilization to
>mask a personalized racial brokerage that has no interest in
>effective, programmatic politics. Instead, practitioners are merely
>provided with "a seat at the table." In other words, unaccountable
>power.
The point isn't just to accumulate votes, is it?
Doug