Black Intellect Outlines Challenges Facing Tomorrow's Leaders

Black Intellect Outlines Challenges Facing Tomorrow's Leaders

The following excerpt comes from an article that appeared in the Nubian Message, North Carolina State University's African-American student newspaper, first published on November 30, 1992.

This article favorably covers the keynote address given by Dr. Michael Eric Dyson at the Southeastern African-American Student Leadership Conference, held at N.C. State University in February 2000. Dyson's speech covers a variety of topics from Clarence Thomas to hip-hop to homosexuality and AIDS. Moreover, Dyson views spirituality as the primary medium by which African-Americans can help bridge the divides of sectarianism and help solve many of the most pressing political issues of the twenty-first century.

Brandon Buskey, Co-News Editor

Brandon Buskey, "Black Intellect Outlines Challenges Facing Tomorrow's Leaders," The Nubian Message 7, no. 12 (February 10, 2000), 1-2. Digitized by the Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC.

2000-02-10

Madison W. Cates

English

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According to Dyson, the future of Black America will require sharp young black people who do not waste their time on triviality. He then went on to explain that the African American leaders of the future will have to be individuals who can speak ebonics and those who can speak the Kings English in order to effectively articulate the foundation of African American Society. Dyson warned leaders, they must be aware that their tasks will be made more difficult by the fact that there is not inherent unity in the African American community. To remedy this, blacks must not separate ourselves based upon assumptions of behavior, Dyson said. Clarence Thomas will be black his whole life he illustrated, but we ain’t on the same page.

From then on, Dr. Dyson elaborated on more specific issues facing the black community. The first of these was, bigotry continues to persevere in the face of opposition, said Dyson. The DNA of racism is evolutionary, he went on, and alters itself similar to a roach in order to persist. Almost as important as racism in the black community is the class warfare occurring between the haves and the have nots. To illustrate this point, Dyson used the prevalent hip-hop culture, where only those artists who have a gluteus emphasis on the maximum, as he put it, are able to earn airplay, while those who actually analyze the struggles of African Americans are seldom heard. We’ve got Afranasia, Dyson explained, meaning that many African Americans have forgotten the roots of the African experience in America and that the hip-hop culture is merely a microcosm of a widespread emphasis on materialism.

Though the problems of race and culture comprised a healthy portion of Dyson’s lecture, he made it a point to expound on some of the other problems facing black leaders. We can’t stop talking about race, Dyson said, but lets start talking about other things.

(Page 2): Among these other things was gender, where the problems of abuse and impregnation have become major issues. Dyson then went on to criticize African Americans for not recognizing the accomplishments of high-profile black women like Maxine Walters and Jocylen Elders, both of whom are worthy of our respect, in Dyson’s opinion. Sexual orientation was also a major topic in Dr. Dyson’s speech. It is not about race, its about sex, claimed Dyson, and denying the existence of homosexuality denies the legitimacy of homosexuals in communities. We owe a lot to our gay brothers and sisters, Dyson pointed out, without whom our nation may never have passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Future black leaders, according to Dyson, must deal with the sex issue in order to eliminate some of the problems that stem from ignoring sexuality, like the proliferation of AIDS in black populations.

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