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Politicians are in campaign
mode and fanning out throughout Toledo with an eye to the
2017 local elections. As they approach Toledo’s urban core,
many are encountering an electorate that has lost patience
with the political status quo.
Black voters are frustrated
from being trapped between what is perceived as “irrelevant
black leadership” on one hand, and a white “colonial
institutional structure” on the other.
Their concerns are valid.
The Irrelevance of Black
Leadership:
Electoral politics have
yielded little or no change as local black elected
officials, despite their numbers and elevated positions of
authority, have been powerless to produce substantive
benefits targeted specifically for the black community. The
black political establishment has also been silent on the
topic of race and the electorate has been unable to
distinguish black political themes from the generalities of
white political rhetoric.
The Colonization of Black
Poverty and Pain:
The face, as well as the
purse strings, of the institutions charged with the social
and economic well-being of Toledo’s black community are all,
or nearly, all-white. With no representation or voice, the
black community continues to receive negligible benefit in
the form of positive outcomes from the social or economic
“plantations” that provide economically disadvantaged people
with services rather than income while providing wealth and
stability to those who run the plantation.
Enter Black Millennials:
Recently black millennials
have burst onto the local political scene with a bang and
their emergence has created shockwaves throughout the
political establishment. They are candidates for political
office as well as activists who are more likely to use
agitation than the “Can’t we just all get along” strategy of
their baby boom predecessors.
Although the generational
boundaries are somewhat fluid, their ages are generally
between 18 and 36. Black millennials are also more
politically engaged than their white counterparts.
Employment, education, gun violence, healthcare and
incarceration and police are the major influencers of their
worldview. They also are less likely to be connected with
traditional black institutions such as the church or NAACP
than previous generations.
What do Black Millennials
want?
Black Millennials want just and fair
representation and inclusion. They want equity in the
administration and allocation of resources in minority
business, social services and public institutional matters.
Millennials also want to bring our repressed discussions on
racial and socioeconomic inequality into the open. In
addition, black millennials want solutions to the high rates
of violence from guns in our community as well as for
disparities in employment, health and criminal justice.
And, black millennials have made it known
that they will not go away “quietly.”
My Take:
Politicians, political parties and
organizations must not sleep on black millennials. It is
apparent that the tactics of status quo leadership have not
worked. Real change is more likely to come from contemporary
organizations and individuals that are “more plural in terms
of class, sexuality, and even concern about various racial
groups,” says Duke University scholar Eduardo Bonilla-Silva.
Other groups or individuals, he adds, “are in the slow march
of extinction. They may remain alive but eventually, like
the Communist Party, will ultimately become a relic.”
Therefore if the black community is to be
liberated from the equally unwelcome outcomes of the
irrelevance of black leadership and the colonization of
black pain and poverty, it will come from individuals or
organizations that are “radical, open, populist, and
militant.”
These are traits that the current leadership
structure with its middle-class focus is unable to possess.
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org
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