Does PBS host Tavis Smiley have it right in stressing that President
Obama should launch a Black Agenda for America? Or is Rev. Al Sharpton,
a civil rights activist and one not known for backing away from
controversy, correct in proclaiming that Smiley has it all wrong?
Smiley seems more than a little perturbed that some black leaders feel that with the election of the nation's first black president coupled with the civil rights anthem of the 1960's "We Shall Overcome Someday" means Black America has largely overcome.
America -- particularly African Americans -- has to focus not on race but on universal colorblind challenges like economics, jobs, health-care, home foreclosures and recessionary stresses and pressures.
Yet for Smiley, who hosts an annual "State of the Black Union" conference, perhaps did not feel comfortable with the growing feeling in Black America that presidential edicts and calls from the White House for a Black Agenda are not necessarily what is needed in helping the plight of what he may feel are the unrepresented constituencies in black America.
So Smiley wants to hold The State of the Black Union 2010 Round Two. On March 20 he is assembling another black agenda confab to be hosted according to published reports in the President's hometown of Chicago. The Chicago State University conference will have speakers like Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Rev. Jesse Jackson as well as Princeton Professor Cornel West, who has publically describes himself as a "non-Marxist socialist."
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Source: Kevin Fobbs, Renew America
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