What the Black Agenda is Not

What the Black Agenda Is Not

By Tara Bynum, Ph.D.

“What is the ‘black agenda’?” It is the question that opens Tavis Smiley’s latest summit, “We Count! The Black Agenda is the American Agenda,” to hold an elected official—namely, President Barack Obama—accountable to the needs of the Black community. In asking it, Smiley attempts to define the terms of the conversation that will proceed among his 12 highly esteemed guests, including Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., Dr. Cornel West, Dr. Julianne Malveaux, Angela Glover Blackwell, and Dorothy Wright Tillman. Even as his panelists wrestled with the terms of their engagement, the question remained largely unanswered over the course of the four-hour program.

What became clearer rather was the converse of the question—“what is not the Black agenda?” With only 4 women at a table of 12, it was clear that the “Black agenda” is not one that has room for women to participate equally in the discussion. Even the idea of the “Black agenda” assumes that race exists separate and distinct from the experience of gender. Implicit in the idea of a “Black agenda”—a plan of action that addresses a singular, homogenous collective—is a gender neutrality that does not actually exist in the everyday lives of Black women and men. The “Black agenda” is not one that confronts the sexism that overlooks women’s issues like rape, domestic violence, or the increased rates of incarceration and infant mortality among Black women. To do so would admit that which is not spoken—sexism exists even within the Black community.

The “Black agenda” is not yet ready to confront the gendered privilege that allows Minister Farrakhan to describe chutzpah as a “testicular fortitude” and permits Dr. Michael Eric Dyson to respond mockingly with the seemingly more gender friendly definition, “ovarian audacity.” Even as Dr. Malveaux admonished Minister Farrakhan for using “genderized” language, the awkward chuckles of the panelists and audience members masked the curious ways in which women’s issues—particularly those related to issues of reproduction—seemed shut out of the conversation.

Just as Tavis Smiley calls upon us to hold our elected officials accountable, it is time to hold our non-elected leaders, those public intellectuals, accountable as well. We cannot continue to imagine the Black community as a one of men with a singular history and political agenda. Our leaders do us a grave disservice when they create opportunities for and participate in discussions that do not speak to the very diversity that is Black America. Though I commend Tavis Smiley for organizing this roundtable, I am nonetheless dismayed that Black women remain marginal to the conversation despite the varied ways in which our concerns have been downplayed against those of Black men. I am disheartened by the lack of younger scholars, activists and students at the table.

Though there is still much to be done, it is time to recognize the ways in which this new generation has used the technology of this age to advance its political agendas and organize its peer groups. It’s time for intergenerational conversations that build bridges within our community rather than point the blame. It’s time recognize that the Black agenda is comprised of many agendas that reflect the complexity that is so much a part of our various lived experiences. It’s time to admit, as Zora Neale Hurston does, that we are not “tragically colored” women and men, but instead we bear a legacy that allows us to dream and achieve on a grand scale—without which there would be no clear agendas for the Black women and men that strive daily to change their communities.

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Tara Bynum, Ph.D is an Assistant Professor of African-American literature at Towson University.