“If the Negro could abandon the idea of leadership and instead stimulate a larger number of the race to take up definite tasks and sacrifice their time and energy in doing these things efficiently the race might accomplish something. The race needs workers, not leaders. Such workers will solve the problems which race leaders talk about and raise money to enable them to talk more and more about. When you hear a man talking, then, always inquire as to what he is doing or what he has done for humanity. Oratory and resolutions do not avail much. If they did, the Negro race would be in a paradise on earth. It may be well to repeat here the saying that old men talk of what they have done, young men of what they are doing, and fools of what they expect to do. The Negro race has a rather large share of the last mentioned class.”
-Carter G. Woodson, Mis-Education of the Negro
Woodson’s classic text offers a critical analysis of the malaise confronting African people. While the book is centrally concerned with education, or more specifically, mis-education and its deleterious impact on the Black mind, the book also concerns itself with two other things–institutional formation and leadership. Woodson recognized that institutions are the bulwark of a community and a key agent in shaping its future. Further, and in relation to the above statement, he maintained that leadership was an indispensable element in the process of community transformation. He lamented a tendency which he observed, that of Black leadership which fails to distinguish itself through its contributions to community institutions or its central role in the day-to-day work of community development, but instead grounded itself in the rhetorical as if words alone might free us.
Sadly what Woodson observed in the early 20th Century, persists in our day where a certain class of Black leadership, having garnered a degree of popularity via social media, distinguishing itself via its rhetorical ability, remains largely inefficacious in the arena of work that Woodson championed. He recognized, just as this lamentable class of Black leadership has, that talk is far, far easier than action.
One of the things that Baba Hannibal Afrik would always emphasize was the primacy of work on behalf of African people. While he too was eloquent and deeply insightful, he did not prioritize talk divorced from actual labor. For him, the famous expression from the Black Power Movement, “Kazi is the Blackest of all” always rang true. What’s more, it served as a standard against which he measured himself and others.
I offer this as an alternative metric whereby we might assess leadership, its nature, and value. We should not only listen to the words of those who profess to be leaders, position themselves as such, or are positioned by others in this vein; but we should also examine their track record, their history as leaders. We should ask questions like what organizations are they a part of? What role(s) do they play in these organizations? Is the work of these organizations impactful or are these simply vehicles for rhetorical signification and posturing? What institutions are they a part of? What role do they play in these institutions? What role do these institutions play in our community? Do they function on behalf of the community in any measurable way?
Ultimately we should ask what value these “leaders” bring to our community beyond their words? If we cannot answer this question in the affirmative, it may serve us well to focus our efforts and attention on things that may prove more durable.
Again, Woodson argued that our people need workers, rather than leaders. While the latter has continually proven its ability to garner attention and mis-direct our collective focus. The former has been and remains our greatest asset in struggle.