Why Are Our Black Leaders So Damn Quiet in the Face of Trump’s Destruction?

It’s been less than two weeks and President Donald Trump is turning the White House, and by proxy the country, into his own fiefdom. Every infuriating headline about an important shuttered federal division or series of petty comments about how Black folks couldn’t possibly be qualified to do the job they were hired for begs the question: Have we no Black leaders who can push back against Trump?

During chattel slavery, Harriet Tubman escaped her chains and became a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Frederick Douglass, a former slave who learned to read and write, took a different approach and put pen to paper. He wrote and spoke forcefully against slavery. Everyone did their part to help people who looked like them.

In the years after slavery, Booker T. Washington wrote the book “Up From Slavery” and argued for what he thought would help former slaves. He thought that Black people needed economic independence the most. Time has proven that he was, in fact, wrong: W.E.B. Du Bois, a Black intellectual and a contemporary of Washington, passionately disagreed with the former slave and argued that what was most needed was civil rights.

The list could go on and on. There was Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X; Ida B. Wells and Mary Jane McLeod Bethune. There are the more controversial folks like Black Panther leader Bobby Seale and activist Marcus Garvey. These were all leaders who saw that Black people were in need, and, out of love, took it upon themselves to try to provide leadership.

Hopefully the point is clear: Any time there was a threat to Black America, there have always been Black leaders who stepped up and tried to provide a vision for the future.

W.E.B. Du Bois was correct in his criticism of Washington, but we should never doubt for a second that Washington — who was the principal developer of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, now Tuskegee University — loved Black people...flawed as his ideas were. The same is true of all I named above. Each in their own way loved us and sacrificed for us.

So where are our leaders now?

Trump poses a real and present threat to America in general and Black people in particular. He opposes DEI initiatives and is working diligently to eradicate them from the country. On Wednesday (Jan. 29), he signed an executive order that he hopes will defund K-12 schools that teach Critical Race Theory. (Something most schools do not teach.)

He is doing all this to send a message: Do not teach the truth about American history. Teach only those parts that I approve.

Now is a time for leaders. Many in America are disheartened that Trump is back in the White House, but Black people are not just sad —we are under attack. In the past, when we were treated like we are today, a leader would arise. They were never perfect. They were sometimes wrong, but at least they cared.

Sure, there are some who are trying to push back. There is Dr. Freddie Haynes III who leads Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas. There is Rev. Raphael Warnock, the first Black senator from Georgia. And, of course, Kamala Harris is still around…but let’s be honest...is she a Black leader?

We have no transcendent, earth-shattering Black leader like we did in years past. They just aren’t there. Maybe it’s because of social media, and everyone who would take that mantle has skeletons in their closet that they do not want to come to light. Perhaps it because we have become too cynical to follow any leader.

Whatever the reason, we don’t have one. And we are all the worse for it.