Under all of the topics I’ve happily listed under “love to hate,” I must admit that Tavis Smiley’s “State of the Black Union” was at the very top. I am more upset than I thought I’d be with Smiley’s announcement a couple of days back that he is not continuing these annual forums. I think Smiley’s reasoning is a bit, um, punkish. Lemee get this straight: because we now have a few more radio talk show hosts and scores of Black blogs, and because Roland Martin has a Sunday chat show on TV One, we don’t need this annual national meeting of Black thinkers? How much of this has to do with trying to prevent any more nationally broadcast Black criticism of Barack Obama, since it did damage to the Tavis brand in the past?
I wonder what will rise up to replace it. Something must. We just can’t have 1,000 blogs and websites. We’ve had a lot of national (public) meetings over the years, but nothing stuck like this (corporate and conservative) one. Of course, if we had a movement, we would be meeting all the time. And doing things. Now Obama’s presidency is a marker to have no movement, and too many people are okay with that. It might just be up to small groups to hold (upside down) the flag.
JANUARY 15th UPDATE: A much better version of what I was trying to say here is here.
Drums in the Global Village 