by Tavis Smiley
By the time President Bush started his second term, we were a well-oiled machine. We knew he was on his way out and the 2008 election was going to be the mother of all elections. Our intent was to use our momentum to force candidates to address the disparities in employment, health, education, the crippling prison industrial complex, and more—everything outlined in the Covenant with Black America.
Who knew the candidacy of an unknown senator from Illinois would derail the wheels of our carefully crafted, collective machine?
On the Wrong Side of History
Ironically, my mainstream audience saw no detour from my standard course. Granted, most whites don’t tune into the Tom Joyner Morning Show or keep up with news on Black websites. Whites, for the most part, were familiar with the Tavis Smiley they knew from PBS and NPR. Some read or heard interviews with me talking about my book, Accountable: Making America as Good as Its Promise. Others saw or heard me say that we should treat Obama like any other presidential candidate. Many had heard about a rift between me and a large number of Black people, but they saw no justification for it in my public commentary. The majority of my white audience saw no deviation from my core beliefs expressed over the years and what they now heard me saying about Obama.
But in Black America, all of a sudden, Tavis Smiley was “stuck on stupid.” Overnight I was labeled a “hater.” That was the spin generated in Black media: on talk radio, the blogosphere, and other news outlets. I was the commentator who had forgotten what it means to be Black in America. I expected Obama to risk his candidacy by trumpeting himself as the “Black candidate.” Later, the critics implied that I was furious because Obama wouldn’t go out on the stump and promote a Black agenda.
WRONG.
I never held the position that Obama should make the woes of Black people the center of his campaign. At no time did I insist that he roll out The Covenant. I’m not stupid. Not only had I worked for a Black mayor who was elected five times in a city that was less than 12 percent Black, I had also run for office myself in a district that was half Black and half white. I know the danger of racial politics better than most. I also know the value of building successful political coalitions.
The perception by some of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton representing and caring more about the fate of Black people than the fate of all other Americans effectively doomed their respective presidential campaigns with certain voters before they even got started. No way did I expect that the presidential candidate in 2008 who happened to be Black would necessarily speak for all Black folk. Not if he expected to win the election.
I did, however, expect him—and every other candidate—to address the issues that our community raised. I said it then, and repeat it now. We cannot start a process where politicians—Black, white, or “other”—are given passes on addressing African American concerns because it might hurt their chances of getting elected. If we start that process, it can’t be reversed so easily.
Judging by the increasing opposition to the nation’s first Black president, it’s a safe bet that, after President Obama, it will be a while before another African American occupies that office. So when a white person is back in the White House and people demand that he or she addresses their agenda, he or she can justifiably dismiss them:
“You all didn’t press Obama on that particular issue, so what do you expect from me?”
There was an ugly brouhaha in early 2010 after a group of recognized African American leaders met with Obama to discuss his jobs strategy and their concerns about the unemployment crisis in Black communities. When I heard these community leaders intimate, in front of reporters and TV cameras, that the President need not articulate or even address a Black agenda, I hit the roof. I called them out publicly and organized a nationally televised symposium on C-SPAN. “We Count! The Black Agenda Is the American Agenda,” took place in Chicago just weeks after their White House meeting.
These Black leaders were absolutely right when they suggested that African Americans should have their own agenda and not expect President Obama to draft it for them. Fact is, such an agenda already existed, and these leaders, as participants in the “State of the Black Union” symposia, had helped to draft it.
Furthermore, somebody has to articulate that Black agenda to the President. And frankly, if Black leaders pipe down after the President suggests he can’t or won’t do certain things because he wants to be reelected, then the title of “Black leader” should be summarily revoked. The same is true for leaders of other constituencies. The role and responsibility of a leader are to tell the President the truth and hold him accountable for the well-being of the people.
Before and during the firestorm, I repeated my wish that Obama succeed. But, with history as a backdrop, I reminded everyone that “great presidents aren’t born, they are made.” They are pushed into greatness. Without a Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t be the President history honors—neither would FDR without A. Philip Randolph or LBJ without an MLK nagging, nudging, pushing him toward his best.
If Dr. King could boldly stand for truth in spite of the fact that it meant losing favor among a substantial portion of Black people, how could I abandon my responsibility to honor his legacy and expand his universal vision?
The more I examined the timeline, it became clearer to me that I was never stuck in the stupid lane, nor was I a hater. Rather, I was simply trying to keep my promise to always speak truth to power, most especially on behalf of the people I love most.
I didn’t swap my principles for my best interests. It would have been in my best interest to quietly go along just to get along. By toning it down, I might have been invited to the White House with other notable Black citizens or had President Obama as a guest on my television and radio shows regularly, the same as before he was elected President.
The more I examined the timeline, the more I realized that—cracked vessel that I am—I did not veer off my path. Prior to Obama’s campaign for the White House, I had never, ever shied away from speaking my truth—no matter the odds, fallout, or blowback. As besmirched, demeaned, and denounced as I had been, I stood firm in my truth.
It’s the only way I know.
Truth Needs No Defense
Standing in my truth didn’t change the fact that most of Black America considered me treasonous, and the rest were planning a funeral for my career.
When you think you’re the only one who feels the way you do; when you are massively outnumbered; when everybody thinks you’re wrong and those who don’t say so only in whispers, never in public—doubt sets in.
When friends you’ve known for years write personal letters, saying: “I love you and have always supported you, but Tavis, you’re wrong on this one”—doubt becomes a friend.
When your own employees start looking at you funny and questioning your good sense, and people like Tom Joyner predict that your book sales, speaking engagements, and annual income are going to drop dramatically, and it all happens—you wear doubt like a uniform.
“Tavis,” my undertakers intoned, “when the history books are written, you’re gonna be the odd man out.”
Dr. West, who encouraged me every step of the way, offered a comforting rebuttal to the wrong-side-of-history comments: “Remember, Brother Tavis, most of the chapters on the Obama era have yet to be written. And when they are, history will have to also reflect that there were other points of view on this matter.”
In the middle of all the turbulence, my mother encouraged me:
“All I can tell you is this, baby: the truth needs no defense,” Mama said. “Do not feel the need, however tempted you may be, to succumb to defending yourself. The truth is the truth, and it doesn’t need defending.”
Another moment of comfort came during a dinner conversation with a dear friend and longtime MLK confidant who said to me, “Tavis, sometimes patience is your best friend. There’s not a whole lot you can do. You just have to tell the truth and wait it out.”
As it tu
rns out, I never did reach a point where I felt the need to make the media rounds defending myself. Staying busy, doing the work I feel I’m called to do kept me sane.
With some distance, people are starting to understand what I was talking about. They see a President handcuffed by a system designed to accommodate the rich and the lucky while the poor and unlucky live the realities of double-digit unemployment figures in their communities. They realize that the cycle of poverty that has fueled the disproportionately higher national black high-school dropout rate overstuffs the nation’s prisons without redress. Many who tolerated the government’s bailout of bankers and billionaires are left to wonder when Black and brown victims of the subprime mortgage tsunami will receive a little reciprocal federal love. While the President waxes poetically about improved race relations, rising racial tensions betray the “post-racial” illusion. Suddenly, people of color realize that the concerns of a paranoid populace are of top priority while their sentiments seem like an afterthought in the milieu of “hope and change.” The late Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song,” with the haunting “what about us?” refrain, has become a reverberating theme among African Americans. They wonder why their issues don’t seem to resonate with the Obama administration. So far, they’ve seen a Black President preside over the dismantling of the discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” antigay military mandate. They’ve heard Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reassure Israel that it has the United States’ support, even as it builds settlements that have been widely condemned for stoking dangerous embers in the region.
Yet issues that Black leaders and the Congressional Black Caucus have championed for years, such as reform of the criminal justice system go unaddressed. We cannot afford to ignore a criminal justice system that disproportionately targets and incarcerates Black and brown people.
The CBC has long taken federal contracting programs that bypass Black businesses and favor white enterprises to task. According to the Ohio State University–based Kirwin Institute, white-owned businesses received 82.1 percent of stimulus contracts compared to 3.4 percent for Black-owned businesses. Is it really too much to ask that this important issue be addressed instead of being given short shrift or totally dismissed?
The Obama administration’s answer to the economic crisis that Black people face dates back almost 50 years. President John F. Kennedy is credited with the aphorism “a rising tide lifts all boats.” The slogan also served as President Ronald Reagan’s justification for his “trickle-down” policies—the assumption that relief for upper-income Americans, specifically tax relief, will trickle down and lift up the poor. In a word, it’s baloney. Better yet, it’s what George H. W. Bush described as “voodoo economics” while campaigning against Reagan for the presidency.
In December 2009, after Obama had pushed through his stimulus package, he was specifically asked how it was going to help Black people, and he gave the “lift all boats” response: “… I can’t pass laws that say I’m just helping Black folks. I’m the President of the United States. What I can do is make sure that I am passing laws that help all people, particularly those who are most vulnerable and most in need. That in turn is going to help lift up the African-American community.”
Really? How exactly did that statement reconcile with a national unemployment rate at the time of 8.8 percent for whites and a jobless rate of 15.6 percent for adult African Americans, and nearly 43.5 percent among Black youth? In 2009, only 4 out of 100 low-income Black students were able to find work. How exactly did the stimulus help the most vulnerable and those in need?
“A rising tide does not necessarily lift all boats,” wrote economist Abdullah Shibli, “for example, boats that have a hole or need to be otherwise repaired.” The closing paragraph of Shibli’s February 2010 commentary in The Daily Star was written as a personal plea to Obama:
“So, Mr. President, a rising tide does not lift all boats. Some boats suffer damages, some lose their occupants, and others become too costly to run. And while the big boats and newer boats can sail away, the ones that stay behind need a little help to join the rest to sail out.”
My own view is that all the boats did not go down at the same time, and all the boats will not come up at the same time. Wall Street and Harlem are both on the same island called Manhattan. The former has definitely come up, the later is still drowning. And finally, when the tide does come up if you’re in a yacht and I’m in a dinghy, we still have a serious problem.
To summarize, my initial concerns about those small boats perpetually grounded in low tide have become the shared fears of a growing number of people. Namely, if we’re not forever vigilant, there is an imminent possibility that symbolism will trump substance in the Obama era.
With the 2012 presidential election zooming toward us, many Black people are reflecting on the 2008 campaign. Prior to that historic election, millions who listened to the Tom Joyner Morning Show supported and pushed a Black agenda called the Covenant with Black America. At that time, they demanded that all presidential candidates address Black folks’ issues outlined in The Covenant.
The call for accountability and the need for a Black agenda are as relevant now as ever.
Truth is not seasonal.
So, what do you do when everybody turns against you?
Have patience, stay strong, and stand in your truth.
Dear Friend …
I sat down with a broken heart and moistened eyes to respond to my dear friend’s letter. Dr. King’s trials and tribulations and that lonely, ostracized place he occupied before his death played in my head like an old reel-to-reel movie.
Please don’t think I’m placing myself on the mantel with Dr. King. Hardly. It’s just that Dr. King, Gandhi, many others, and even Jesus Christ are testaments to the fact that when you challenge power, when you stand up for the disenfranchised, the dispossessed, and discarded, you may stand alone.
My response was short, about two paragraphs. I thanked her for her letter, which I wanted to believe was written out of genuine concern for me. At the risk of remaining unaligned with God, I wrote: “I will hold fast to my beliefs.”
In truth, I was never really alone. Throughout the Obama drama, there were always a few who held me up when my knees almost buckled. One of them called in the midst of my storm. She too is world renowned, only her forte is music. I wasn’t home when she called and left me these encouraging words on my voicemail from one of my favorite hymns.
It was the first stanza of a song written by Thomas Shepherd:
"Must Jesus bear the cross alone, And all the world go free? No, there’s a cross for everyone, And there’s a cross for me."
CHAPTER 20
FATHER
KNOWS BEST
I interviewed Barack Obama many times in the years prior to his becoming President. I was never quite sure how he felt about it, but I always found myself at some point in our conversations bringing up his first unsuccessful race for the U.S. Congress. There’s a reason.
Here’s a quick refresher: In 1999, Barack Obama—a lawyer, former community organizer-turned Illinois State Senator—set his sights on Congress. The seat’s occupant was, and still is, Bobby Rush, former Black Panther and perennially elected incumbent from Chicago’s South Side.
Obama was trounced by a two-to-one margin.
A few years after he was handily defeated by Rush, Obama entered the U.S. Senate race and won, becoming the only African American among the 100 senators. With the audacity of hope, he set out on a quest to be elected the nation’s first African American president.
He runs.
He wins.
He makes history.
Who knew?
Apparently, God knew.
You see, Obama’s story fascinated me because my story, your story, and a whole lot of other people’s stories serve as examples of one of the most common human failures. It’s one that I repeated often throughout my life until I finally got it: The hardheaded failures that accompan
ied my increasingly complex plans for myself always wound up being far less than what God had in mind for me.
Over the years, I have had to finally learn how to let go, to realize that I don’t dictate the journey—I never have. Like the time I was ready to abandon California because the job I expected wasn’t there when I arrived. Because things didn’t go as I had planned, I thought something was wrong with me. Ever had that feeling? Because things aren’t working out just right that there must be something wrong with you, right?
There was nothing wrong with me. And there’s probably nothing wrong with you.
It was part of His plan. I am now celebrating 20 years in broadcasting. There have been many incredible achievements that I’ve been blessed to accomplish along the way. The plans I’ve made for my life are good, but never as good as what God had planned for me.
It’s impossible for me to share a book about the lessons I’ve learned without coming full circle. There are three things, I maintain, that sustain us. I refer to them as “the three F’s”—Faith, Family, and Friends. My family and friends are crucial and very important to me. But faith trumps all.
My unyielding faith has been fortified by a Father who accepted my occasionally troubling turns, my huge misses of the mark, yet who never stopped responding to my human folly with exactly what He knew was best for me. No matter how much I tried to tell God what to do.
You Almighty
The concept of the movie, Bruce Almighty, is absolutely brilliant. Jim Carrey plays Bruce, a faithless guy who learns the meaning of faith by becoming God. The movie’s “God,” played by Morgan Freeman, lends Bruce His powers to teach him a lesson.
As the Almighty, Bruce has to learn the downside of using his powers for personal gratification. But true to His nature, God gave Bruce all the powers of the universe, except one—the ability to tamper with an individual’s free will.