America on the Brink

Chapter Two Leading in a Cultural Windstorm: Reflections on Black Political and Community Leadership The winds of turmoil and change are blowing. In a sense, we are living in a revolutionary cultural moment. There is a global pandemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. Millions of Americans are unemployed and uncertain how they are going to make ends meet. Businesses are in serious trouble and some have already closed. Covid-19 was a perfect storm. It hit America during a time of great social upheaval and fragmentation. The partisan divide is dysfunctional and impairs our ability to function as a healthy democracy. Hate and mistrust are intensifying and spilling into the streets. Our roads, bridges, tunnels, and rail system are antiquated and crumbling. Despite our cultural worship of wealth and affluence, millions of Americans are living in poverty. In fact, poverty in America is such a problem that the United Nations (U.N.) commissioned a special study and issued a stinging report stating millions of Americans are living in Third World conditions. There is the presidential election that could set off another chain of violence and mayhem for what could be a “winter of our discontent” as Shakespeare said in Richard III. As the American crisis deepens, religious and faith-based institutions are becoming increasingly irrelevant and unable to stem the crisis of meaning and rampant nihilism playing itself out on social media, popular media, and in our streets. More Americans are leaving churches and abandoning traditional beliefs unable to make sense of what has become of this country. While America declines, other nations are growing in strength economically, politically, and culturally; what Fareed Zakaria calls “the rise of the rest” in his book The Post-American World . In a sense, the pandemic exposed and exacerbated deeper fault lines, setting off social earthquakes and cultural tsunamis that have engulfed the nation. We are living in a cultural windstorm! Amid such upheaval, black political and community leadership are more important than ever. That is why I want this month’s Black Pulpit and Public Square article in Black Politics Today magazine to bring needed attention to the issue of black leadership. Kelly Mikel Williams always asks us the question: “what’s at stake for black America?” The answer today is: “Everything is at stake for us in this cultural moment.” Covid-19 is killing a disproportionate number of African Americans, the data on depression, hypertension, and obesity rates is alarming, home ownership rates resemble rates during the Great Depression, we own a mere 2.6% of wealth though we represent 13% of the population, and we are still miseducated, overly policed, and incarcerated. Most of us live paycheck to paycheck in a country that values

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