{"id":386,"date":"2014-10-03T17:24:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-03T17:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/10\/and-the-young-ones-shall-lead-them-the-ferguson-rebellion-and-the-crisis-in-black-leadership.html"},"modified":"2014-10-03T17:24:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-03T17:24:00","slug":"and-the-young-ones-shall-lead-them-the-ferguson-rebellion-and-the-crisis-in-black-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/10\/and-the-young-ones-shall-lead-them-the-ferguson-rebellion-and-the-crisis-in-black-leadership.html","title":{"rendered":"And the Young Ones Shall Lead Them: The Ferguson Rebellion and the Crisis in Black Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The blood of Michael Brown has seeded the soil of a great American revolution\u2014sprouting yearlings of new black leadership onto the political and public landscape. The Ferguson Rebellion has exposed deep-seated racism, hyper-militarized state forces, unabashed police brutality and the soul-crushing poverty that will come to define \u201cthe Age of Obama.\u201d It also revealed the open hostility between many from a younger generation of activists and elites of the traditional civil rights, religious and civic organizations of the Black freedom struggle.<\/span><\/p>\n

The extrajudicial killing of Mike Brown was followed by the lynching-like display of his body to his shocked and grieving community for over four hours. This sinister threat and clear provocation bred even greater contempt for the Ferguson Police Department, a department that is 94 per cent white, charged to protect and serve a community that is 67 per cent black; a department that has issued arrest warrants<\/a> on two-thirds of its black population. The hyper-militarized police response included teargas<\/a>, rubber bullets, tanks, drones, an unrelenting assault on the freedom of the press<\/a> and a globally televised attack<\/a> on First Amendment rights and peaceful protests. This in turn, fomented a rebellion led by poor and working class black youth.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, traditional civil rights institutions and religious leaders failed to understand the foment of the younger generation. Older leaders called for protester restraint and highlighted black-on-black crime, affirming popular notions of black pathology. Many condemned the vicious policing during the Ferguson Rebellion as an afterthought \u2013 further alienating a dispossessed generation. On more than one occasion high profile black leaders denounced black youth who took to the street as thugs, rioters and looters. A significant portion of Rev. Al Sharpton\u2019s sermon<\/a> during Mike Brown\u2019s funeral service was devoted to criticizing a generation of young blacks, painting them as gun-toting thugs who have \u201cghetto pity parties\u201d. The NAACP was silent for nearly three days following Brown\u2019s killing and the subsequent social unrest. The venerable civil rights\u2019 organization\u2019s first comment on the ugly affair came in the form of a quickly deleted tweet<\/a>: \u201cWhen someone outside of our race commits murder we want upheaval, but we need same for all murder.\u201d This ill-fated statement resulted in a swift social media backlash, further underscoring the distance between the historic civil rights organization and a younger generation.<\/p>\n

By placing the emphasis on respectability politics instead of on the visceral pain and rage so eloquently articulated on the streets of Ferguson, traditional leadership attempted to shame the courageous yet maligned young folks who forced the nation to acknowledge their humanity in face of inhumane treatment by law enforcement. Diminishing Mike Brown with that same chimera of \u2018respectability\u2019 \u2013 and the popular obsession of the absent black father<\/a> \u2013 obscures the fact that Mike Brown had four loving parents (step<\/a> and biological) and was part of an intergenerational community. <\/p>\n

Read the rest here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The blood of Michael Brown has seeded the soil of a great American revolution\u2014sprouting yearlings of new black leadership onto the political and public landscape. The Ferguson Rebellion has exposed deep-seated racism, hyper-militarized state forces, unabashed police brutality and the soul-crushing poverty that will come to define \u201cthe Age of Obama.\u201d It also revealed the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAnd the Young Ones Shall Lead Them: The Ferguson Rebellion and the Crisis in Black Leadership<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The blood of Michael Brown has seeded the soil of a great American revolution\u2014sprouting yearlings of new black leadership onto the political and public\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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