My dad, an octogenarian now, has thrown at me and my little sister sayings, phrases, gems of wisdom and words of warning since we’ve known this dude – i.e. our entire lives.
“Don’t piss in my face and tell me it’s raining.”
“Sh*t, or get off the pot.”
“Straighten up and fly right. Straighten up and stay right. Straighten up and fly right. Cool down, papa, don’t you blow your top.”
That last one, he delivered to us by singing (which he does supremely) that old, old-school Nat King Cole classic.
Oh, how I wish the folk at Rainbow PUSH had received decades of CW’s verbal instruction. How do I know they hadn’t? Glad you asked.
Don’t Piss in My Face
I don’t know Rev. Frederick Haynes III, but I know people who do. And those folk, who I have mad respect for, by the way, say to a person that Haynes is the real-deal-Holifield – conscious, passionate, brilliant, driven, determined, down-to-earth and absolutely committed to the empowerment of Black people.
When word came out that Haynes was succeeding Rev. Jesse Jackson as the leader of Rainbow PUSH, damn near every Black person younger than Generation X members asked, “Who and what the hell is Rainbow PUSH”? Most older Blackfolk, however, were excited that an organization that had been written off as dead a long time ago seemingly stood on the precipice of a much-needed resurrection.
But just three months into his tenure, news broke that Haynes was stepping down. And as folk wondered about the reasons for such an abrupt departure, apparently some Jackson disciples floated around the idea that Haynes simply didn’t have the right stuff. And it’s that line right there that would have my dad telling whoever was in earshot, “Don’t piss in my face and tell me it’s raining.”
How the hell is this committed, accomplished, down-for-the-cause, conscious brother, who has earned every award and distinction of service known to humanity, who has successfully led a 12,000-member megachurch for years while unflinchingly preaching truth to power, all of the sudden unable to lead?
Haynes’ Rainbow PUSH exit is not a stain on his leadership legacy. Rather, it’s a slap in the face wake-up call to any and all Black people who say they want better for our people, but who have yet to learn that when our commitment to a specific leader outweighs our commitment to the transgenerational struggle to which that leader pledged her or his service, then our organizations fail to live beyond that leader, and our people continue to perish.
Sh*t, Or Get Off the Pot
Blackfolk, at some point, we’re going to have to “sh*t, or get off the pot.” Either we want liberation, self-determination, empowerment and freedom from the ongoing evils of the myth of white supremacy that play themselves out in very, real and tangible systemic ways, or we’re cool with being 21st, 22nd, 23rd, etc. century beings enslaved to the same god-complex-having folk who have spent their entire existence wrestling with their feelings of inherent inferiority in the face of our historic brilliance.
These cavemen and women don the mask of bravado with its accompanying declarations of their supposed superiority, and draconian, torturous, oppressive, barbaric laws and policies meant to inflict the most pain and damage possible to us. And in every generation, we resist, persevere and push forward via a power that can only be described as divine.
And in our trodding of the stony road, we create organizations to propel us out of servitude and into self-determination. But instead of serving the organization, and even more important, the goals and aims that organization espouses, we have too often settled on giving all oaths of loyalty to this charismatic leader or that.
And when that leader is gone from us in the physical, all too often the death of their organization soon follows. Oh, some of those organizations still exist on paper – for years, even decades. But to say they become shells of their former selves is to, for no good reason, diss shells.
Blackfolk and Black organizations, if we’re serious about our liberation, if we really want our children educated, our seniors honored and protected, our families and communities thriving, our young adults growing, our votes counting and our ancestors smiling, succession planning is paramount. Word is, some Rainbow PUSH folk just couldn’t let go of their commitment to Jackson’s leadership. Now, they stand leaderless.
Often in our past, it’s been the leaders themselves who refused to even consider ever handing over the reins to another, as if they were going to live forever. How has that worked out for us?
Straighten Up and Fly Right
Either we want to be free, or we don’t. Either we want to be about building the pyramids that need to be built today or we’re cool merely celebrating the builders of those structures back in the day as the status quo chaos kills us all, some quicker than others.
Either we’re serious about seeing the trouble our Pan-African people are in and responding to the call to “Come, let us rebuild,” recognizing that the work we do, the struggle we’re called to, will outlive us all, or “we jus playin’.”
It’s true that all we can do is all we can do. But if we’re not developing a transgenerational mindset, or tapping into the “momentum of memory” (to borrow a phrase from Dr. Greg Carr) that allows us to recognize the brilliance and importance of creating ways, traditions, policies and organizations that allow the movement to keep on moving after the leader is gone and after all of us here now are gone, then we’re not doing all we can do.
A huge part of us doing our part is making sure the organizations we create through which we do this work outlive us. Doing this allows our children and our children’s children to tap into that transgenerational knowledge and wisdom built up over eons, so they don’t have to always start over from scratch every generation.
Prayerfully, this is the lesson we take away from Haynes’ 90-day tenure as the Rainbow PUSH head.
