Dr. Brooks Robinson\ Black Economics.org

Photos: YouTube Screenshots\Wikimedia Commons

Introduction

This Analysis Brief concerns a very important Black American problem. The good news is that, like nature, problems often sort themselves out autonomously. The bad news is that, while the sorting out occurs, we are likely to continue suffering the ill effects of the problem. The problem about which we speak is inadequate and inept Black American leadership that continues to produce outcomes that fail to meet our expectations. BlackEconomics.org has produced two releases on this topic that serve as hardcore examples of failed leadership.[i] This Analysis Brief rounds out the two earlier submissions by describing the anatomy of this failed leadership—including the following subtopics: (1) A definition and description of failed Black American Leadership; (2) The “why” of this failed leadership; and (3) The process by which this problem is likely to  be overcome. We conclude thereafter.

The Black American Leadership Problem

Many Black and non-Black American scholars and laypersons have noted that our post bellum rise is unparalleled the world over. However, it is safe to say that most of us and other racial and ethnic groups believe that much progress has been left on the table during the period by Black Americans due to poor decision-making by our “leadership.” The fact that there remains a significant undercurrent of Black American discontent is evidence of leadership that has failed to ensure our arrival at anticipated positions and short of our overarching goals.

Without consulting Webster or the BOTS, “leadership” is comprehended to mean the display of the full scope of methods (administrative, education/training, financial, physical, psychological, etc.) required to produce an outcome desired by those who appoint or elect a “leader.” The latter sentence is transparent concerning the likely requirement of significant resources if certain leadership assignments are to be fulfilled successfully. We will see later in this Analysis Brief  that scare resources is a key factor that causes poor-quality Black American leadership; i.e., leadership failure.

Let us not overstate the case. There are innumerable individual cases of highly successful Black American leadership. However, the qualifier “individual” serves as a death knell to aggregate Black American leadership. The fragmenting power of recognizing “individuals” versus “the group,” along with expert application of real or imagined Willie Lynch Principles, serve as insurance against the arising of Black American “leadership” that can achieve a “critical mass” of physical support and resources to sweep all of Black America to self-identified finish line as victors.

Although we have a few Black billionaires who have reflected sound “leadership” skills because they rose in income and wealth through entrepreneurship roles alone, most of our successful billionaire leaders arise from the entertainment industry. These are leaders who have worked on both sides of the fence (as entrepreneurs and as entertainment team or firm leaders) and have generated resources that could help produce sound leadership. On the other hand, there are numerous solid and successful Black American leaders who leverage resources provided by private sector firms and institutions or public sector bureaus and agencies that employ them. However, these are  “individual” leadership successes by Black Americans that are largely unrelated to the leadership that Black America requires to ascend to our rightful place as national and global leaders.

As reminders of what we consider to be classic Black American leadership failures, consider that:

• During the Civil War and before his assassination, President Abraham Lincoln offered Black Americans land for nation building in what is now Central America. As evidenced by Black Americans so-called “slaves” who prompted Union Army General William Tecumseh Sherman to issue General Field Order 15 granting 40 acres to each “slave” household, the Freedman desired access to land to enable freedom. However, to selected free Black elite leaders of the day—including the venerable Frederick Douglass—Lincoln’s offer was a slap in Black Americans’ face, and the offer was rejected out of hand with little-to-no further discussion. It is noteworthy that Lincoln did not concede to these Black American elites; he ordered an effort to organize a Caribbean island to which Freedmen could relocate, but it failed.[ii] In our view, Black elite leaders failed because they proffered a “no” decision without any serious discussions or negotiations. One can always say “no” after obtaining more information, but to say “no” without complete information about a decision of this import  stands as a major failure in our view.

• At the end of the Civil War, the White-to-Black population ratio was about six-to-one nationally; it was less than two-to-one for the Southern “Slave” states where our population was concentrated. It was one of our best opportunities to extend the war and take the land. We were some of the most valiant soldiers during the war, we had the greatest incentive to fight, and Southern Whites were defeated and tired. While little benefit is usually derived from “woulda, coulda, shoulda’s,” and it is a complicated matter, but in this case imagine where and what Black America and the US would be today if our leadership had had the vision to exploit White American weakness at that point and seize land and liberty.

• During the 1960s Civil Rights Protest Era, Black elites as leaders failed Black America egregiously. We all know that “oil and water do not mix.” Also, we have noted elsewhere that the “mixing” of unequal entities ensures the “superimposition of superiority” of the stronger entity; not  the integration of the unequal entities.[iii] In other words, a decision to accept “Integration” and “Equal Opportunity” as the “carrot” to end “Burn Baby Burn” was a serious error. Evidence already abounded within Black America at the time that there was a strong preference for “separate but equal” if not “separation”—especially among some of the most organized, outspoken, and accepted Black American voices that spoke for groups of significant size. This glance in the rearview mirror also causes us to pause when we read “Equal Opportunity” as opposed to “Equal Treatment.” It is instructive that the law that established the “US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,” which was given a mandate without sufficient resources to enforce a halt to racial discrimination, did not  employ the words “equal treatment” as opposed to the Commission’s existing label “equal opportunity.”[iv] Enforcement to ensure “equal opportunity” leaves vast space for racial discrimination to continue versus enforcement designed to ensure “equal treatment.” 

Given the paucity of space for this Analysis Brief, we will not regurgitate it here. But as another important example of failed leadership, we urge consideration of the huge failure of Black elite that constituted the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) before the mid-term elections during President Joe Biden’s Administration and the CBC’s management of efforts to secure Reparations for Black Americans. The source that describes the details of this leadership failure is cited in Endnote “v.”[v]

Why Ineffective Black American Leadership?

As already mentioned, a key factor that contributes significantly and often to Black American leadership failures is a dearth of resources. Too few resources individually and collectively (among our organizations and institutions and for our entire group) have prevented enough of us from becoming prepared to obtain the highest quality training in too few fields—including leadership training. Moreover, too few resources means that we lack enough monitors and forecasters to identify potential problems before they emerge. It is often easier to solve a problem before it arises fully than after it becomes full blown. Probably most importantly, when problems arise in our 400-plus year war with White and other Americans and efforts are made to resolve them, we have insufficient resources to access sufficient expertise that can develop and clarify alternatives so that the probability of arriving at a favorable decision is enhanced. We confront  a lack of sufficient resources in the form of communication platforms that can easily and effectively place important information and issues/concerns before Black Americans and obtain their related opinions in real time. Finally, we have too few resources to ensure that our leaders are not persuaded by our opposers to serve the latter’s interest because they provide “benefits” that we cannot match or exceed. Even when our leaders are our “best and brightest,” it is somewhat haughty for our leaders to believe that they can always decide best in isolation. We will come back to this point in the next section of this brief that discusses a newly evolving leadership paradigm.

The foregoing is a high-level view of one general factor (a dearth of resources)—albeit a very important one—concerning why Black American Leadership has failed. Now we turn to more specific and selected reasons for the failure of our leaders that can be unique and additional causes for  such failure. We address these selected reasons briefly, but most are related to the Black American cultural tradition of selecting our elite for leadership or making our leadership elite once they are in place.

• Elite Black American leadership like non-Black elite leadership has a proclivity to engage in “elite capture.” That is, Black elite leadership will engage in a practice that is akin to “nepotism.” Like non-Black leaders, elite Black American leaders may use their positions of power and authority to unduly  benefit family members, friends, and associates rather than adopting a more meritorious approach to extending benefits/opportunities/treatment. This practice is self-perpetuating. Unfortunately, it limits the pool of Black Americans who become prepared to lead; it restricts the quality of our leaders; and it constrains the body of ideas and methods available to solve our problems.

• Colorism also raises its ugly head here! Sadly, like the world of non-Blacks, Black Americans continue to struggle with the sickness that Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clark identified in 1947 through their research using Black dolls. While it may appear to be involuntary, we have been trained over 400-plus years to appreciate our lighter-skinned versus our darker-skinned brothers and sisters when it comes to “White-collar”  or leadership roles. The evidence is that when appropriate controls are applied, there is no statistically significant difference in measured intelligence or ability between Black Americans with different skin-shades or between Blacks and Whites for that matter.[vi]  Therefore, logically, we believe that colorism is a causal factor for Black American leadership failure for the same reasons that Black elites contribute to such failure. It is transparent that many Black elites arrive at their vaunted positions because of their skin shade.

• Because many Black leaders (especially those we label as “important”) are associated with higher level of average income and wealth than their non-leader counterparts, they become avid consumers of goods and services—more so than would occur under different conditions. In fact, especially for Black American religious leaders, there is a tradition of pressing leadership to enjoy and appreciate higher levels of material consumption. Accordingly, Black Americans who are associated with such leadership and views it as favorable, may come to overemphasize materialism as a sign of progress and seek it as a lifestyle. While high-quality and successful leadership may engender higher earnings and net worth, it is not tautological that only high earners and the wealthy can serve as successful leaders. More importantly, a bias toward materialism (i.e., emulation of our opposers) by our leaders influences Black Americans who are not leaders to follow suit. This chain of events may wed Black America more tightly to our opposers as opposed to causing us to be more  independent of them.

• A negative spillover for a leader, who has innately,  or who develops, a mindset that favors over-consumption (materialism), is the formation of an addiction to the so-called “good things of life.” The latter, along with the humiliation that accompanies “falling” may  cause a leader to make decisions that countervails the very best interest of those being led.

We have considered selected, but important reasons why Black American leaders fail. But one of the key constants in life is “change.” In this case, our world has changed and the reasons we have cited as contributing to Black American leadership failure are becoming increasingly less important in the equation that accounts for successful leadership. In the next section of this Analysis Brief, we take up how our new world is changing the variables that produce good and poor leaders, and it is creating a new paradigm in which Black American leadership should become much more successful than in the past. In addition, the new leadership paradigm is ushering up new leadership concepts and definitions.

An Arriving New Black American Leadership Paradigm

We  begin this section of this Analysis Brief by noting what one should expect to observe when “high-quality and successful” leadership is en force. We can best characterize the existence of successful leadership by referring to the discussion above concerning leadership failures and their causes. Accordingly, we should observe the availability of resources that are deployed efficiently to facilitate: (i) The formation of long-term strategic plans that are widely agreed by Black Americans; (ii) sufficient monitoring and accurate and early forecasting  of  potential problems, concerns, and issues; (iii) sufficient communications with Black Americans about potential problems, concerns, and issues and receipt of their related opinions; (iv) sufficient research that examines problems, concerns, and issues and produces alternative solutions for consideration; (v) the availability of standard operating procedures for decision-making that reflects some flexibility for unique cases; (vi) sufficient resources to implement and enforce decisions; (vii) sufficient resources to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of decisions, their proper implementation, and the related enforcement; and (viii) a reduction in the level of dissatisfaction among Black Americans concerning our progress toward reaching our goals and our enjoyment of more self-reliance, self-determination, and  liberty.

We believe that the supporting and observable evidence of increasingly more successful Black American leaders will come into place through the following process or chain of events:

• As part of the first and current evidence that we are on track to improved and more successful Black Americans leadership is the fact that measures of Black American educational and training attainment continue to rise, which  signals the formation of new and more human capital that increases the number of high-quality leaders with the capacity to serve as more successful leaders. The young and bright “whippersnappers” of today are leveraging newly available technology and adopting new and more effective problem-solving methods that are producing successful results.
• As just mentioned, today’s rising young leaders are fearless in using the latest available and most effective technologies—especially social  media—that can enable successful leadership by communicating more effectively with those most inclined to support implementation of solutions for our problems, concerns, and issues.
• Being better trained (increasingly in fields and  occupations that carry higher compensation and faster income growth), young Black leaders and non-leaders have improved expertise and capacity to contribute more to Black American causes, which generates resources to achieve the outcomes discussed above. Resources and expertise enable higher-quality and more comprehensive information, which can enable better decision-making and improved leadership.
• Our youth’s absorption of new technologies ensures that they operate on a more level playing field with our opposers than did older generations. This, in and of itself, is a very favorable outcome.

Two additional and important points should be emphasized. They concern the role of technology in our new world. When  we complete our discussion of them, then  we will  be at the conclusion of this Analysis Brief:

• For those who study and follow the use of innovation in society, they know that individuation (the result of fragmentation efforts to reduce “groups” to “individuals”) has been operational for at least the last two, three,  or more decades. It began with new telecommunications technology, which enabled the easy broadcast and availability of specialized channels through  cable television. As noted earlier in this brief, we should be cautious of fragmentation efforts because they reduce our collective strength.

Relatedly, fragmentation efforts to produce individuation/individualism may be more difficult to  overcome for Black Americans than for other US racial or ethnic groups. It turns out that African Igbo Culture reflects an innate “acephalous” (headless) nature. That is, many Black Americans who are descendants of Igbo Ancestry tend to operate independently and express an absence of strong alignment with leadership of any kind. Hence, we should remain  acutely cognizant of this fact and seek to counteract it in appropriate ways.[vii]

• Our very movement deeper into the 21^st century and the expanded use of digital technologies points us to an increasing capacity to conduct governance no longer through  “representatives,” but as a purer democracy where one-person, one-vote becomes the order of the day.[viii] Such a  “purer democracy” stands to render our current definition of leadership obsolete, and to reduce substantially our use of traditional leadership models. Therefore, as we indicated at the outset of this Analysis Brief, the long-standing and serious problems caused, in part, by Black American leadership failures should begin to diminish.

Conclusion

The advice and counsel that emerges from this Analysis Brief on Black American leadership failures is to urge Black Americans to remain committed to joint problem-solving efforts using “appropriately”  the best available technologies and methods. We believe that it is possible for Black Americans to leapfrog and get out in front of the wave and be prepared to serve as “fishers of men” who can “capture” those who arrive when the wave meets the shore. This will  enable us to reattain our ordained roles as vicegerents of Planet Earth: Those who “dress and keep it.”

We are facing  a new world that has already dawned. We do not have a moment to spare as we dash to lodge ourselves in place to help save ourselves and our world. Earth has been degraded mainly due to greed and an overemphasis on uninterrupted development and materialism. If we awaken to fight everyday using our innate knowledges, skills, and abilities along with the best available technologies, then we may have a chance to regain our rightful place under the warmth of the sun and on our unbelievably beautiful Earth home. Fortunately, our efforts to produce these outcomes should not be countervailed by failures from our leaders because we will all participate jointly in producing our desired outcomes.

Dr. Brooks Robinson is the founder of the Black Economics.org website.

Endnotes

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[i] Brooks Robinson (2021 and 2025). “A Historical Critique of Black American Leadership,” and “Revisiting Black American Leadership,” respectively. BlackEconomics.org. https://www.blackeconomics.org/BELit/leadership.pdf and https://blackeconomics.org/BELit/rbal022825.pdf (Ret. 121325).

[ii] See pages 13 and14 of Brooks Robinson (2011). 53. BlackEconomics.org. https://www.blackeconomics.org/BEAP/53MONO.pdf (Ret. 121325).

[iii] See pages 18-20 of Brooks Robinson (2015). A 3^rd Freedom. BlackEconomics.org. https://www.blackeconomics.org/BEAP/ATF.pdf (Ret. 121325).

[iv] See Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the US Code. Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/title_vii (Ret. 121325).

[v] Op. cit. Robinson (Endnote i; 2021).

[vi] Scientific studies have shown no statistically significant difference in measured intelligence between Blacks and Whites when there is appropriate accounting (controls) for socioeconomic and environmental variables. On the other hand, while older and early studies of differences in measured intelligence cited differences between light-skinned and dark-skinned Black Americans, more recent and rigorous studies have determined those findings to be inaccurate.

[vii] The analytical perspective on the nature of Igbo Culture was provided by Prof. Edward Braithewaite (then of the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica) during a 1978 radio program interview. The Interview is available at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2010.17.1.11a?destination=/explore/collection/search%3Fedan_q%3DAccession%2520Number%253A%25202010.17.1.11a (Retrieved on 121325).

[viii] Brooks Robinson (2025). A Purer Democracy under Cyber Governance: Future Implications for Black America’s Political Economy. BlackEconomics.org. BlackEconomics.org. https://www.blackeconomics.org/BEAP/apdbape.pdf (Ret. 121325).