The Martin Luther King (MLK) holiday is coming up along with Black History Month. It is time for people to take a more critical look at the state of black leadership in this country.

Lets step back and imagine for five minutes that institutional racism is not the root cause of the problems faced by black Americans. After all, we do have a black upper class and a large black middle class in this country. Some people are getting ahead. So if it isnt racism, then what is it? It is the black leadership. Or more precisely, the black liberal leadership.

The Civil Rights era came and went, it was long overdue. Some black Americans took advantage of their new freedoms. They overcame. But many blacks have missed the opportunity of the Civil Rights movement. They never prepared for the day when whites would start treating them as equals. They are still singing about overcoming. And still some others, the liberal black leadership (with the help of white liberals), have kept those who are not enjoying the fruits of the American dream in a cycle of subordination.

These liberals are the new landlords of the post bellum plantation. They profit off of a crop of anger and victimization. Each year they plant seeds of racism and misery in this country. They fertilize it with demagoguery, and reap money, status, and political power as poor, black sharecroppers gather the harvest. They are the self-proclaimed black leaders such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan. They are the NAACP. They are elected leaders such as Charles Rangel, Cynthia McKinney and Sheila Jackson Lee. They are various celebrities and sports figures. Their legitimacy, image and livelihood are based on racial tension. They will put up a fence around their race crop, water it, and make it grow. They will protect this livelihood, even if it keeps others down. Louis Farrakhan is my favorite example. He is a true absentee landlord that comes by every ten years when he needs money and prestige. He gathers up the black men and marches them straight back to the Washington DC victimhood plantation. He promises a million acres of excuses and a mule. He is one of many black leaders who prefer to see poor black children in a decayed inner city school so that their kids can go to a private school. He needs black anger and black misery.

They are holding back the progress of black Americans in several ways.

1. If a black American leaves the plantation and becomes a successful conservative such as Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Star Parker or Thomas Sowell, then they are called Uncle Tom, House Negro, or worse. You see each black that leaves the plantation of dependence takes a little power, status and money from the landlords. They cant continue to harvest failure if the sharecroppers are leaving and moving on.

2.They have led us back down the path of segregation. We now have a separate but equal Black History Month. Isnt all American history important to all Americans? We have a black television network, black magazines, a Congressional Black Caucus, black universities, etc. Wasnt it the racist George Wallace who said, Segregation today; segregation tomorrow; segregation forever!

3. They are zealots of equal opportunity, equal rights and affirmative action. These programs have failed and everybody knows it. Few dare speak the truth. Equal opportunity failed because opportunity is not measurable. What they had to measure was outcome. You cant have a society of individuals who are guaranteed an equal outcome. You cant excessively enforce equal rights without them becoming special rights. Affirmative action breeds mediocrity. You dont need to excel to meet the standards, you just petition to lower the standards. And how can one believe that discrimination is wrong but reverse discrimination is right? What kind of logic is that? That is a logic that divides us and helps a liberal maintain political power.

4. They call for reparations for slavery. This is an opportunity to plant the seeds of entitlements once again. Reparations will sow another field of dependency right next to the public assistance field. Entitlements are a bankrupt social premise that exists only to allay guilt.

5. They belong to the NAACP. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored people. Colored people? What is this 1906? Other liberals want to retreat even further back to 1806 and label some Americans, African-Americans.

6. They are wealthy black entrepreneurs who help peddle a self-destructive hip-hop lifestyle using modern day minstrel performers. This is classic landlord behavior. They sell seeds of rage to young black sharecroppers and then come around at harvest time to reap the profits of hatred. They take the profits and leave just enough for the young sharecropper to scratch out an existence in the projects.

7. They encourage lawlessness. How is a riot going to help make up for an innocent victim lost to a police shooting? How is looting televisions and sneakers going to help feed your family after a hurricane? How is a career selling drugs going to lead to anything other than prison or a gang murder? Why dont they encourage the values and behavior that make people successful? Because they dont want you to be successful. They want you to sit on the street corner, simmer with rage and blame the man.

8. They label all criticism as racism. They would rather protect a black image than improve a black lifestyle. They call the very attitudes and values that are critical for anyone of any color or background to succeed in the US acting white.

What has the black leadership in this country done in the last forty years? If we start looking at some of the biggest problems that affect large parts of the black population we see illegitimacy, drug abuse, chronic unemployment, poverty, low education, health issues, and crime. So what did the black leadership spend the last 4 decades doing? They concentrated their efforts on taking down the Confederate battle flag. It is only fitting that a symbolic leadership would go after a symbol. How did they decide that this was the biggest problem plaguing the black community? What kind of leadership is that?

If the leadership fails should we look to the government for the answer? No, government has created most of these problems. The government legalized slavery while saying that, All men are created equal. The government called blacks 3/5 of a real person. The government created Jim Crow laws. The government created artificial racial distinctions that divide this country. The government kept Rosa Parks in the back of the bus for too long. It wasnt the bus company or the white bus driver. The government planted the seeds of welfare, public assistance and entitlements that grew into ghettos, fields of fatherlessness, and generational unemployment.

In all fairness the government did do one or two things right. Government freed the slaves in the 1860s, and wrote new Civil Rights laws one hundred year later in the 1960s. But other than that they have been stuck in a cycle of stupidity. Do we need to wait until 2060 for the government to make another positive step?

If the government cant help, and leadership is lacking, then the answer lies with the individual. Individuals who consider themselves to be Americans, not part of a separate, victimized group of race objects. Individuals with responsibilities and dignity, who are treated as equal and free, not exploited by landlords on a plantation.

No, Im not black, but I am offering a solution. What solution has your leadership offered?