Black Power
No, this is not going to be a overview of Kwame Toure's seminal book, this is a recognition of a journalist who get's it as close to right as I've seen in a "mainstream" publication. Over at the Washington Post, Jabari Asim, Puts the smackdown on Newsweek for mis-portraying the essence of Black Power.
Quote:
In recent years, more African-Americans have followed Raines to the highest rung of the corporate ladder. Two years ago, Newsweek famously commemorated the rise of three of them -- Kenneth Chenault at American Express, Stanley O'Neal at Merrill Lynch and Richard Parsons at Time Warner -- with a cover story titled "The New Black Power....
The Rev. King maintained that his only concern with power was whether it was "moral," "right" and "good."...
In this they were in agreement with Booker T. Washington, the controversial figure who founded the National Negro Business League in 1900. According to Washington, black businessmen had "a peculiar opportunity for service, an opportunity ... offered to no other class among the members of the race." ...
Equally valuable is mentoring of the sort provided by former basketball star Earvin "Magic" Johnson. Now head of the flourishing and far-flung Johnson Development Corp., he told Fortune magazine: "Creating black presidents, vice presidents, general managers, managers -- that has been the best part." If black power truly applies to anyone in the corporate world, it's folks such as Graves, Johnson and Winfrey. ...
In contrast, Newsweek's cover men are merely highly paid employees. As the article noted, any of them could be fired tomorrow -- and that kind of fragility makes real power difficult to sustain.
I'll let that stand on it's own.
Links:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29533-2004Jan19.html
(17 years of informed commentary)
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