Panelists at BSA Forum Critique Black Community

Offering strong opinions on the Black middle class, white corporate America and the Nation of Islam, four panelists discussed Black power last night before more than 120 students at Harvard Hall.

Last night's speakers were strongly critical of some aspects of the Black community. One charged Black churches with being out of touch with the poor, while others criticized the Black middle class and said too few Black people are involved in technical fields.

"We're pathetic in society," D. Dayneen Preston, an executive manager at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, said in perhaps the evening's most critical comments. "We are some lazy people."

The panel discussion, "Black Power: Political, Economic and Spiritual Roads to the Empowerment of the African-American Community," was sponsored by the Black Students Association (BSA). BSA President Kristen M. Clarke '97 organized it.

The discussion featured: Thomson Professor of Government Martin L. Kilson Jr.; Alex Hurt, a first-year student at the Harvard Divinity School; Preston; and Carl Washington, a Los Angeles minister.

Kilson began the panel with sharp criticism of America's Black churches.

"They don't leverage their upper class resources on the behalf of empowerment," said Kilson, the first Black full professor to teach at Harvard.

He said Black churches do not use their financial resources to benefit Black communities. "Did you ever see the figures on how much, annually, they take in?" he asked.

"We have to 'young-bloodize' the church," Kilson said in an interview following the discussion last night. "We need to put some fire under the church."

Kilson said the Black middle class must find "some way to get the new capital of the new, bourgeois Black America into the process of exporting egalitarian progress for the weakest of us."

Hurt argued that many Black intellectuals lack "cultural legitimacy."

"Poor Black people see Black middle-class people as one, apathetic to who they are, and two, apathetic to what they are," he said. "Black folks who haven't been in the 'hood look at the people in the academy and say, 'You're not doing enough.'"

Hurt, who is working toward his master's degree in theological studies, said Blacks lacked both "a technical class" and enough people devoted to the cause of Black empowerment.

He said Black students at Ivy League schools often fail to return and help their communities.

"They want to come to Harvard, Yale, Princeton so they can get out of the 'hood, not so they can make avenues that lead back into the 'hood," he said. "Do they owe anything to the hood or is it every person for himself?"

Washington, the reverend of St. Mark's Missionary in south-central Los Angeles, offered a critical view of Black power in America.

He said the trial of O.J. Simpson showed that no matter how far Blacks advanced, their skin color held them back.

"You don't have enough money--there is not enough education in Harvard to buy you what you want in life," Washington said. "You will always be the one who is sent before the judge, regardless of how much you've accomplished."

But at the same time, the reverend said Blacks are also to blame for the problems of some African-Americans because many successful Blacks are not giving back to the community. He said many Blacks are "blaming the white man" too often.

"If you fail to share with your brothers and sisters, then you have failed the course," Washington said.

"My oppressor isn't the white man," he added. "My oppressor is my own brother."

Washington, who grew up in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, recently helped negotiate a truce between the Crips and the Bloods, two of the city's most prominent gangs.

"My first question is, 'Why are you killing each other?' Nobody has an answer," he said.

Preston, the final panelist, offered a personal account of her life. She grew up in a public-housing project in Brooklyn, she said, and still lives in the same neighborhood.

After attending the City University of New York, Preston said, she decided to join the ranks of corporate America.

"Yes, it's a white company," she said of her current employer, Chase Manhattan Bank. "But I didn't care. I was going to break that glass ceiling. That was my mission in life."

Preston, who is 30 years old, said she was content with her position until early this year, when she decided to start a beauty-consulting firm rather than work for Chase.

"If you're working for somebody else, how successful can you really be?" she asked.

She also said Blacks have been negligent in building centers for their own businesses.

"Orientals will come in and have Chinatown.... Why is it that people who are not African-American can come here and do so much for themselves?" she asked.

A brief question-and-answer session followed the panel discussion.

In response to an inquiry on the Nation of Islam, Hurt said: "What's attractive about the Nation of Islam is they not only lend a sense of urgency to the Black man, but they give the easy answer. The reason is always, "The Jews traded you as slaves.'"

Alvin L. Bragg '95, former BSA president, noted that the organization had revitalized sections of New York's East Harlem.

"The argument still doesn't make the muster," Hurt replied.

Student reactions to the panelists varied.

Clarke said she believed Preston was trying to dramatically underline the importance of independent Black businesses.

"Ms. Preston was trying to emphasize [that] it is more valuable to take on independent ventures as opposed to merely working for someone else," Clarke said.

"Her comments that Blacks are lazy are not to be taken at face value," Clarke said. "The thrust of her argument is to emphasize that some Blacks are not using their full potential."

Carlos K. Whiteman '95 said he enjoyed the speech.

"If we're talking about constructive ideas in the Black community," Whiteman said, "we have to embrace the traditional mechanisms of power."