Content Warning: some content, language, and statements used in this story may be triggering to listeners.
MPR’s Brandt Williams reports on who speaks for Black community. Reports includes comments from church leaders, an academic, a city council member, and resident of the community.
A group of outspoken African American leaders will be at the front of an anti-police brutality rally in downtown Minneapolis. Activist's tactics have been criticized by African American and white city officials who questioned whether they actually speak for the city's black community. Some say the controversy is typical of how race and class complicate the African American struggle for political power.
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BRANDT WILLIAMS: The question over who represents the Black community came to the fore several weeks ago. Members of the Coalition of Black Churches, and African American Leadership Summit filed a lawsuit to prevent the appointment of David Jennings as the head of the Minneapolis Public Schools. Jennings backed down from the position because of the controversy raised by the leadership, and Jennings supporters questioned the group's authority to speak for the Black community. And that is what particularly angers the Reverend Randy Staten.
RANDY STATEN: They'd like to be able to say, well, you know, that's just a handful of niggers out there, just a handful of men, and they don't represent nobody. They ain't doing nothing. Well, that's the most insane thing in the world.
BRANDT WILLIAMS: Reverend Staten is the head of the Coalition of Black Churches and serves as an official spokesman for the African American Leadership Summit. On most Tuesday mornings, he can be found at Lucille's Kitchen as a guest on conversations with Al MacFarlane. The 90-minute forum is broadcast from the North Minneapolis Soul Food Restaurant on KMOJ Radio. Staten considers the criticisms of his group as nothing short of an attack on the Black community.
RANDY STATEN: We are at war. If you look all around us, we are at war. We got cuts occurring everywhere. We got a retreat on civil and human rights. We have a war on Black folk with police profiling. We are at war.
AUDIENCE: Amen.
BRANDT WILLIAMS: Staten's words have the ring of sensationalism to some, but to others, the rhetoric matches the issues.
JOHN WRIGHT: Some of these approaches to leadership and to strategic maneuver are very much tied to specific historical situations.
BRANDT WILLIAMS: Professor John Wright teaches in the African American Studies program at the University of Minnesota. He says there are several reasons why certain people or groups emerge as representatives of the Black community. First of all, he says the people who speak for the community are the ones who can offer the appropriate response to the seriousness of the situation.
African Americans in Minnesota, compared to most racial and ethnic groups, earn less money, are in poorer health, are more likely to be unemployed, they perform worse in school, and are more likely to be arrested and imprisoned. Professor Wright.
JOHN WRIGHT: Certainly, I think there's a well established, in many ways, justifiable view on the parts of some organizations and groups within the African American community, that the only way to move the power structure at large is through vigorous, militant protest.
BRANDT WILLIAMS: However, Wright says there are other factors, which help determine who speaks for the community. He says like in many cities across the country, members of the Black middle class have moved out of the inner city of Minneapolis. Wright says their departure has left a power void. The void has been filled by people and institutions that remain, like the Black churches.
Don Samuels is one of two African Americans on the Minneapolis City Council. He represents an inner-city neighborhood in North Minneapolis. Samuels says there wouldn't be a need for groups like Staten's if more Black middle class people brought their money, values, and political cloud to neighborhoods like his.
DON SAMUELS: We need some enfranchised Black people coming into the community, taking leadership of the community by sheer-- simply but sheerly by the standards of living that they will insist on. Only we can do it.
BRANDT WILLIAMS: Wendell Westbrook is the kind of person Samuels is talking about. Westbrook has lived in North Minneapolis for nearly 50 years. He says he's heard a lot of the same complaints about discrimination and police brutality for as long as he can remember. Westbrook says for the most part, people like him aren't usually the ones who have those kinds of problems, so they remain quiet.
WENDELL WESTBROOK: We said we've lived here all these years, and we certainly were involved in the school and in the community organizations. But there should be a lot more of that, and it's part of our fault too.
BRANDT WILLIAMS: The rally in March against police brutality will start in two locations, one in North Minneapolis, the other in South Minneapolis. The two groups will meet downtown outside the federal courthouse. Brandt Williams, Minnesota Public Radio.