OPEN LETTER TO AL SHARPTON

Dear Mr. Sharpton:

After watching your public address regarding Glenn Beck’s event on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, I could only wonder what your true motivation was. Then, I realized it had absolutely nothing to do with Dr. King, the anniversary of his famous speech, or Glenn Beck’s timing. It was all about YOU. Every protest you have organized has had nothing to do to further the Black cause. It has always been about you and your bank account.  If you were truly concerned about the ills of the Black community, why have you not championed those issues that would improve our state? If you are an honest man, answer the following questions:

1. When are you going to use your energy to protest and boycott city, state, and federal governments for their allowing the destruction of urban schools, their neighborhoods, and communities?

2. When are you going to use your “Black Power” to march in Black neighborhoods and demand that drug dealers, violent criminals, and pedophiles leave?

3. When are you going to use your energy to petition urban school boards to stop their self-service and fulfill their obligation to their constituents: the children?

4. When are you going to use your energy to hold the Black communities accountable and responsible for the lack of physical, emotional, financial, and academic support of its constituents?

You continually make your money off the blood, sweat, tears, fears, pain, suffering, failures, and ills of the Black community. This is a SIN! Whenever a non-Black person (usually a White person) commits a crime against a Black person, you jump right on the race-card band wagon. However, I have yet to see you use the same tenacity, vigor, and energy when Blacks hurt Blacks. Why is that? Oh, I know. It does not pay your bills. It does not bring you media attention. It is not the “flavor of the day”. This is what I call “pimping the Black community”. The following is the definition of a Black community pimp:

–noun 1. a person who exploits Black constituents or communities, usually in return for earnings and media attention. A person who panders to the media at the sacrifice of the Black community. A person who procures at the cost of the Black community. 2. A user. 3. A despicable person.

I have grown up watching you and all I have witnessed is you making a living off the pain and sufferings of the Black community. I have yet to see you march on local governments protesting their failure of inner city schools. I have yet to see you march on local governments protesting their allowing the deterioration of Black neighborhoods. I have yet to see you march on local governments requiring the re-establishment of neighborhood schools so our children can walk to school with their neighbors. This would cut down on a lot of the neighborhood violence. Do you not remember what it was like to go to a school in your neighborhood? You knew your neighbors? You knew the merchants, business men and women, etc. Oh, that’s right. There’s no money in that. A pimp needs to make his money; and I guess that is not a money-maker for you.

How can you claim to be a Black leader when your actions for all these decades have been despicable, sinful, and self-serving? Why Black communities have not denounced you is a mystery to me. Case in point: the Tawna Brawley fiasco. Your actions were beyond incomprehensible. I wonder how many Blacks realize you conjured up that incident just for publicity sake? You media-pimped a 15-year old girl. SHAMEFUL!!! You continue to play the same media-whore card; and the Black community continues to eat the crap like it is candy.

I will not stop until I can get the attention of the Black community. Because of you and others like you, the Black community is the laughing stock of the global community. Thanks to so-called Black leaders like you, we are viewed as savages like depicted in “The Birth of a Nation”. Nonetheless, there are more Blacks like me who want to correct the damage people like you have caused. You are not a leader. Your opportunistic actions are shameful. However, there is still hope for the Black community; and I will not stop until I can make a dent.

If Dr. King’s niece, Dr. Alveda King, can speak at the Glenn Beck event, what is your problem? You demanded that Mr. Beck read Dr. King’s speech. I have read it over and over again as well as listened to it and the resounding theme is unity, self-sufficiency, and equality. All those themes were addressed at the Beck rally. However, your rally was divisive and racially motivated, which is your usual mode of operation. The audience at the Beck rally was very diverse. Why did you not acknowledge that fact? Again, that would not put dollars in your bank account.

It is time for the Black community to hold you responsible for damaging our psyche. It is time for you to be accountable for the rape and pillaging of the Black people's dignity and spirit.  If you truly care and want true success within the Black community, stand up and protest for safer neighborhoods and schools. March within Black communities where residents are plagued by Black-on-Black crime. Protest local governments and school boards and hold them accountable for their neglect of these communities. Do what is right and beneficial and stop making money off the Black community. Stop perpetuating the slave mentality. Stop reselling us into slavery and set the Black community free. There is hope.  Redemption is possible.