Black Leadership: A Discussion 30 Years after the March on Washington (1993): What does this mean in 2026?

As I look at the conservative political environment here in the United States today, I’m compelled to take a look at where I am today in 2026. This upload, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol-TyOVYpxE

used to be something that I thought, as a younger man, would lead to a better future for Black Americans. When I look at where we are in 2026, I see the same problems with no real collective change.

One problem is that the Silent Generation, the Baby Boomers, and the Greatest Generation conflated reforming America with establishing group power. Better-paying jobs don’t lead to freedom. If that were true, as the late Dr. John Bracey once said, then the Vietnamese would have pulled up in the Tet Offensive and requested jobs.

While well-paying jobs do help individuals and their children, Black Upwardly Mobile Professionals (BUPPIES) have found that cutbacks usually reach us first and that glass ceilings and brick ceilings affect us to the greatest degree. Ironically, it seems that the better we do, the more vulnerable we become.

A Black philosophy professor from Huntsville, Texas, who had a brief run as a social influencer, posted a 4-hour presentation on just that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2sr4_o7nBI

One problem that we can’t seem to accurately define is the difference between individual accomplishments of a few and the overall vulnerability of the many. The William Julious Wilsons of Black America feel that it’s a class struggle, but as Dr. John Henrik Clarke observed, you can’t have a middle without an upper. He meant that we don’t have a Black equivalent to the Fords, Rockefellers, and Carnegies. So when we use class analysis, we’re borrowing from an upper class to which we don’t belong.

One of my mentors, the late Dr. Lyn Etta Lewis, PhD, taught us a sociological concept that she coined Triple PW. This stands for prestige, power, privilege, and wealth. She further taught us that the interlocking wealth that the Fords, Taubmans, Carnegies, and Rockefellers have must also last at least 3 generations in order to be a part of the American upper class. Black Americans lack this, so we really can’t effectively use class analysis.