By: Nia Whitaker
Black History Month is Coming. How will you be remembered?
I am Black. I am from a community that has survived through brilliance, faith, and relentless struggle. Because of that history, we have earned not only the right but the responsibility to tell the truth about leadership that fails us. This includes Black corporate leaders, legislators, aldermen, supervisors, educators, preachers, pastors, and others entrusted with power who have chosen comfort over courage.
To be clear, we do not hate Black leaders. We hate being abandoned.
Let us stop pretending. The issue is not that Black people do not respect leadership. The issue is that too many leaders stopped respecting the people who put them where they are.
In small towns and cities across this country, Black leadership has been reduced to titles and photo opportunities. Folks are expected to feel lucky just to be “at the table” while their communities starve, stagnate, and suffer. That is not leadership. That is elite capture, when a few gain access and status while the collective sees no material change.
Too many leaders are more concerned with how other institutions and ethnicities perceive them than with how Black neighbors experience them. Respectability politics taught generations of leaders to whisper instead of demand, to smile instead of confront, to wait instead of build. The cost of that strategy has been paid by those at the bottom, not those protected by proximity to power.
When crises hit, leaders go silent. No statements. No organizing. No backbone. Silence has become policy. And silence is violence when you have power and choose not to use it. Communities do not demand perfection. They demand presence.
Younger politicians are not exempt. Many have been trained to avoid controversy rather than confront injustice. They jump away from hard issues, terrified of losing funding, clout, or favor. But history does not remember the careful. It remembers the courageous. Every meaningful freedom movement was advanced by people willing to risk something.
Some older leaders continue operating from slave era logic, obedience over imagination, hierarchy over liberation, survival over freedom. Trauma helps explain this posture, but it does not excuse it. Survival is not the same as leadership, and fear is not wisdom.
The critique does not stop at city halls and courthouses. It reaches the pulpit.
Before leaders start spouting scripture and quoting verses, remember this. Faith has never been about perfection or performance. Jacob limped. Paul carried a thorn. Moses stuttered. Leadership in the church has always required humility, sacrifice, and service. Standing behind a lectern demands more than halfhearted prayers for members while elevating oneself on a pedestal. Shepherds were meant to tend sheep, not build brands while congregations struggle to eat, learn, stay warm, and live with dignity.
Financial leadership deserves the same scrutiny. To leaders in banks and financial institutions, shame on you for hoarding wealth while refusing to teach Black neighbors how to build it. Worse, shame on you for refusing to take chances on them the way you do for others. Access to capital and financial education is not charity. It is justice.
And to politicians who say they are only one voice or one vote, miss us with that excuse. It was our individual votes that put you in office. Representation does not end at the ballot box. It begins there.
Educationally, we may not all hold the degrees you display, but we possess street sense, lived experience, and discernment. We can tell when we are being misled. We know when we are being sold Advil instead of Xanax, offered surface level relief instead of real solutions. Too many leaders have become modern day dope pushers, distributing comfort, half truths, and lies while communities remain in pain. There must be accountability for harm caused by deception and neglect.
Then leaders ask why young adults do not trust them. Why they do not vote, join, or follow. The answer is simple. Trust is built through action, not titles. Through sacrifice, not silence.
This is not hate. This is heartbreak.
If this critique stings, good. Growth requires discomfort. Soul searching must come before speeches. And before asking young people to trust again, leaders should first look in the mirror.
Sources and References
The Holy Bible
Genesis 32
Acts 9 through 28
Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church
Táíwò, Olúfẹ́mi. Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics
DeGruy, Joy. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
Pew Research Center
Studies on trust in institutions, political disengagement, and generational attitudes among Black Americans
Federal Reserve and FDIC Reports
Data on the racial wealth gap, access to capital, and financial education disparities
