If you try you might fail...

...But if you do not try you are guaranteed to fail! -Jesse Jackson


If you try you might fail, but if you do not try you are guaranteed to fail. That was a popular motivational phrase uttered often by Jesse Jackson to black youth and adults. Jesse also popularized the phrases; “I am somebody” and “keep hope alive”. Although this essay is not about Jesse Jackson, he is the icon that conservatives use most to exemplify what is wrong with black leadership.

How did these positive messages get contorted and framed as the promotion of hopelessness and failure in the black community? Of course, that’s a rhetorical question as I know full well the how and why. It is because of the conservative movement that defines itself antithetical to liberal ideology and hence must twist words of and agendas to make others ideology look bad, while juxtaposing theirs as what is good.

I am not attempting to defend liberalism, but rather, black leadership who has fought for black uplift. I had a long conversation with a good friend of mine who interpreted and concluded that I was promoting hopelessness because I said that there is a reason why black people under perform is society. He said that based upon what I lamented, that people would not even have a reason to try, once they hear the negatives about external obstacles against them. However, I never alluded anything of the sort.

What I want to know is since when does noting obstacles and opposition to success mean that one should give up and not try? It’s a false corollary to suggest that talk of racism and environmental impediments decreases effort and motivation. Indeed, it is better to overestimate your opposition rather than under estimate it. For the overestimation is likely to produce over preparation while underestimation is likely to produce under preparation. As long as people have dreams and hope, they will try regardless of obstacles. It is the people without dreams and hope that end up not tying. In order for me to make such an assumption, I would first have to conclude that blacks are weak and cowardly who simply give up in the face of opposition. However, I see black people not as cowards, but brave fighters against injustice.

Many conservatives want people to believe that talking about and fighting against racisms legacy upon black folks is mutually exclusive to internal focusing on efforts to improve the black condition. Conservative black folk are not interested in augmenting black leaders who have an external focus on fighting institutional and systematic racism and oppressions legacy, with new leaders who will have an internal focus. Rather, they seek the all or nothing route with the all being a total internal focus, with the elimination of leaders with external focus. Thus, nearly every time you hear a black conservative, he or she does not suffice with internal talk; they must criticize, ostracize and condemn black leaders with external focus as outdated dinosaurs whose ideology and methods need to be scraped.

The truth of the matter is that white folks have lost their patients, assuming they ever had any, with dealing with the black condition. Consequently, the voice and political conduit of angry white folks, the Republican Party, is sending the message loud and clear that enough time has passed for black folks to pull themselves up. Therefore, black folks coveting favor and promotion in the conservative ideology thus propagates the message to the black masses so that conservative whites are spared the discomfort of being seen as racist, despite its validity in many cases.

How long is normative human healing in regards to recovery from slavery and racism? Conjecture and false analogies and comparison abound. However, the consequence of premature expectations are not unlike the consequences of prematurely trying to take the caste off a broken leg that has not had the proper time and care to heal. What could happen is that the leg will be re-broken or heal improperly, resulting in a permanent limp. White folks want and expect black folk to be free of the caste because the caste is a reminder of their and this nations inhumanity, which they do not want to assume responsibility for. In steps the black conservative to do their dirty work by their attempt to characterize the lack of healing as being self inflicted. Thus, no longer the cause of white America.


Who is to say how long is should take for a people to recover from over 300 years of legalized racial oppression that manifested a physical, psychological, geographical, economical and social reaction upon a people? Where are the examples from history were an oppressed group of people who remained in the land of their oppression, amongst the oppressing group, who rose to equality as a minority in that land? Most oppressed groups of people in history immigrated and subjugated their way out of the legacy of their own oppression by doing to others what had been done to them, in degree or kind.


In light of that, it is obvious that those who want to ignore those external forces are propagating the belief that black humanity is “abnormal” and hence what needs to be targeted is black abnormality. They want people to believe that the black condition of inequality is the resultant of pathologies endemic to a genetic racial pattern, which manifest as blackness. Hence, working on these abnormal human behavior characteristics and traits is what they believe is needed for blacks to move forward and not attempting to fight vestiges of institutional and systematic racism.

Most people do not have a problem noting individual variation. We all know that some individual achieve less than others because some individuals have greater inherent capacities than others. Although most people are around the same, there are those few who separate from the average for the better and worse. Thus, among individuals, there will always be variations in performance. However, when you talk about races of people, you have to assume equality in requisite genetic attributes, lest you are forwarding the doctrine of racial inferiority. That is what conservatives do in their arguments. They forward the notion of black abnormality or inferiority, by seeing inequality the resultant of these traits endemic to black peoples more than others.

In conclusion, I think that the words by Jesse Jackson, which states that if you try you might fail, but if you do not try, you are guaranteed to fail totally refutes the supposition that traditional black leaders are retarding the effort of blacks by their focus on external obstacles. Black leaders are indeed encouraging black to be all that they can be and to try, regardless of the odds and obstacle against them relative to others.