Developing Leadership, not Individualism

In my dream last night, I accepted a new job as a communications lead for a nonprofit organization. It was called “Queue,” a brand intended to indicate they were developing the leaders of color who were next in line in democracy – a pipeline, a queue. The primary place they made this happen was in a retail store, where they sold and gave out really cool tracksuits and sweat-suits. This was an organization that created culture through clothing, and also provided work experience to the target demographic who came in their door. Inside, a large crowd of amazing Black and Brown people of every age and ability, all wore distinctive burgundy and white outfits, in a variety of styles with the Queue brand on the front. My dream ended when a four year old crawled into bed with my partner and I and kicked me pretty hard, but the last thing I remember about the dream was finding a rack of really well-made tracksuits that were embroidered with “MAGA IS POGGERS.”

You probably know what MAGA is, but might not know about POGGERS: slang which can mean a lot of things, but particularly in the Twitch community is another way of saying “hype.” The dream ended with the realization that the Queue nonprofit was a front organization for right-wing ideology. They’d found a way to sell it to our communities of color using symbols of status and youthful slang.

The Queue organization in my dream was a leadership development organization. I thought of them in the same vein as many organizations I respect for their ability to bring people together and develop skills that are useful in navigating the political world. Queue used branding and clothes to create a group sense of purpose, but the idea behind Queue exists in countless forms throughout the nonprofit industrial complex. I’ve been the recipient of leadership development programs for a variety of audiences, and I’ve developed leadership in others. Hell, my professional resume still has some of these programs listed, credentials I’ve earned, programs I’ve run. I don’t think of programs like these as without any merit.

But leadership development exists along a spectrum that operates between two binary poles: one, the “put a necktie on and get yourself elected” pole, the other, a “recognize your power and learn how to use it to organize others for community benefit” pole. The former is not about teaching a person how they can work with others, as would seem to be implied by the word “leadership.” Often our schools lift up historic figures as being great leaders – MLK, Gandhi, Harriet Tubman, or Mother Teresa. But precious little attention is given to the end goals of liberation most of these leaders sought, and what made them memorable contributors to history. It was not how they dressed which made them successful, though we herald the images of MLK as a respectable preacher, or Gandhi as a simple pauper. It was the masses they educated and liberated, the injustice against which they stood. A person who is trained to focus on themselves, their own standards of dress, and how they navigate an existing bureaucracy, is not focusing on collective power. At best, many of the necktie leadership development programs teach individuals to see themselves as a representative of their own race, gender, sexuality, or housing status, whose own advancement is a good unto itself. Rarely do participants in such programs spend time building greater participation among their fellows, or actually practicing the skills it takes to truly lead others meaningfully toward their own liberation. As analysis of personal identity has replaced class, structural and historic analysis has taken a backseat to egalitarian myths about “pulling oneself up by the bootstraps.” Methods of organizing for social change have concurrently undergone a transformation.

Necktie programs may teach a person how to get elected to high office, but in most cases such an election will be a moderating force. A campaign will temper the elected person’s public views and thus their ability to agitate and educate their constituents in order to win the votes of a majority. The voting public have received a very narrow definition of leadership from a lifetime of education and experience, and necktie programs seek to push participants toward fitting this definition in order to win. The organized left has created almost no plan for educating the masses which challenges and reshapes this definition. Occasionally, left-liberal politicians will use rhetoric that implies collective power (“yes we can,” “not me, us”), but only in the service of electing individuals. Very often, our political competitions come down to a battle of accusations of radicalism (the Georgia Senate runoff the most recent example), which insinuates and further educates voters to believe that being moderate is the desired end. But in the final analysis, moderation that comes from necktie programs under racialized capitalism leads one to, at best, tinker around the edges of policy changes which can reduce harm.

My dream, like many, was pretty heavy-handed as far as cautionary political narratives go. Once I had a second to think about it, “Queue” is almost too on-the-nose as a front for right-wing ideology in a world where the QAnon cult is staging coup attempts. But underlying this pun (which I’m proud my sleeping brain concocted) is a lesser-acknowledged truth. Too often, when we emphasize the “necktie” pole of leadership development, we’re indoctrinating these leaders into a vein of reactionary ideology. The basic idea, which many people advance, is that by learning how to operate inside of systems that have too long shut out the participation of people of color, by learning the language, the handshakes, the style of dress, we can enter and reform those systems. Ultimately, there is great value in supporting the election of people of color, diversifying the perspectives of legislators, and policy built from the perspectives of people of color, for whom white supremacists formerly made policy. But the danger in this style of leadership is that it does not come with political education. Our systems of government, our businesses, and even our nonprofits all serve to prop up a white supremacist system which was created precisely to avoid accountability for slaveowners and Indian killers. How decision-making spaces are structured, the way our laws operate, and standards of respectability and conduct all obscure the reality of where modernity originated, who were its victims and who perpetrated the crimes. Philanthropy invests heavily in leadership development programs which intend to advance “system change,” but too often these programs do not advance the underlying story of why we need different leaders, and different systems. In 2021, some necktie programs have come far enough to speak openly about white supremacy, Black exclusion, and the genocide of Native peoples. But such programs rarely advance in their participants the reality that race is a lynchpin of capitalism, and that systems which depend upon race are inherently capitalistic. As in my dream, the leadership development of Black and Brown people is commodified, sold to us as culture, and becomes a brand we wear as individuals.

It is easy to forget that unapologetic radicals and respectable leaders in suits have each been martyred and abused by white supremacists and their systems. When one chooses to push hard on the levers of power in a way that works – by organizing people, identifying harms and their historic origins, and demanding change – one accepts a risk. Organizing against foundational systems, as Black Lives Matter organizers who make the policy demand of “defund the police,” is dangerous. Those systems are designed to protect themselves, none more than those empowered to use live ammunition at home and abroad. When developing leaders, it is important we are honest with ourselves and our benefactors. If our work does not seek to upend historic injustices, but perhaps just replace its perpetrators, it is not “system change.” It is a system makeover. If the education provided by such programs does not properly identify the racialized capitalist system that requires an underclass of non-white people, it is not providing a worthwhile education. If it does not empower participants to bring together their peers, regardless of how we dress, or how we act in board meetings, it is not “leadership development,” it is cultivating individualism. Such individualism is itself a part of the mythology that we live in a meritocracy, that people who play by the rules get ahead. Ultimately, if we participate in such programs, we need to assess the effectiveness of leadership development for historically-marginalized people by a single standard: does the program seek to teach us about the rules so that we can play by them, or to help us change them?