Barack Obama - US presidential hopeful Black America, indeed a large portion of the black world is suffering of the malaise of self-flagellation, blaming the white world for its own failure. Indeed the white world is not a saint.

The off record (recorded) chatter of Jesse Jackson concerning Barack Obama ”talking down to black people” clearly indicates that the old guard of the black leadership is not quite ready for a black president who refuses to use race as the only leitmotif in dealing with issues of politics in America.

Jesse Jackson Jr scolded his father for his remarks, a signal that maybe there is a paradigm schism between the young guard and the old one. Can we assume as such that the new guard is ready to lead young black male Americans in adopting a lifestyle mode conducive to model citizenship?

This essay is looking into the dilemma of nation building in America, where the duty of the government to break down the barriers of discrimination must be compensated by the responsibility of the black recipients to use the opportunity not only to better themselves but also to create a better society for all.

The United States might seem and is in fact one of the best models of race integration in the world. Although the country is almost 230 years old, the process of integration started in earnest only forty years ago, with the advocacy of Dr Martin Luther King. Jesse Jackson was one of the young foot soldiers of the movement. President Lyndon Johnson did not fight the movement; he embraced it with a long list of civil rights initiatives.

The anti-poverty programs have created a coterie of managers who sometimes insisted in perpetuating themselves while enjoying the trappings of the position and paying lip service to the duty of using the affirmative action programs to create a culture of responsibility to magnify the output. With Barack Obama at the helm of power, there will be few excuses to blame “the man” for own personal shortcomings.

The whole world is filled with the theory of conspiracy of the white man against the black species. Robert Mugabe inherited a well developed country filled with the infrastructure necessary to take off in the future. Rhodesia turned into Zimbabwe twenty years later, is a catastrophe of deluging proportion for its black population.

Haiti, the former pearl of the islands under colonial times, and also under the governance of Toussaint, Dessalines and Christophe, has sunk into the abyss of squalor since the presidency of Alexander Petion and Jean Pierre Boyer, some two hundred years ago.

Jean Pierre Boyer, who benefited from the allegiance of the Eastern part of the island (Dominican Republic), treated that part of Hispaniola so niggardly that the Dominicans had no choice but to revolt and seek their independence. Haiti is still ruled under the ethos of Boyer.

Black America, indeed a large portion of the black world is suffering of the malaise of self-flagellation, blaming the white world for its own failure. Indeed the white world is not a saint. In America the range of initiatives that benefit the black people took place mainly under President Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon (Richard Nixon!). It was thirty years ago. The commitment to full integration since, has been dismal at best; sporadic at worst. Yet the capacity building of the black leaders to utilize the opportunities to move the black Americans to another level warrant a low mark. The crisis of the young black males in America might be as crucial as the looming energy crisis. Seventy three percent of young black males are not attending or are barely following a regular school program leading to an academic degree.

The typical black male youth has his pants hanging around his lower hips, with his underwear showing, dreaming of driving a fancy car with the proceeds of the drug deals or a hip-hop record. The sad part of this story is, this model is emulated all over the black world through the magic of the cable TV, in the Caribbean and in Africa.

Very few voices have stand up to muster a comprehensive fight against this drama. Oprah Winfrey and Bill Cosby are in the avant-garde; ... they are not enough. I have brought the cause to the attention of the 100 Black Men, a respectable organization in America. The President then, told me Al Sharpton was the best voice for such a cause.

Creating a more perfect union in America will not be easy. With a black president at the helm of power, white America will not be able to hide behind the bushes of benign indifference on one side, and black America will have to stop blaming the white man on the other side.