The Question I Get All the Time
“Who would you say is the best leader or public face of Black people today?”
My answer is simple: no one.
Some folks hear that and think I’m ducking. I’m not. I’m saying what needs to be said out loud: a people this powerful, this global, this creative—should never outsource its future to a single face. That’s a setup for disappointment, manipulation, and control.
When someone pressed me, “Isn’t the inability to identify a leader a failure of Black people?” I had to smile. No, brother. It’s a failure of the system that keeps trying to reduce a living nation to a mascot. I don’t play mascot politics. Not today, not ever.
Why America Always Wants Us to Have “One Face”
America loves one spokesperson because it’s easy to book, easy to butter up, and easy to burn down. A single target can be bribed, smeared, or silenced. A network can’t. That’s why “Who’s your leader?” is really code for “Who do we call to manage you?”
We’ve lived the cost of personality cults—big speeches, small results. We’ve also seen how the media crowns “a voice” on Monday, then feeds them to the wolves by Friday. I’m done with that game.
Visibility Is Not Power
A camera loves a certain kind of figure—loud, dramatic, and marketable. But visibility doesn’t equal power. Power is policy, budgets, land, ownership, protection, and intergenerational plans. You can trend all week and still change nothing on the ground.
We keep confusing celebrity with capacity. That’s how we end up treating entertainers and athletes like heads of state. Nothing against talent—but a contract with Nike ain’t a contract with our future.
Do Other Communities Have One Agreed-Upon Leader?
Let’s be real. Most groups in America do not have one “face.” They have institutions, coalitions, donors, PACs, think tanks, faith networks, trade groups, and media channels that press their interests. You may recognize a few public figures from those communities, but they speak for structures, not just themselves.
That’s the lesson: build the structures first. The “faces” are just microphones for machines. We’ve had microphones. We need machines.
What Leadership Should Mean for Us
For me, leadership is functional, not fashionable. It’s defined by lanes:
Policy & Law: who can draft, pass, and defend laws that move our people forward?
Economics: who’s building Black ownership, access to capital, and job pipelines?
Education: who’s creating systems that raise our skills and guard our minds?
Health: who’s closing the gaps in care, food, and mental wellness?
Technology: who’s putting us on offense in AI, data, cybersecurity, and biotech?
Media & Narrative: who’s shaping how we see ourselves—and how the world sees us?
Safety & Rights: who’s securing community safety without selling our souls?
No one person dominates all these lanes. That’s by design. We need a bench, a relay, a council—not a king.
If You Need “Names,” Use Them by Lane—Not as Saviors
I’ll name visible Black people who operate in real lanes. I’m not crowning anybody. I’m showing categories—so we stop pretending one microphone equals a movement.
Policy & Public Service: leaders like Wes Moore, Raphael Warnock, Ayanna Pressley operate where laws and budgets live. Whether you agree with them or not, that’s a lane with measurable outputs.
Law & Justice: people like Bryan Stevenson have fought for lives, not likes. That’s freedom work, courtroom level.
Faith & Moral Organizing: William Barber II demonstrates how moral language pushes policy. Not church as performance—church as pressure.
Civic Organizing & Voter Power: LaTosha Brown and others have treated turnout like infrastructure. Votes are levers; you need hands to pull them.
Business & Capital: Robert F. Smith shows what high-level capital can do publicly. We need ten more like him, plus regional versions who invest quietly.
Tech & Ethics: Timnit Gebru put a spotlight on bias inside the machine. If AI is the new railroad, we need Black engineers, conductors, and owners.
Education & Scholarship: voices like Bettina Love and Nikole Hannah-Jones fight over the curriculum and memory. Our children’s minds are the first territory.
Public Health: Uché Blackstock and others push for care that actually reaches us. Health is wealth—literally.
Local Builders You Don’t See on TV: the most important lane of all—school founders, credit-union organizers, land trusts, trades mentors, reentry program bosses. They don’t trend. They transform.
You’ll notice I didn’t hand the mic to entertainers or athletes. They can donate, amplify, and stand with us. Beautiful. But they don’t get to define us. Other communities don’t do that. We shouldn’t either.
The Criteria: How I Judge “Leadership” (So We Stop Getting Played)
If you want to evaluate a leader, use a scorecard, not feelings:
Material Wins: What changed on paper? Budget? Law? Land? Ownership?
Institutional Weight: Is there a team, a board, a pipeline—or just vibes?
Succession Plan: If they vanish, does the work continue?
Risk Profile: Do they take risk for us—or only when it’s trendy and safe?
Accountability: Can we audit outcomes, not just admire speeches?
Shielding & Security: Can they protect people who stand next to them?
Diaspora Links: Do they connect Black America with Africa, the Caribbean, South America, Europe—or do they keep us small and local?
Media Discipline: Do they feed algorithms—or build narratives that outlive the news cycle?
Score them honestly. No more hero worship.
The Real Problem Isn’t “No Leader.” It’s No Machine.
We’re not failing because we didn’t crown a single face. We fail when we don’t build systems that outlive any face. Our rivals invest in think tanks, PACs, trade associations, cooperative banks, research centers, and youth pipelines. We invest in personalities and parties. That’s backwards.
Give me ten strong institutions over one superstar any day. A star can fall. Institutions compound.
A Practical Blueprint: From Mascot Culture to Movement Culture
Here’s how we graduate from “Who’s the face?” to “Where’s the force?”
Build a Black Commons Network: local councils in every city—policy, business, education, health, safety—meeting monthly, publishing public goals and results.
Create Local Scorecards: grade city councils, school boards, prosecutors, and police chiefs on outcomes that affect Black life. Public, simple, relentless.
Own the Narrative: fund independent media bureaus to cover our wins, not just our wounds. Train 100 young storytellers per city.
Money That Moves: seed Black credit unions, community land trusts, co-ops, and revolving loan funds. “Buy Black” is good; bank Black is better.
Tech on Offense: AI/data literacy hubs in our neighborhoods. Scholarships tied to a promise: come back and build something we own together.
Protection & Legal Muscle: prepaid legal plans, rights trainings, and networks of lawyers ready to respond. Safety without surrender.
Diaspora Bridge: permanent exchange between Black America and African nations—trade missions, film, tech, agriculture, logistics. We are global by blood—let’s be global by business.
Do that, and any “face” who speaks for us will be speaking for an engine, not just a brand.
To the Brother Who Asked If This Is a Collective Failure
No, it’s not our failure that I can’t point to a single face. It’s our wisdom. We’re too vast for one mouthpiece. The real failure would be pretending a charismatic soundbite is a strategy. I’m done pretending.
If you want me to name who I’d choose, I’ll still say no one—because the job description is bigger than one person. But if you’re asking who I’d bet on, I’ll bet on the builders: the policy grinders, the capital movers, the educators, the technologists, the healers, the local organizers no camera ever finds. Those are my leaders. Most of them don’t want a spotlight. They want a supply chain.
Final Word from Lancescurv
I’m not here to crown celebrities. I’m here to build capacity. We’ve spent decades chasing “the next” this and that, only to watch the same cycles repeat. Let’s stop feeding the machine that turns our pain into profits and our leaders into products.
No mascots. No masters.
Build the bench. Fund the institutions. Guard the children. Connect the diaspora.
When we do that, whoever steps to a microphone will be speaking for a nation that already knows where it’s going.
And that’s my answer—on camera, off camera, every time.
Sincerely,
LanceSCURV
Makes a lot of since! Let the "code" be the leader. Shot out Mr. Neely Fuller Jr.