written by Matty BMB NYC

an article from WARTIME 2025: 100 Years of Malcolm X

No More Black Overseers! No More House Negroes! A Rejection of the Black Misleadership Class

“Black people who choose to fight for the enemy, or use our struggle for personal and financial benefit need not apply.”

– Black Men Build Values Pledge

The concept of a “misleadership class” in our community dates as far back as our captivity, when white enslavers gave Black overseers and house slaves greater access to white power than the majority of enslaved Afrikans, who worked in the fields. Black overseers were enslaved Afrikans whom white enslavers empowered to manage daily slave labor, and house slaves were domestic servants whose working conditions tended to be less harsh than those of the field slaves.

All of this was strategic: it introduced divisions among us, and confused the more privileged Afrikans about the realities of the slave system and its ruthless exploitation of all Afrikan people. This made it easier for white enslavers to manage the enslaved Afrikan population: instead of us all fighting for our freedom, some Afrikans bought into the system and preferred to fight for inclusion in it. 

Over time, this class of confused Afrikans has evolved to become what we today call the Black misleadership class. Beyoncé, Kevin Hart, or Tyler Perry–they and others are the latest in a lineage that has sipped the oppressors’ Kool-Aid for centuries. They desire “success” within a system that is designed to loot and terrorize our people, rising and grinding their way to money and celebrity while leaving the masses of our people behind. Worse, they also help our oppressors sell these false dreams to Afrikans everywhere, spreading the lie that if we just work hard, the rest of us can get rich and famous, too. All of this encourages our people to accept the status quo rather than fight to change it.

In the early 2000s, two Black radical publications–The Black Commentator and Black Agenda Report–were the first to use, clearly define, and attack the concept of the Black misleadership class in print. In particular, our ancestor Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report was relentless in his critiques of the Black misleadership class, routinely exposing the hypocrisy and lies of Black misleaders like Barack Obama, Condoleezza Rice, and others, and writing about the ways they had sold out their people by perpetuating the United States’ projects of domestic capitalism and global empire.

Decades earlier in a 1963 speech at Michican State University, our ancestor Malcolm X made it plain, differentiating between the house Negro and the field Negro, and warning of the house Negro’s potential to align with our oppressors. Brother Malcolm joked that the house Negro identified so much with the enslaver that the house Negro would refer to themself and the enslaver as “we.” This is the same logic that today leads Jay-Z to say he is proudly a capitalist.

If we know today’s Black misleaders evolved from yesterday’s Black overseers and house Negroes, then we also know they are living examples of what not to do. These people do not deserve to be our leaders. Instead, we must struggle to embody and popularize a different form of leadership. We need revolutionary leadership.

Revolutionary leadership demands genuine relationship-building, a commitment to organizing for our liberation, and an understanding of our current conditions paired with a strategic vision for a completely different future. Revolutionary leaders encourage us to critique the economic exploitation, racism, sexism, and other evils that capitalism has produced. They are, as James and Grace Lee Boggs write in “The Awesome Responsibilities of Revolutionary Leadership,” committed to channeling our people’s righteous, “rebellious energies” into a revolutionary political force.
Glen Ford writes that the Black misleadership class is both real and aspirational: it is real because it exists and has a very active membership, and it is aspirational because many of our people dream of joining its ranks. Our mission as conscious Afrikans is to organize our people toward revolutionary leadership, and away from the reality and aspirations of Black misleadership. May this piece and the work of Black Men Build be a part of that struggle.