Credit: Gary Raynaldo / ©Diplomatic Times /  Herman Portocarero,  former European Union ambassador to Cuba, speaks on future of the socialist nation at Columbia University,  New York  political forum Nov. 12, 2019.

By Gary Raynaldo    DIPLOMATIC  TIMES

“WHERE IS BLACK LEADERSHIP?” 

European Union career diplomat, former ambassador  Herman Portocarero wants this question answered amid the current U.S. civil unrest that was sparked by the homicide of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.  In his blog post “Another Country,”  Portocarero,  who  served as the EU’s  first full-fledged ambassador to Cuba in  2012 questions the absence of black leadership and the urgent need for new leadership during this point of crisis.  Here are excerpts from  the former ambassador’s blog – The Diplomatic Lounge: 

“The title of James Baldwin’s 1962 novel often comes to my mind as summing up the collective feelings of alienation experienced by many African-Americans individually and Black communities collectively in the United States.”

-Herman Portocarero

facebook.com/portocareropage/community /  James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist.

Portocarero reflects on the murder of George Floyd: “Speaking about the murder of Mr George Floyd by a White police officer in Minneapolis, Mr Joe Biden summed up all that the White House is denying: America never got over its original sin of racism. To deny that there is a systemic problem is just ridiculous,” Portocarero writes in his blog.  Ambassador Portocarero writes that the “underlying racism” never healed since the end of slavery.

“The over-militarization of police forces throughout the United States always makes tensions worse, not better. No protesting civilian wants to be confronted with troop contingents equipped and behaving like an invading and occupying force.”

-Ambassador  Portocarero

Credit: Gary Raynaldo /  ©Diplomatic Times  / Herman Portocarero,  former European Union ambassador to Cuba.

“Civilian policing in the US has been utterly perverted by the defense industries. Just like wars anywhere thrive on the arms trade, militarized police forces are a typical example of a solution creating its own problems. The manufacturing and sale of security equipment is a sideline to the indecent internal arms race in the US, and a billion-dollar industry in its own right, cleverly courting the police apparatus and public powers everywhere.”

-Ambassador  Portocarero

Credit: Gary Raynaldo   / ©Diplomatic Times  / Herman Portocarero,  former European Union ambassador to Cuba, speaks on future of the socialist nation at Columbia University political forum Nov. 12, 2019.

Ambassador Portocarero On Police Training:

“The next issue is training.  I find it unbelievable that with all the tools of HR management to which we subject any candidate for any job, it still appears impossible to avoid recruiting police officers with the wrong basic instincts. Not people getting carried away in the heat of passion– although policemen and women should possess adequate self-control– but persons capable of cold-blooded murder by minutes-long strangulation like Mr Derek Chauvin.”

The former EU ambassador is likely to get a lot of flack from African Americans involved in the struggle for social justice on his questioning of Black leadership in the current crisis in the U.S. They may say who does Mr. Portocarero think he is to question our leadership when the ambassador is far removed from the struggle living a privileged life in Europe.  But it is a fair question.    One has to admit that although the recent police killings of Black Americans have sparked massive protests in the U.S.  not seen since the 1960’s, there really has not been a singular Black leader or Black leaders leading this contemporary Black Lives Matter  movement for social justice like in the past with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,  Malcolm X,  Rosa Parks, James Baldwin, John Lewis, Jesse Jackson, Roy Wilkins, et al.  But perhaps that is the point with this contemporary movement of Black social justice that a singular leader is not needed to distract from the message.

“Why the Black Lives Matter movement doesn’t want a singular leader” is an excellent POLITICO article addressing this issue raised by Ambassador Portocarero.

“There is no chairperson or candidate calling the shots in private or serving as a public rallying point. With no singular person to attack in tweets, President Donald Trump instead directed his ire and threats of violence at mostly peaceful protesters.”  Laura Barrón–López writes in POLITICO.  

“In terms of strategy — and this is very real that we have to be honest about this — it makes it harder for those who are against us to do what they did in the ‘60s, which is to target one leader,” said Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, a voter engagement nonprofit – POLITICO

But let us now return to Ambassador Portocarero’s thoughts on  Black leadership, who concludes his blog asking…

“My last point is a very delicate one, but it has to be mentioned…

“Where is Black leadership?”

“The worst vicious circle in all this will be the increased racism, with prejudices confirmed and reinforced by the burning and the looting. Yet this is the real message: too many poor Americans and especially Black people are indeed living in another country, long left behind by politics, no longer inspired by civic leaders with standing and credibility. Street violence has always been the language of the powerless. And unavoidably, we descend into the realm of the worst instincts. The breaking and burning looter reacts to the killer instinct of the bad cop. It will take time and a great deal of patience and intelligence to break those vicious circles, if that is at all possible. And most of all, it absolutely requires a change of leadership at the top come November. Or else, there will forever be Another Country, always denied, long-suffering, but exploding in vicious instincts when senseless repression is carried too far once again.”

-Ambassador Portocarero. 

Mr. Portocarero was born in Antwerp is a Belgian writer and diplomat of Portuguese and Spanish ancestry. After graduating law school at Antwerp University,  Portocarero practiced law at the Antwerp bar. He joined the Belgian diplomatic service in 1978. His first posting was with the Belgian permanent representation to UNESCO in Paris. In 1979 he joined the Embassy of Belgium in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In 2012 he ended his career as a Belgian diplomat to join the newly created European External Action Service, the diplomatic arm of the European Union. Based on his earlier experiences in Cuba and the Caribbean, as well as on his record in multilateral (UN) diplomacy, he was named the EU’s first full-fledged ambassador to Cuba in July 2012. He is also the author of Havana Without Makeup: Inside The Soul of The City.