I’ve read two books recently, The Leader of the Future 2 and Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man. As frequently happens, two different books have crossed ideas and provided insight.

The Leader of the Future 2 is an anthology of leadership articles. One article, “Anchoring Leadership in Adaptive Progress,” written by Ronald A. Heifetz hypothesized it took Moses forty years to, “bring the children of Israel to the Promised Land not because it was such a long journey, but because it took that long for the people to leave behind the dependent mentality of slavery and generate the capacity for self-government.”

In Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man?, Charles Barkley interviews Jesse Jackson. Barkley’s book explores the current state of being black in America and how to improve the situation. Jesse Jackson highlights the historical context of the situation. When this nation achieved it’s independence in 1776, we were 157 years into slavery. At the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865, slavery had been the law of the land for 246 years. Then, until 1954, Jim Crow was the law of the land. As of 1954, our nation’s law was for racial supremacy. That’s 334 years.

It’s 2007. Fifty-three years later we expect 334 years of legal and cultural racial supremacy to be erased? Folks, we’re wandering in the desert. We have a ways to go before we achieve the Promised Land. This isn’t a black or a white issue. It isn’t problem for only one race to solve. While fewer and fewer people alive today enforced or participated in the law of racial supremacy, our culture is still adapting to the legal environment that changed in 1954.

In 1776, this nation embarked on a journey President Ronald Reagan dubbed, “the only true philosophical revolution in all history.” This revolution changed the very concept of government to mean government only has the powers granted to it by its people. We got a lot of things right when our forefathers framed our constitution. We got a few things wrong but created a way to correct errors. We’re living through the aftermath of the damages of getting human rights wrong. We’ve been wandering a wasteland for centuries. It took us that long to realize we wouldn’t reach the Promised Land unless we welcomed all people for the journey.

The first step to solving a problem is to recognize you have one. The Civil Rights Movement highlighted we had a problem. Many people believed the steps taken to begin righting those wrongs solved the problem. We lost sight of the long journey ahead. We thought the first Oasis was the destination. We camped there, thinking all would fall into place. As a result, many people believe “all that” is behind us. More people realize that’s not the case, and soon, others will realize “the Oasis” is wanting. As more people become aware that we’re still wandering in the desert, we’ll use the tools available to us to create a map with alternate routes to reach our destination.

The Leader of the the Future 2 and Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man? have provided us two Global Positioning System points to help us locate where we are in the desert. To know where you’re going, you have to know where you are. This is a start.