THE APPROACH of the Fourth of July seems an appropriate time to remind certain would-be black leaders that their tyranny is no more acceptable in 1995 than King George's was more than 200 years ago.

Whether the issue is affirmative action, welfare reform, gangsta rap or Mike Tyson's homecoming, diversity of opinion should be encouraged, not suppressed. Yet when blacks, especially black women, differ from whichever male-dominated coalition declares itself to be speaking for "the black community" at any time, they increasingly risk condemnation and ostracism. Despite their track records, if they stray from the party line, they are accused of dancing to the tune of others, incapable of thinking for themselves or taking principled stands.

After The Amsterdam News threw itself behind plans for a hero's welcome for Mike Tyson earlier this month, black columnists writing for the Daily News and other dailies questioned the wisdom of bestowing such honors on a convicted rapist and admitted wife beater.

On the streets and on the airwaves, many blacks followed the lead of Bill Tatum, publisher of The Amsterdam News. Rather than squarely addressing the issue, Tatum came out swinging in the only way he knows how: condemning blacks who write for "white media" and accusing them of being mere puppets of those who "would leave the black community hopeless, helpless, broke and leaderless."

"We are the people," Tatum declared at a decidedly scaled-back celebration last week, going on to blame the city's dailies for intentionally creating a controversy designed to divide blacks.

The blame does not fall on the white media or any other white conspirators or any black collaborators. It falls on the Bill Tatum-Don King-Al Sharpton team of party planners who assumed that blacks would be so enthusiastic about seeing a celebrated athlete walk in their midst that no one would raise objections about the message being conveyed to women and to children.

In the pages of Tatum's newspaper, critics of the Tyson wing-ding were, with no apparent sense of irony, castigated as "opportunists" who were "self-serving" and "playing to mainstream cameras."

Jill Nelson, the writer who helped form a group to protest violence against women generally and the homecoming specifically, was accused of trying to boost sales of her popular 1993 book, "Volunteer Slavery." Councilwoman C. Virginia Fields, who represents central Harlem, was accused of participating "in what was clearly an effort by someone else to further damage Mike Tyson and spoil his return to the community."

Other members of the coalition who, unlike Sharpton, Tatum or Tyson, actually live in Harlem, were nevertheless depicted as interlopers.

These tactics are not solely a local phenomenon, as C. Delores Tucker can attest. In her three-year, little-publicized crusade against gangsta rap, Tucker, the president of the National Political Congress of Black Women, has won the praise and support of the likes of Jesse Jackson, Ben Chavis, the Black Leadership Forum and the Congressional Black Caucus.

But then she joined forces with a conservative Republican, William Bennett, to take her campaign to national television and op-ed pages. Since then Sharpton and others have dismissed her as a puppet of the "right wing." As if this 67-year-old woman, Pennsylvania's former secretary of state, does not have a history of acting on her convictions.

"Why weren't they standing with me? Why are they so silent?" Tucker asks of the naysayers. "I will talk with anyone and be happy to have the support of anyone on this issue."

Those who would control public discourse within the black community know that all they need do to cast doubt on the credibility of dissenters is use buzz words like "conservative," "right wing" "white media" or "outsiders." Their task is made especially easy if the dissenters are black women, who some black men still see as more privileged than they are in this society.

This Independence Day, we should toss off the yoke of oppression from within our community and test competing ideas through principled debate. Without that struggle, there can be no progress.