“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”
MLK, Letter from Birmingham Jail
A few days ago I returned to Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The last time I’d read the letter in its entirety was high school. I suppose I was moved to return to the letter by the recent opening of the King memorial. But I also heard echoes of King’s upbraiding of the “white moderate” in Patricia Turner’s measured critique of The Help in The New York Times as well as Martha Southgate’s eloquently acerbic Entertainment Weeklycover story. Like Mississippi Burning and To Kill a Mockingbird, the story advances a view of racism and the civil rights era that is incompatible with the facts. That the central function of these stories is to soothe the psyches of good whites who do not consider themselves racists or having benefited from racism is troubling. That they evidence the persistence of the white savior complex in American cinema is nauseating. That they do so at the expense of people who felt and continue to feel the brunt of racial bias is morally inexcusable.
But this has all been exhaustively and perceptively rendered already. What I found myself wondering was why there is such a disconnect in our American realities and how in 2011 this particular story can stir up such dissimilar emotions? Read the rest of this entry »
How Did a Small Jewish Sect Nearly Sweep a Nationwide Contest?
And What Can the Rest of Us Learn from Them?
Nearly two months ago Kohl’s Cares launched a $10,ooo,ooo “What would your school do with a half-million dollars?” contest. The company officially called it a celebration of 10 years of community giving and volunteer programs. Sounded good. But the lawyer in me has a thing for small print. The smaller the better.
» The contest was open to any public school, grades K thru 12, in the United States, and any not- for- profit private or charter school grades K thru 12.
» To win,a school had to finish among the top twenty vote getters on the Kohl”s Cares Facebook page.
» You or I or anybody we know 13 or older with an e-mail address and a Facebook account could’ve voted. Pre-teens aren’t allowed on Facebook.
» Eligible voters were alloted 20 votes and the freedom to use them however they pleased. Only one catch: up to five of those votes could be used on any one school. This raised an eyebrow. Seemed odd. I slowed down. There was more.
The top 20 eligible vote getting schools will be declared the potential contest winners.
What does “potential” mean?
Kohl’s Department Stores will provide funding up to $ 500,000 for each winning school.
Schools will receive funding needed to complete only the projects they have outlined in their project summary and budget overview paperwork.
The way I read it, “up to $500,000” can mean something totally different than “$500,000”. Meaning a lot less.
Over the two months of voting an interesting trend emerged: nearly all of the top vote getting schools were private and well-resourced. But they weren’t just private; they were religious. Of the final top twenty list — that is, as of this posting at 3 AM on September 3rd — eighteen were either Jewish (12) or Christian (6). In coinage terms, that’s up to $6,o00,000 of the $10,000,000 pot going to one religious group. Out of the twenty-one to twenty-five group, four were Jewish. Three of those were Chabad schools. That’s thirteen Chabad schools in the top twenty-five finishers in a nationwide contest.
Northridge, California’s Darby Elementary and Millbury, Ohio’s Lake High were the only public schools to finish in the top twenty. Why Northridge? I don’t know. What I do know is that Lake lost its building in a tornado early this summer. I saw pictures of the destruction. How could I not vote for them? What kind of person would I be if didn’t vote for the school that was destroyed by a tornado? I gave them the full five. And afterward, I felt beneficent; like I’d just done a good deed. Knowing I wouldn’t get any tangible reward made it even better. It felt an act of pure generosity. It occurred to me then that this must be how philanthropists feel. They give out money to whoever they feel like giving it out to. I think that was part of the contest’s allure was the sense of power it bestowed upon voters. We are a nation, if not a world, obsessed with voting. We love to share our opinions, the more so when we have the power to do some good. The stakes were real. People’s lives were going to be affected. Do you choose the school that wants a new swimming pool? The school that needs a sewer system upgrade? The school that was destroyed in a fire? Every school in America had a compelling case. Then they all started to run together and I became a snob about. I found myself sifting through gut wrenching vote pleas like the junk mail in my inbox until I found the one that moved me. Something didn’t feel right about that.
But that’s a different story.
The story that caught my attention is that five of the top ten and ten of the top twenty finishers are affiliated with an Hasidic branch of the Jewish faith called Chabad-Lubavitch. On its headquarters’ website, Chabad is described as “a philosophy, a movement, and an organization,” and “the most dynamic force in Jewish life today.” Based in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn,New York today, “Lubavitchers”, or “Chabadniks” originated in Russia 25o years ago. After the movement swept through Russia, it spread through surrounding countries, providing “scholars with answers that eluded them and simple farmers with a love that had been denied them.” The movement’s original aim was to break down social barriers between Jews of different classes by revealing the “oneness unique to Jewish people.” Today, the Chabad global network of institutions extends all over the developed world. However, there are only (thought to be) around 200,000 total adherents.
Which makes the nearly 1,500,000 votes the top ten finishers garnered in just two months even more impressive. Exactly how did the Chabad network manage to pull this off?
I have some theories.
Theory #1: They wanted it more. The votes speak for themselves. The top vote getter, Los Angeles’ Cheder Menacham, has all of 22o students but gathered more than a 130,000 votes. Long Island’s Silverstein Hebrew Academy, the seventh overall vote getter, has a whopping 110 students but brought 127,000 votes. How do you explain this if not by desire and hunger?
Theory #2: They were organized. Although the contest rules prohibit winners from using the funds or religious purposes, there is no rule against using the religion-based network to vote for winners. Moreover, the voting process lent itself to real-time viewing. People in the network could see which Chabad schools showed promise early on and allocate their votes to the most effective end. In effect, each school had a tryout before either being cut or making the squad.
Theory #3: They were committed. It’s one thing to jump out to an early lead or to rally down the stretch; it’s something else to sustain momentum for two months. You would think that just given the modest number of Lubavitchers around the globe, other more populous groups would catch up and even surpass them. I watched the voting closely. It didn’t happen. Those in the network used their votes to support one another.
While Chabad-Lubavitch’s main Facebook page has more than 13,000 fans and an additional 3,000 onTwitter, the combined social media network (or as Facebook refers to it, social graph) of local Chabad emissaries [people who spread the philosophy and grow the movement] carries much more.
Theory #5: They were creative. One school raffled off free iPads on a weekly basis starting in early August. Several schools made Youtube videos:
Others loaded banner ads on online Jewish web sites:
Blogger Jacob Berkman wrote about one school’s really creative tactics on his Fundamentalist blog:
In a In Charlotte, N.C., Chabad’s 220-student Charlotte Jewish Day School used an inside-out approach to garner 45,000 votes by Tuesday, earning it 14th place in the Kohl’s challenge, according to spokesman Rabbi Bentzion Groner, director of the Friendship Circle of North Carolina.
The elementary school has a relatively small base, but it tapped into alumni now in their teens to hold a vote-a-thon. The school, which was started in a basement in 1984 with just a couple of students, enlisted 50 teenagers to bring their laptops to the school, where they spent an afternoon reaching out online to as many of their friends as they could, soliciting votes one by one. And of course the school invited three television stations and the local newspaper in to check out the event.
My hat goes off to all of them.
Now, I know a few of you reading this may think I’m being naive here by not mentioning other obvious factors, so I will:
» The better access and resources argument. Certainly, we can make the argument that low income people don’t have access to computers and that often community members aren’t connected to their neighborhood schools or that the smaller, more concentrated Chabad communities had an advantage because of their cohesion. The thing is, access and resources didn’t stop people from hitting up Obama rallies back in 2007 and 2008. People wanted Obama to win and went out to support him. This was even easier. You didn’t even have to go out. All you had to do was press a button a few times. It was that simple
» The school equity and social justice argument. Simply stated, not one single school that primarily serves students of color and low-income students made the top 20. Mark Federman, the principal at East Side Community High School in downtown Manhattan and a dear friend of mine made this argument in an appeal he sent out to school supporters several days ago:
We are the only school in the top 40 that primarily serves students of color. (Our school is 55% Latino, 35% African-American, 5% Asian and 5% White) and we are the only Title I school (a school where vast majority of students live below the poverty line) in the top 40. We are the only NYC neighborhood public school in the running and one of only a few public schools nationwide. We are at an extreme disadvantage in this competition because almost all of the top schools are private and/or wealthy parochial schools that are getting votes using tremendous sums of money and resources we do not have.
This is not just a contest. It is an issue of equity and social justice.
To draw interest to East Side Mark slept in a tent outside of the school for several days, wrote letters to supporters, granted interviews and appeared on radio. His efforts paid off. East Side finished just outside of the top thirty. Mark did everything in his power to raise awareness and generate support. I admire him for this. As a teacher at East Side I witnessed his commitment to students, families, staff and the community up close. He’s one of the most committed leaders I’ve ever been around. East Side could’ve done transformative things with the money. East Side will continue to do transformative things without it. As for the point Mark raised, it’s a valid one. The Jewish School of the Arts, one of the top vote getters and a Chabad institution, is located in affluent Palm Beach, Florida. Rabbi Shlomo Ezagui describes the school as one that offers “high-tech, high quality education” in a “beautiful, 11,000-square-foot building, newly renovated with a brand new playground and gymnasium.” One would hope that a school that already boasts such abundance would want to spread the prosperity around a bit.
Or is that just me being an idealist again?
Nevertheless, I don’t want to see social justice being used as a crutch or an excuse. Making this as a social justice issue begs more difficult to answer questions. Which children are more deserving? Who decides? What are the standards? Ultimately, this was a contest and to win people had to vote. Not enough people voted for schools serving students of color and low-income students. That may or may not be a social justice and equity issue. It may just be a geographical issue–it’s easier to rally around the only school in town; East Side isn’t even the only school in its building. It is definitely an issue of organization; an issue of commitment, an issue of creativity, an issue of savvy, and sheer desire. Five-hundred grand was on the line. The Lubavitchers found a way to get more than half of it.
So what lessons have we learned from this contest?
1. Strategize and mobilize early. Get your story out there. Build your brand. Be creative. Be proactive. Be vigilant.
2. When it comes to getting things done, the number of Facebook friends you have doesn’t matter … unless they are active and aware.
3. Glenn Beck might have a point, after all. Two days before his controversial “Restoring Honor” event, Beck told his radio audience:
People will gather and see this. And hopefully, we will mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. At least we will begin to look at those things, start to maybe challenge that we haven’t valued those things high enough — honesty, integrity, merit, personal responsibility, family and God.
If nothing else, the Lubavitchers’ commitment to ensuring the success of their young people should show the rest of us how sacred our young people are.
4. Al Sharpton dropped the ball. As the final week of the voting began, Al Sharpton was gearing up for a “Restoring the Dream” rally to combat Beck’ by launching an online petition denouncing Beck’s appropriation of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech that garnered 30,000 votes in two days. Sharpton later led a rally and march that allegedly drew 30,000 supporters. At the rally, one speaker after another got on stage and made crowd-stirring but ultimately redundant tirades against Beck. NAACP President Ben Jealous said “we have to revitalize jobs and schools”; Jaime Contreras, president of SEIU-32BJ, said those gathered at the Mall with Beck “represent angry white people and hate-mongering” ; Avis Jones DeWeever, executive director of the National Council of Negro Women, told onlookers not to “let anyone tell you that they have the right to take their country back.” She said, “It’s our country, too. We will reclaim the dream. It was ours from the beginning.” A steady stream of speakers also bemoaned the persistent societal inequities facing black people. It took Education Secretary, Arnie Duncan, to address the salient issue: “We have to stop making excuses … We’ve been too satisfied with second-class schools.” When the speaking was all done, the attendees did what they always do–marched.
When I checked Sharpton’s National Action Network web site the day after the rally, all I saw was one picture of Sharpton after another. I wasn’t surprised. But I was disappointed. If he could get 30,000 people to sign a petition, he could’ve chosen a handful of schools across the nation and encouraged the same supporters to vote for them. It would have been that simple.
5. Too many of us missed the boat this go round. The other day I was speaking with a public school administrator here in New York about the contest. She didn’t know anything about it. She’d never even heard of it. But she suggested something that gave me pause. Money isn’t always the problem or the solution at public schools. Often, it’s money management. Schools, she said to me, are incredible perpetrators of waste.
6. Kohl’s got way more than $10,000,000 worth of publicity and good will. As someone who can say with confidence he’s never stepped foot in one of their 1000+ stores nationwide (and didn’t even know what they sold), I now know. This year the company added nine stores in six states – Colorado, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania – and plans to open a total of approximately 30 new stores before the year ends. It also announced remodeling plan for 85 stores this year, a 66 percent increase from 2009. For a company that is aggressively expanding its business and upgrading its image, this kind of positive publicity is priceless. The Kohl’s millions will now know will be associated with positive values.
That being said, I will suggest this to Kohl’s brass: If you plan on giving this much money away in the future, come up with a better strategy for doing so. At a certain point, basing the distribution of this much money on what is ostensibly a glorified popularity contest is plain irresponsible.
That is, unless, by awarding participants 20 votes you were aiming for a particularly lopsided outcome in the first place. I won’t go there, though
7. Facebook users beware. Our information is officially for sale.
The first thought that came to my mind when I heard about the Sean Bell shooting back in November of 2006 was, not again. My second thought, there must be more to the story. No way a mere seven years after the 41 shots aimed and fired at Amadou Diallo provoked citywide uproar were 50 bullets (paid for, once again, with taxpayer money) going to be aimed and fired into the body of another innocent black man. Not in the new and improved, post-Guiliani New York. The previous mayor was, after all, the purported embodiment of a kind of smug indifference to black and brown life that, for all intents and purposes, created a climate in which one could say it was “open season” on black and brown males with a straight face. Comfortable with my initial impulses, I deliberately, and perhaps willfully, disregarded any news about the trial, including the ruling and the ensuing protests.
Why, especially since I am a black man who works and lives in New York City with youth of color, cares deeply enough about social justice to teach and write about it, has himself had his share of run-ins with law enforcement, and is still fairly young, was I not among the loudest voices in support of justice for Sean Bell? The answer lies in the question itself. It is precisely because of all the things that I am, do, believe and have been through, that I have, up to now, recused myself from commenting on or writing about the case.
Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. For me, participating in an uproar over Sean Bell with the expectation that a collective cry of outrage would register in the halls of justice was a doomed enterprise. But it was the automatic comparison people made (and continue to make) between Bell and Diallo that really irritated me. It was, in my opinion, like setting a dinner table when you know good and well that the cupboards are bare.
Sean Bell was not Amadou Diallo. He was not reaching for his wallet on an otherwise empty, unassuming street when he was sprayed with bullets. He was leaving one of the seediest strip clubs in New York City at 4 o’clock in the morning. Is that a crime? No. Is it a significant detail that should be taken into consideration? Absolutely. Not because it suggests Bell or his entourage had a proclivity for crime but because the club itself was a known criminal hang out. Is it sad that this was the night before Bell’s marriage? Yes. Is it relevant to whether the offending officers were guilty or not? No.
The danger in comparing Bell to Diallo is (at least) six fold. First, it discourages and frustrates any meaningful and constructive dialogue about the facts of the night of the shooting, and how the law was applied to those facts to reach this particular decision. Second, it conflates completely distinct situations into a one-size-fits-all “fate of the black male” narrative, in turn perpetuating dangerous myths about the value of black life. Third, it reinforces a victim mentality among black people. Fourth, it reinforces unwarranted feelings of shame and guilt among whites. Fifth, it abstracts the “police” into an amorphous body of untrustworthy hyper-violent thugs out to get people of color. Finally, it alienates anyone, like myself, who has an opinion that deviates from the norm.
•1. Encouraging meaningful and constructive dialogue about the law and its application.
Under our rule of law, the prosecution must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. “Beyond a reasonable doubt” means that a “reasonable” person would be convinced based on evidence that the accused is guilty. It is not absolute certainty but it is also not mere uncertainty. This burden of proof exists to protect both jurors and the accused. Is it foolproof? No. Is it a tremendous advancement over trial by fire or by combat? Without a doubt. In the Bell case, the prosecution’s job was to prove that a “reasonable” police officer in a similar situation would not have opened fire on Bell’s car. The presumption, therefore, is that the cops were justified (re: innocent until proven guilty). In the judge’s opinion, the prosecution failed to prove that the officers were not unjustified. (This is not the same thing as saying the cops were justified.) The judge came to this conclusion based on what he called “significant inconsistencies” in the testimony of key prosecution witnesses. Chief among the factors Judge Arthur Cooperman listed as influencing his decision were:
1. Prior inconsistent statements by witnesses
2. Inconsistencies in testimony among prosecution witnesses
3. Criminal Convictions
4. Demeanor on the witness stand of witnesses
5. Motive witnesses may have had to lie and the effect on truthfulness. (key witnesses had already filed a civil suit against the NYPD for $50,000,000 and were receiving payments from Al Sharpton).
Here is where we as a community could use the trial as a teaching tool: Without sugar-coating it, and taking into consideration the judicial system’s record of unequal treatment toward blacks and other people of color, Sean Bell’s friends blew the trial. Leaving aside the motive key witnesses may have had for the moment, the conflicting stories some offered, the criminal records others carried, and the manner in which certain key witnesses conducted themselves on the witness stand all speak directly to the lack of respect, lack of honesty and contempt for authority we as a community are trying to address day in and day out. In a perfect world, maybe prior criminal records would not matter; in our flawed world they do. In a perfect world, maybe a witness’s “demeanor” should not taint the way a judge or jury perceives their testimony; in our prejudiced world, it does. On the other hand, in a perfect world I hope that consistency of testimony always counts. As for the witnesses who filed a $50,000,000 civil law suit several months before the criminal trial even began, I can only scratch my head and wonder who was advising them.
Race and culture impact our judicial system. Anyone who denies as much at this stage of the game probably isn’t worth trying to convince otherwise. However, we do a disservice to the next generation when we tell them the justice system failed Sean Bell because he was black without talking about the company he kept. It doesn’t do any good to preach about the value of respect and honesty when we ignore the role those character traits (or their shortage) played in the outcome of the trial. We need to tell our students that the company Sean Bell chose to keep brought him down in the end. They didn’t pull the trigger and I have no doubt that they loved him, but when they could have risen to his aide in a court of law, their past baggage weighed them down. By addressing all of these issues we not only talk about personal responsibility and integrity, but about the way the law works.
•2. Resisting the Myth of the Meaninglessness of Black Male Lives
The Diallo-Bell association, though attractive and momentum building, makes it seem as though black men are just being randomly gunned down in New York City. Speaking as a black man who has had his share of police firearms pointed his way in his 33 years, I steadfastly repudiate this gloomy fate. I refuse to accept premature death as a natural life process. I reject those who say such things like, “Black male lives are meaningless in America.” These false notions only perpetuate a sickness I see in too many young black men (and women) on a daily basis. That their lives are expendable; that they aren’t going to live long anyway; that death (along with prison, poverty, disease and job discrimination) is lurking around the corner. This kind of thinking only feeds a pessimistic world view that we as a community are fighting to put to rest. It also removes any and all responsibility young people have in their encounters with police. They have choices. They always have choices. But when we tell them that they’re no better than target practice for police pistols, we’re in effect telling them that they have no control, no choice. We can teach them to kill cops with kindness whenever their paths cross; to be polite; to even smile-whatever it takes to allow them feel like they are in control. Whatever it takes to live.
3. Resisting the Black Victimhood Trap
There is also a deeper, broader and more historically rooted problem with turning Sean Bell into another martyr: it encourages black people to fall back into a mode of reactionary protest that is no longer an effective tool for social engagement or change. In this day and age the civil rights style protest – the march, the sit-in, the boycott, the picket – tends to reinforce the feelings of victimization that prompted the protest in the first place. More often than not, the modern protest lacks a clear objective and can simply be ignored by the media (MLK’s nonviolence was always aimed at gaining global sympathy via the media) without consequence. At best it allows people to grieve publicly, which is important. At worst, though, it allows people to mistake “symbolic” action (marching for a couple of hours, boycotting for a day) for “real” action that requires prolonged commitment to social justice or, worse, to wind up feeling as though social activism is a waste of time when nothing changes after the protest ends. A constructive solution means coming up with a goal-oriented educational and/or advocacy campaign, organizing it and implementing it, which, to be sure, I’ve seen in pockets.
4. Resisting the White Savior/Victimhood Trap
Black people weren’t the only victims of the Bell ruling. White people who care deeply and passionately about social justice were placed in a winless situation as well. In a piece posted on the Huffington Post, a well-intentioned college professor discussed the verdict in her class. After listening to her students (some of whom had never even heard of Sean Bell) discuss the case, she closed the class with the following,
I decided to… test for racism in the Sean Bell case. “Ok, class,” I said, “I have a question for you: would the Bell verdict have come down the same way if the victim of the shooting had been a 23-year old white man?”
The chorus swelled up. “Hell no,” some of them yelled.
And then, Nadine, who today was wearing her hair neatly corn rowed, made the final statement.
“If it had been a white man, the cops wouldn’t have gone after him in the first place,” she said, “and then none of this ever would have happened.”
Amen, Nadine.
Amen.
Huh?! What?! Never in the piece does the professor mention to her class that two of the cops were black or that there is such thing as a reasonable doubt standard or burden of proof or that the Bell case was rife with faulty witnesses. Never. What she does mention, at the very beginning no less, is the Amadou Diallo case. This is exactly the kind of over-simplified politically correct conversation passing for “real talk” that keeps us from confronting race and justice in a way that works towards solutions. This professor reiterates a few limp platitudes and a reputable media outlet passes it off as meaningful commentary. It’s just not as simple as black and white. As well-meaning as the professor was, she only succeeded in reinforcing two dangerous ideas to her class (which was half white and half black). One, white life is more valuable than black life. Two, the average white American has some special purchase to power that black people don’t have and can therefore “save” black Americans by being less racist. Ultimately, it is as important for white people not to buy into the hype of their existential importance as it is for black people not to buy into the hype of their existential insignificance.
White Americans who’ve been raised in the post-civil rights era in particular have learned to walk a fine line when it comes to talking about issues involving race. Some choose to avoid race issues altogether. Some, rather than risk appearing racist in public, quietly take their cues from acknowledged black media personalities like Shelby Steele and John McWorther. Others overcompensate by taking “anti-racism” to such an extreme that black people become either blameless victims or unimpeachable race saviors. None of these approaches removes the stain of white victimhood (i.e. a sense of powerlessness, due to our society’s racist past and politically correct present, with regard to open and candid discussions about prejudice).
5. Mending the Rift between Black and Brown Males and Cops
By linking Sean Bell with Diallo (and others), we only lend credence to the perception – declarations of all officers not being crooked notwithstanding – that the police are indeed out to get young black men. Without arguing whether this is in fact the case, it without questions exacerbates the tensions between young black men and the police by fueling the distrust and animosity within both groups. There is a sense among too many young black men that there is something courageous and justified about standing up to the cops. Courageous is standing up for one’s rights, not simply bucking authority. There is a difference between the two. It’s imperative that we take the time to teach our students the difference. It’s not enough anymore to tell them they have rights or to even hand them a booklet. We need to begin simulating actual police encounters in school. This way if and when one does occur, our students (and the bystanders who often provoke and stoke the unrest) have the tools to diffuse rather than escalate the situation.
6. Inviting Dissenting Opinions
I know I’m not the only one out here who has felt like his opinion had no place in the “Justice for Bell” discussion. Out of respect for the family and the freshness of the wound, I kept my opinions close. I can no longer do that in good faith. There is an opportunity here to move the conversation in a different direction, to educate and challenge, but it won’t get there on its own. We have to be willing to take it there. We can say we invite all opinions to the table, but as long as people don’t feel those opinions will be supported rest assured they won’t be uttered publicly.
In the coming years the Bell trial will undoubtedly become a widely studied case in law schools. They’ll examine the testimony and the applicable law. They’ll take the judge’s ruling apart and put it back together again. Law journals will publish articles about the case. It will be cited in cases yet to come. Middle and high schools have the same opportunity to use the Sean Bell verdict and the passions it incited to challenge students, families and professionals who work with them to move beyond black and white clichés while it is still fresh on our minds. Otherwise, the Sean Bell shooting will calcify into yet another in a series of black male tragedies that are only thawed to remind us of how far we haven’t come.
Jesse Jackson’s rise, Sharpe James’s fall and the end of the black folk hero
According to biographer Marshall Frady, Jesse Jackson’s rise to preeminence following the assassination of Dr. King didn’t just happen. It was set into motion even before King’s death when Jackson attached himself to King and the SCLC while he was still a divinity student. King saw something powerful and troubling in Jackson. He was brilliantly gifted with something magical, some creative magnetism – a vision and the audacity to evoke it – that drew people in. But once he had someone, King and others noted, he sucked them dry with his compulsive need for attention and adulation-patronage. Frady traces Jesse’s obsessive roots to his childhood, repeatedly referring to him as having grown up an “illegitimate child” living under “another man’s roof.” In turn, he attributes Jesse’s clinging to Dr. King, his hanging off his every word, to his search for affirmation from a father figure. In fact, Frady’s biography is very nearly a psychoanalytic study; it certainly isn’t an intimate portrait. At best it’s a story of a man (perhaps not even that) whose ego was so unrelenting in its pursuit of the affirmation it did not receive early on in life that it pushed beyond the boundaries of conventionality, taboo and appropriateness, and in doing so eclipsed the fear and self-doubt that stands in the way of so many of our aspirations. Hence, the duality. Jesse is both folk hero and false prophet; both man of the people and poverty pimp.
As universally reviled as Al Sharpton supposedly is, we can’t seem to get enough of him. In the last two months ‘Reverend Al’ has been in the news non-stop. Two months ago a pair of scientists discovered a link between his slave ancestors and Strom Thurmond’s slave-holding forebears. A month ago he was accused of waging a political turf-war with Barack Obama. Three weeks ago he stood astride Sean Bell’s family at press conferences following the indictment of the three officers accused of murder. Two weeks ago he and Russell Simmons called for yet another end to the violence in the hip-hop community. Last week he became synonymous with the Imus affair after the he grilled the shock jock/serious journalist on his satellite radio program. This past Friday Bill Maher had the Reverend on his popular weekly news program to discuss the scandal. Even the HNIC Report became a hot source for Sharpton news. For more than a week nearly 100 unique visitors per day read a three-week old piece on Sharpton and Obama that had gone unnoticed initially.
The flood of attention on Reverend Sharpton got me thinking: How has this man managed to remain in the public eye for so long?
This isn’t the first time Rutgers basketball has found itself at the center of a racially charged controversy. Just four months prior to C. Vivian Stringer’s arrival on the Piscataway campus in the summer of 1995, the school’s African American student body was doing its best to rekindle the fire of the sixties generation. For weeks the campus became a hot-bed for political activity. Protests. Teach-ins. Fire alarms. Bogus bomb threats. A highway was taken over.
Before there were “good blacks” there were “model negroes.” And before there were “model negroes” there were Head Negroes In Charge. Though distinguishable, they are each part of a continuum, a tradition, that traces itself back to Frederick Douglass and is fully crystallized in Booker T. Washington. All three strains of the “acceptable” black are in conversation with one another. They borrow each other’s symbolic elements even as they put them to use – and are put to use – in their specific epoch to allay white America’s anxieties. Their emergences and particular characteristics are in large part dependent upon the contours of their counterpart— the “bad black,” the “black separatist” and “uppity nigger.” For example, Bayard Rustin once noted how, following Paul Robeson’s 1949 statement that blacks would not go to war against the Soviet Union because of it racial egalitarianism, the mainstream black leaders of the day – Mary McLeod Bethune, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Roy Wilkins and Walter White – successfully used Robeson to gain ground on the integration front. Even as they isolated and denounced him, Rustin noted,
[H]is “wild” statement helped to make their demands, by comparison, appear reasonable and even modest; his implied threat of future disorder made the passage of their “responsible, middle-of-the-road” program seem more urgently necessary. (Duberman, 345)
Did Al Sharpton Commit Murder? Or Has Obama Just Made Racism Okay Again?
March 19, 2007
the Hnic Report
“Now, it’s fair to ask, what is Sharpton really up to? What is his real objection to Obama? That Obama has white supporters? That Obama has become the first serious black presidential candidate in U.S. history? That he lacks the civil rights bona fides that Sharpton claims for himself? Or is the real problem that Obama’s biracial appeal has trumped Sharpton’s race card?”
“To say that Sharpton is jealous is about as obvious as saying that America’s not about to elect a black man who wears his hair conked. Why should the media again seek out Rev. Sharpton, a self-appointed leader, when it can call on Sen. Obama, the first competitive African-American presidential candidate? Why go to Sharpton to get a quick quip on how we’re losing the war on poverty, when you can go to top-tier candidate Obama for a substantial response on what he’d do about us losing the war in Iraq?”
– Monroe Anderson, The Chicago Sun-Times
“Listening to Al Sharpton rip into Barack Obama this week made me wonder: why is it that African American leaders so often feel compelled to give the back of their hand (to say nothing of the serrated edge of their tongue) to emerging black leaders? Is it jealousy? Ego? An unwillingness to give up power? Or is it some sort of political hazing ritual in which the upperclassmen mercilessly pummel the new pledges before letting them into the fraternity?”
– Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post
Ever since a pair of unnamed “black” sources from within the Democratic Party reported that Reverend Al Sharpton was jealous of Senator Barack Obama’s rocketing popularity in the New York Postlast week, the rest of the mainstream media world has piled on without even bothering to question the veracity of the statements. Not even one of the dozens of articles and editorials that have appeared in the press since the Post article was published have seriously considered who these unnamed sources are or what their interest in fueling a feud between Obama and Sharpton might be. The lopsided reaction – the automatic assumption that Sharpton is withholding his endorsement of Obama out of spite, that is – speaks to the level of contempt people privately and publically hold him in. One has to wonder: If it were it anyone other than Sharpton standing at the center of this controversy wouldn’t at least one journalist have stepped back and looked at the bigger picture before jumping into the fray? As it stands, Sharpton is being skewered by the press, and no one seems to even care why he’s chosen to withhold his endorsement, let alone taken his decisions seriously, Ms. Huffington’s faint defense of Sharpton’s right to dissent notwithstanding.
The crux of this writer’s objection to the criticism being lobbed at Sharpton – and to be clear, I am not a Sharptonite – is the personal animus echoing in every single one of them. That Sharpton is not being attacked as a political figure, but as a human being is troubling. For example, the Post article, which happens to be the site’s most e-mailed article at the moment, never offers a single basis for Sharpton’s jealousy that is not grounded in a personal (rather than a political) conflict between Obama and Sharpton. Instead of dealing with the valid political differences the two men may have, the writer– Fred Dicker– chooses to focus on the personal differences between Sharpton and Obama in order to corroborate the opinions of his unnamed sources. Because Sharpton only has a high school education and Obama is a Harvard Law graduate, Sharpton must be jealous of him. After all why wouldn’t he be? Obama being touted as a “transcendent candidate” simply has to burn Sharpton up inside. Aside from rehashing the hackneyed– and I hate to do this– ‘house slave vs. field slave’ conflict, the writer also makes a rhetorical rather than a persuasive argument to prove his point. Put differently, it reaffirms what people already want to believe about Sharpton without providing any substantive basis for believing anything whatsoever. The real icing on the cake, however, is Dicker’s back-handed compliment. Sharpton, according to Dicker, is “street smart” (read: ‘book dumb’). Obama, on the other hand, is deemed “polished” primarily because he went to the nation’s leading finishing schools, and, as Senator Biden and others have pointed out is so “articulate.” These most recent Sharpton attacks reveal a couple of important points that the establishment continues to overlook or disregard. For one thing, the Sharpton’s of the world continue to have legitimacy within their communities in part because of incendiary assaults on their character from the mainstream press. Black folks resent the paternalistic, know-it-all attitude exuded in the press when it comes to evaluating their leaders, anointed or not. In D.C. they resented Marion Barry being taken down by the FBI so they re-elected him after he was released from prison. In Newark they resented Cory Booker being thrust upon them by outside forces, so they re-elected Sharpe James for a fifth term. When will America get it: black folks don’t like to be told who to follow.
The second point is this: all of the articles utilized Obama to mask personal attacks on Sharpton. More specifically, they all reflected a liberal minded belief that as long as they sing Obama’s praises, whatever they say about Sharpton, no matter how outrageous or unfair or plain mean, can’t possibly be interpreted as racist. This is the danger of Obama. He makes it okay for white people to feel comfortable criticizing Sharpton any which way they please. Forgotten are Sharpton’s surprisingly strong (and articulate!) performances in the debates leading up to the ‘04 election; forgotten is the ‘97 Mayoral race that galvanized hundreds of thousands, not all of them black, to the polls; forgotten is his commitment to publicizing issues like police brutality that the Guiliani administration would’ve just as well swept under the rug; forgotten is his outspoken stance on Vieques. Forgotten are all of the positive contributions to public discourse he has made in the name of people of color. By no means has Sharpton always been right on, but no one can not argue that he hasn’t been right there.
All of that being said, let’s just pretend that, for the sake of argument, Sharpton isn’t solely motivated by jealousy and ego, but by real (as in sincere and legitimate) political ambivalence. What if he’s not just trying to win attention, but struggling to decide where he stands on an election as important as any presidential race since 1861 when Lincoln was elected, setting off a firestorm of secessions. Consider the situation: If Sharpton does have the clout to deliver black votes through his endorsement of a presidential candidate, then isn’t it his ethical responsibility to make certain he does not lead voters down the Primrose Path? Doesn’t he owe it to those who follow him to look closely at the issues and to ask searching questions and to ultimately make a choice that will produce the most felicitous outcome for his followers? If he chooses to endorse Clinton and Obama wins, where does that leave him? If he chooses to endorse Obama and Clinton wins the nomination and the election thereafter, where does that leave him and the so-called black community he represents? These are serious questions that deserve serious consideration.
Consider, as well, the history of Sharpton’s relationship with Senator Clinton. Their political alliance began in 1999 when the then-First Lady invited Sharpton to the White House to celebrate the New York Yankees’ World Series victory. Mrs. Clinton had not yet announced her candidacy for the Senate, but it was clear that by inviting Sharpton, who many doubted had ever been to a Yankee game, she was setting the stage for her run by opening lines of communication with Sharpton. In 2000, with Sharpton by her side, Candidate Clinton spoke at his Harlem church on Martin Luther King’s birthday. In 2006, again with Sharpton by her side, Clinto again took the podium at Canaan Baptist Church on MLK’s birthday. Theirs is an unlikely and tense alliance, but it has survived for seven years and continues to remain at least superficially in tact. Wouldn’t, shouldn’t, the thought of turning his back on a near decade long alliance in favor of a nascent candidate with whom he has no political history give him pause, cause him to think long and hard before choosing? Doesn’t that count in his favor as an act of political courage and integrity?
In thinking about the avalanche of criticism that has piled on to Sharpton one last question comes to mind. Where was this outpouring of ire when Congressmen Charles Rangel, one of the most powerful and vocal leaders in black America, avowed his support for Senator Clinton a few weeks ago? On a televised Fox News program Rangel said, “Senator Clinton probably will be the favorite daughter of New York state. I am the dean of the New York state Democratic delegation, and so there’s no question that we will be coordinating a campaign for Sen. Clinton.” Given that New York is Sharpton’s base of operations and home state too, does he not have an obligation to endorse Clinton for the same reason as Rangel? Furthermore, doesn’t the lack of uproar about Rangel’s choice speak directly to Sharpton’s status as a political lightning rod with national clout as well as contradict any assertion of Sharpton’s impending irrelevance?
We have to be careful to ask ourselves what’s really at the heart of the backlash against Sharpton. Is it just that his demands for clarity concerning Senator Obama’s commitment to civil rights issues – something at least one prominent pro-Israel organization has done on the heels of Obama’s remarks regarding Palestine – appears disingenuous? Or is it that after two decades of captivity aboard Sharpton’s ship of divisive politics, demagoguery and guilt fueled demands, people think they see land on the horizon and are brazenly plotting a mutiny? If so, one can only hope that the land to which we’re all intent on swimming doesn’t turn out to be yet another mirage.
we can’t seem to get enough of him. In the last two months ‘Reverend Al’ has been in the news non-stop. Two months ago a pair of scientists discovered a link between his slave ancestors and Strom Thurmond’s slave-holding forebears. A month ago he was accused of waging a political turf-war with Barack Obama. Three weeks ago he stood astride Sean Bell’s family at press conferences following the indictment of the three officers accused of murder. Two weeks ago he and Russell Simmons called for yet another end to the violence in the hip-hop community. Last week he became synonymous with the Imus affair after the he grilled the shock jock/serious journalist on his satellite radio program. This past Friday Bill Maher had the Reverend on his popular weekly news program to discuss the scandal. Even the HNIC Report became a hot source for Sharpton news. For more than a week nearly 100 unique visitors per day read a three-week old piece on Sharpton and Obama that had gone unnoticed initially.
The HNIC Report 