It seems like a different moment in history, but the eloquent speech offered by Barack Obama on racism in the United States and the insidious ways in which it spreads its poison was just a little over a month ago.
But here we are again, discussing the political impact of his association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, pastor of the church he attended for nearly two decades, discussing the harsher aspects of Wright’s public comments and ignoring the truth that lies buried at the bottom of Wright’s apparent narcissism.
Consider the differing ways in which blacks and whites are viewing the Wright controversy, from MSNBC:
Black voters, in particular, urge Obama to rise above campaign attacks and dustups, saying he is not responsible for what Wright says. Many white voters say they were deeply troubled and baffled by Obama’s association with Wright, even before the preacher reiterated some of his most incendiary comments on Monday.
MSNBC — a mainstream news outlet that tends to follow the conventional wisdom — seemed to be at odds with itself in explaining the disparity. On the one hand, it calls it a “fundamental disagreement about Obama’s strengths and weaknesses in his battle against Hillary Rodham Clinton.” On the other, it offers this:
In interview after interview, black and white Democrats seemed to talk past each other on the issue of religion and campaigns, even though all said they deeply dislike President Bush and want a change in Washington.
“Obama is not responsible for what his preacher says,” said Copeland Richard, of Knightdale, who attended the Chapel Hill rally. “As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t have to answer that,” said Richard, 66, who is black. “He’s above that, he’s dignified.”
The differences dismay many North Carolina Democratic officials, who saw the excitement over the Obama-Clinton contest as virtually unprecedented, possibly leading to huge gains for the party in November.
“I see a permanent fissure developing now” between black and white Democrats, said state Rep. Dan Blue, of Raleigh, who was North Carolina’s first black House speaker.
With the Wright controversy hot again, and former President Clinton recently saying Obama’s campaign “played the race card” against him, Blue said a great opportunity may turn to tragedy.
“I don’t know how you repair it,” he said in an interview Tuesday.
The Associated Press mined some of the same ground:
The issue threatens the multiracial coalition that is crucial to Obama’s hopes of becoming the first black president, and it has highlighted a gulf between white and black Americans on matters of church and religion. But interviews with more than two dozen Indiana and North Carolina voters Wednesday suggested Obama may have made the best of a bad situation, even if belatedly.
While many white voters were shocked to hear a minister curse America and promote conspiracy theories from the pulpit, some accepted Obama’s argument that he should not be blamed for his former pastor’s words. Many black voters, meanwhile, were far more familiar with Wright’s style of preaching — whether or not they agree with it — and believe the issue will not cripple Obama’s campaign.
Many white voters said the Wright controversy was not important, but “some white voters take a sterner view of the controversy.”
Betsy Lipsky of Raleigh, N.C., said she was deeply troubled by Wright’s remarks and could not understand why Obama stayed in the Chicago church from which the minister recently retired. Lipsky strongly supports Clinton but said she would reluctantly vote for Obama in November if he is the nominee. GOP candidate John McCain “frightens me,” she said, because he would continue Bush administration policies she abhors.
That, most likely is the silver lining for Democrats, but the different languages being spoken on this issue mirror other controversies in the public eye — such as the Sean Bell verdict in New York, in which police officers were acquitted of a fatal shooting of an unarmed man outside a nightclub.
This column by Lawrence Aaron in today’s Record of Hackensack offers an interesting take. Aaron outlines the ways in which police officers have an advantage over mostly minority victims when excessive force complaints are filed or litigated.
AN OFFICER from Clifton, Michael Oliver, had the most emotional reaction of the three New York City detectives acquitted Friday in the death of Sean Bell, a 23-year-old Queens man shot in the wee hours before his wedding. Oliver, who had been charged with the gravest offenses, broke down and cried.
Oliver had been through a tense 17 months since Bell died in a hail of police bullets. The case against him looked the worst. He was singled out as the source of nearly two-thirds of the 50 rounds police detectives fired at Bell and his friends as they left his bachelor party. Oliver fired a total of 31 rounds, 15 of them after he had reloaded his weapon.
No one should be surprised by the final verdict. The sad truth of American justice is that police officers rarely are convicted when they kill civilians. In a police shooting trial, the odds-on favorites are the cops.
The word justice has a hollow ring in this case — and in dozens of others that follow the same pattern. Police are infrequently charged. If they are charged, acquittal is the likely outcome.
Police tend to have some built-in advantages:
Rutgers Law School Professor Louis Raveson cites some factors that have ensured the process is weighted in favor of the police in almost every case. Police are like professional witnesses familiar with the courts, while less experienced civilians are learning as they go, Raveson said.
Also, police have time to “harmonize” their views so that there are no clashing accounts. They don’t have to make any official statements immediately after their involvement in an incident. Cooperman found in his ruling that key witnesses for the prosecution had told slightly different versions of the story to the grand jury.
Raveson said law enforcement tends to have more credibility with a judge not only because of frequent interaction, but also because police are perceived to be doing a heroic job that puts them in death’s path. That image is hard to challenge.
Race is not the controlling factor in these cases. But it is a factor and it does color the reaction of those watching from the outside. The black community was angered by the Bell verdict and critical of the police, while the white community — well, there has been little written in the New York papers about the white community’s reaction. Perhaps that is a commentary in and of itself.
The world is changing, though, as the general reaction to the Bell shooting shows — most people saw the shooting as excessive, even if there was disagreement over motivation. And while former Newark Mayor Sharpe James had supporters who pointed to racism as the reason for his fall from power, there were far more in predominately black Newark who were tired of James’ abuse of the system. Whatever good he had done for his community, in the end he was nothing more than a corrupt pol, no different than John Lynch or any of the other corrupt pols that make New Jersey politics the cesspool that it is.
I’m hopeful that these changes are happening more quickly than my gut tells me they are, that we won’t witness a Doug Wilder effect (or Tom Bradley or David Dinkins), a phenomenon in which a black politician does well in pre-election polling but falls short. The theory is that white poll respondents are unwilling to look racist to pollsters, so they say they are willing to vote for the black candidate. When they walk into the voting booth, however, they are free to let their racism guide their selection.
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Hank Kalet 