Days of Grace (25 page)

In many ways I am philosophically closest to Young; our temperaments also seem almost to mesh. An ordained minister, Young is a reconciler rather than a divider of persons; he is pragmatic in a way that apparently involves no compromise of principle. True pragmatism, I believe, takes into account the moral consequences of an action. If the action leads to immorality, then one has not been genuinely pragmatic, merely opportunistic. And yet one must be able to act. Speaking about the need to make decisions, Doug Wilder said to me once, “You have to be willing to pull the trigger. First you have to think that you are right, that what you are doing is morally defensible, that it is good for the people you wish to help. Then you have to be willing to pull the trigger. You have to act.”

The black electorate must also act. The habit of electing and reelecting demagogues and characters with dubious records, such as Marion Barry in Washington, D.C., is unfortunate. On this score, I thought John Lewis’s recent election in Georgia something of a watershed in African American political history—a small watershed, perhaps, but one nevertheless. Lewis defeated the favorite, Julian Bond, who was his opposite in almost every way. Light-skinned, handsome, and aristocratic in his bearing, Bond comes from a distinguished family; he is highly educated, politically sophisticated, and has a long personal history of activism. In 1968, at the national convention of the Democratic party, he was even nominated for the vice-presidency of the United States, before someone discovered that he was too young to qualify for the job. His honesty was unquestioned. Lewis was none of these things, except for his honesty and his record of activism; as a civil-rights worker, he had been beaten repeatedly. But he was perceived as morally above reproach, one of the masses and yet no demagogue; in addition, he was clearly responsive to the needs of both blacks and whites. Against the odds, he won the election. Much as I admire Bond, I thought the largely black electorate
showed wisdom in making its choice. We have not always chosen wisely.

I think of myself as being in some respects a “race man,” an expression that black Americans use to describe someone committed to his people and vigilant about racial injustice. Still, I am appalled by the level of irrationality in our community and especially by the complicity of some newspapers and radio stations in encouraging this excess. Irrationality certainly also exists among whites, but it seems to be fostered more readily within our community by people who should know better. Our suspicion of whites and hostility to them routinely go beyond the dictates of reason. When I read certain newspapers aimed at blacks, however, I sometimes wonder whether race is not abused to some extent as a subject by these weeklies, so inflammatory and irrational they can be. In the past presidential election, for example, certain papers repeatedly mauled Jesse Jackson for allegedly having “sold out” to Bill Clinton. In the first place, Jackson had been lukewarm in support of Clinton; in the second, only a short-sighted African American could fail to see that to win the election Clinton had to steer his campaign down the middle, to recapture many of the white Democrats who had defected to the Republicans. To the editors of such newspapers, however, this logic meant little; the opportunity to be divisive was there, and some seized it.

The same is true of the call-in radio shows on WLIB, a radio station that probably reaches more blacks in New York City than any other station. Many of my black middle-class friends refuse to listen to WLIB, or claim not to. They insist that what is spoken there is often unsubstantiated, reckless, and even racist. The comments of many of the callers, and even some of the hosts, indeed often seem irresponsible. Nevertheless, I know I have never turned off the station in anger or disgust. No matter how absurd the comments, I believe that whatever little effectiveness I have depends in large part on knowing what our people think. In addition, all is not confusion and discord, as some of my friends insist. In fact, I agree with much of what is said on
the station, either by callers or the hosts, on the subject of race. Above all, I sense the hurt and sorrow behind the wild accusations. These are people who suffer and have suffered. A radio station like WLIB is one of the few vents for their seething emotions, their frustrated thoughts and dreams. Still, I will not support racism or extremism, no matter what the source.

I look for responsible, intelligent African American political leaders. At one time, I had high hopes for the Reverend Jesse Jackson. In 1984, when he made his first run for the presidency, I even founded an organization called Athletes for Jesse Jackson. (To tell the truth, few athletes were for anyone but themselves, and fewer were for Jackson after dealing with his staff. One athlete, the football player Butch Woolfolk, had so much trouble getting a simple reimbursement for his expenses on a trip for Jackson that I finally gave him the money myself.) I was determined to support him all the way. The first iota of doubt came when Jackson began to claim that Martin Luther King, Jr., had died in his arms; people who were at the Memphis motel when King was shot told me that such a thing never happened. I began to wonder about someone who would exaggerate his relationship to King in order to enhance his stature as a leader. I also began to think that Jesse liked the limelight a little too much; I was irked by the fact that he almost never spoke to me in public without looking around to see to whom else he might want to talk. I was not flattered by this lack of focus.

When Jackson formed the Rainbow Coalition, several of us were asked to contribute $5,000 each. I was prepared to send the money, but I doubted that it would be wisely spent. What was Jesse Jackson actually going to do? What was his mission? After the 1988 election, I began to drift away. When he moved to Washington from Chicago, I assumed he would run for the mayoralty of the District of Columbia. To my disappointment, he didn’t. All I saw was an ineffectual maneuvering to stay out in front, to remain
the
black leader in America without having any executive
experience whatsoever, without once testing his ideas and abilities in the crucible of public office. I thought he was determined to monopolize the attention of the media so that no other black leader, such as Kurt Schmoke or Maynard Jackson, could ever rival his fame. Rather than develop a plan, he seemed restlessly to seek one photo opportunity after another.

Accordingly, his reputation has suffered in many circles. Talented, intelligent, and shrewd, he needs to decide on a few areas of involvement and focus on these, rather than try to be Minister Plenipotentiary from black America to the world. Like most of us, I still admire and like him; but he must settle down if he is ever going to be effective. If he does settle down, he could be an even greater force for social progress than he already is.

WHILE I THINK
that the concept of the “role model” is an indication of our instability as a people, I know that it is a valid concept in our culture, where failure is so much a part of our lives that anyone who succeeds is scrutinized for his or her secrets to success. Whether I like it or not, it seems clear that blacks who succeed have a special obligation to try to live exemplary lives. When someone like the entertainer Eddie Murphy appears to flaunt his children born out of wedlock, it probably appears to impressionable young people that the way to success is to turn one’s back on institutions such as marriage. In a special
Newsweek
investigation of the black male published a few years ago, many young men openly declared that they felt a strong obligation to have as many children as possible, but no obligation whatsoever to these children or their mothers. Behavior by celebrities that reinforces such thinking is unfortunate. When Vice President Dan Quayle spoke out against unmarried single women having children, he did so by criticizing the television comedy series “Murphy Brown.” I believed that he was right in pointing to the potential negative impact of television images of fatherless children (although we must always respect the freedom of expression); he simply
picked a poor example in attacking the fictional character Murphy Brown.

I am also appalled by the number of celebrities who become involved in crimes of one sort or another, but especially crimes involving sex. Of these, athletes are probably among the prime offenders, with Mike Tyson the most celebrated—although not necessarily the most delinquent. Statistics indicate that a high percentage of sexual crimes reported on American campuses involve college athletes. That a disproportionate number of these are blacks distresses me. I remember a sorrowful conversation some years ago with Julius Erving, once a basketball superstar but a man who even then set high standards of behavior for himself and met them. Erving had been so shocked at some words uttered by a promising young basketball player, Quintin Dailey, that we talked at length on the telephone about it. Responding to questions about the charge that he had sexually assaulted certain women, Dailey seemed to brush off the matter. “That’s all over now,” he reportedly said. “All I’m concerned about is getting back to basketball.” Julius and I both wondered how he apparently could turn his back on the severity of what had befallen those women and ignore the seriousness of the allegations against him. But we were dealing with a new generation, and the old morals and sense of discretion apparently no longer apply.

I do not think that every black athlete or entertainer has an obligation to thrust himself or herself into positions of leadership. However, our situation is increasingly desperate, and I admire those athletes and entertainers who consciously try to give something back to the people, if only by exemplary behavior. I admire former stars such as Julius Erving in basketball, or Lynn Swann in football, for what they have made of themselves. I am less happy with the demureness of someone like Michael Jordan, who is as popular as he is rich. While I would defend Jordan’s right to stay out of politics in general, I think that he made a mistake in declining to give any open support to Harvey Gantt,
the respected black politician who ran for the U.S. Senate in 1990 from Jordan’s home state of North Carolina. For me, the main point is not that Gantt and Jordan are both black; rather, it is that Gantt’s opponent, Jesse Helms, has a long history of supporting segregation, and the contest was close. For blacks across America, that Senate contest was the most important in decades. Instead, Jordan stuck to his apolitical position. “I don’t really know Gantt,” he said, in response to criticism of his silence. “Well, Michael,” I would have told him, “pick up the telephone and call him!” A few appearances with Gantt might well have made the difference. Instead, Helms returned to the Senate.

FEW ASPECTS OF
race relations in America have disturbed me as much as the enmity in certain quarters between blacks and Jews. The entire climate of black-Jewish relations has become stormy. Recently in New York City, with its large Jewish and black populations, a center of trouble has been the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, where Hasidic Jews of a particular sect live surrounded by blacks. This sect, law-abiding but exclusive and zealous, is hardly representative of Jewish culture as a whole. And many blacks who live near them are from the Caribbean, of hardworking immigrant stock but often without a fully informed understanding of Jews or of American race relations. Some prominent blacks have either expressed or silently encouraged anti-Jewish sentiment of varying degrees of seriousness. Jews and African Americans have had to deal with the bigotry preached against Jews by Louis Farrakhan in the name of the Nation of Islam, which has a documented history of hostility to Jewish culture, although its leaders often protest this charge.

I have no reason to feel anything but affection and respect for Jews as a people in the United States. A long time ago I came to the personal realization that of all the people who have helped me become a success in life, a disproportionately large percentage of them have been Jews. And as far as I know, I never sought them out to ask their help.
They took the initiative, and continue to do so. Whether or not they are assuaging certain guilty feelings is, to me, irrelevant.

When I was growing up in Richmond, Jews occupied a prominent and favored place in my life, and in my father’s life. Before and after he found his main job with the Department of Recreation of the city of Richmond, my father worked for a number of wealthy Richmond Jews. He worked for the Schwarzchilds, who owned a chain of jewelry stores in Virginia, and the Thalhimers, who owned a chain of department stores. My father also worked for Daniel Schiller, the treasurer of Thalhimer’s, who lived within walking distance of Westwood, the black enclave in western Richmond. Apart from the people my father worked under at the Department of Recreation, almost all the white people with whom he regularly associated were Jewish. He found them fair and honorable. In my own life, the dominant Jewish figure was Mr. Paul, who owned a store by that name at the corner of Oak Road and Brook Street, near our house. It was years before I realized that he was Jewish. I see now that he was probably the poorest Jew I knew as a child, and he was not poor.

Among blacks in Richmond, as among people elsewhere, certain anti-Jewish phrases were current, although in a mild way for the most part. For example, to “Jew you down” meant to get the better of you in a deal. Almost certainly the speaker was no anti-Semite but rather an unthinking person using expressions he or she had picked up somewhere. My father saw clearly that even great wealth did not save the Jews of Richmond from bigotry. He liked to tell the story of driving William Thalhimer to see a man about a piece of land that Thalhimer wanted to buy. The man hated to sell the land to anyone, but he hated above all selling it to a Jew. As Daddy listened, the man insulted Thalhimer in every way he could. Thalhimer said nothing. The deal was concluded. Driving back, my father asked Thalhimer why he had meekly taken those insults from an inferior.

“Arthur,” Thalhimer said, “I came out here to purchase that piece of land. I got the piece of land. It belongs to me now, not to him. That man can go on cursing me as long as he likes. I have the land.”