Posted on 02/16/2003 4:56:05 AM PST by SJackson
While Jesse Jackson`s political capital has diminished recently due to personal and professional indiscretions, his reduced capacity for articulating black America`s sentiments has created an opportunity for another highly visible, though justifiably suspect, spokesman to usurp his old role: the Reverend Al Sharpton, who recently announced his Democratic candidacy for the U.S. presidency.
Though the likelihood of Sharpton`s being elected is clearly remote, and his candidacy has been termed essentially ``symbolic,`` the real question is this: Given his propensity for grandstanding, bombast, race baiting and questionable ethical behavior in pursuit of his various causes, what exactly does Sharpton`s quest for the presidency symbolize?
Sharpton has built his career by coming loudly and publicly to the defense of those he deems victims-of racism, of poverty, of government neglect, of criminal acts. But in serving his narrow constituency, he has perpetrated what John H. McWhorter, an African American professor of linguistics and fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, has termed a "cult of victimology" in his book Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America.
McWhorter writes that victimology is "a subconscious psychological gangrene" that, through the efforts of leaders like Sharpton, "has become a keystone of cultural blackness to treat victimhood not as a problem to be solved but as an identity to be nurtured."
Thus, Sharpton`s has increased his political currency exclusively by seeking out victims whose situations could be exploited for his personal status-building as a player in regional and national politics. The problem, of course, is that it`s been Sharpton`s pattern to seek out his victims on the fringes of society and law, frequently in the midst of incendiary social situations, often with calamitous and tragic results. It is part of what McWhorter calls "the victimologist hustle."
Widely known is Sharpton`s role as one of the disingenuous handlers of the now-infamous Tawana Brawley, who as a teenager in the late 1980`s concocted a story of being raped by a group of white men in order to obscure her own misbehavior and escape punishment from an abusive stepfather.
Sharpton shares culpability, too, for riots that erupted in 1991 in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn after a black child was killed in an automobile accident involving a motorist who happened to be a chassidic Jew. As Sharpton raised vocal complaints about Jewish "diamond merchants," neighborhood blacks rioted against Jewish life and property. Yankel Rosenbaum, a young rabbinical student, was stabbed to death by a group of marauding black youths.
A few years later the city was witness to highly-charged protests in Harlem at Freddy`s Fashion Mart, a store owned by a Jewish proprietor, which was finally set ablaze by a protester who, urged on by Sharpton`s fiery rhetoric, also opened fire and killed himself and seven others in the store.
Sharpton`s role in these events, and his aggressive seeking out of victims to further his calls for justice, is widely known. Less known, and more significant now that he wants to be considered a serious candidate for national office, are some of the other political alliances and victimist relationships that he has established in his efforts to widen his influence.
Sharpton`s political ambition has led him to align himself with an assortment of sociopathic charlatans, criminals, race baiters, and virulently anti-American, anti-white and anti-Semitic activists.
One uneasy political partnership has been the one between Sharpton and Minister Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam. Farrakhan has derided Caucasians as "white devils," called President Bush "the leader of the lynch mob," and referred to Judaism as a "gutter religion" of "blood suckers" who prayed in "synagogues of Satan."
Despite those less-than-conciliatory attitudes, Sharpton defiantly stood with Farrakhan in 1993 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, proclaiming: "We will stand together. Not in some private midnight meeting ... but in the daylight ... Don`t ask who don`t like it; we love it! Don`t ask who`s mad, we`re glad!"
In the 1990`s, Sharpton also formed a close working relationship with the now-defunct New Alliance Party (NAP) led by Dr. Lenora Fulani, a Marxist activist whose insights about global politics include her belief that Jews "had to sell their souls to acquire Israel and are required to do the dirtiest work of capitalism — to function as mass murderers of people of color — in order to keep it."
Co-directing the NAP was Fulani`s mentor and tactician, Dr. Fred Newman, a psychologist whose unorthodox practices included group psychotherapy, mind control, and sexual encounters with patients. Like Sharpton, Drs. Newman and Fulani are admirers of Farrakhan, particularly his anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish inclinations. In a 1992 forum on black-Jewish relations, moderated by Sharpton and Newman, the conclusions Newman came to — which echoed the conspiracy theories that permeate Farrakhan`s own paranoia — were that "the Jewish community has abandoned the African American community. The Jewish community has walked out in the middle of the struggle. The Jewish community has lied and we will expose it."
Sharpton frequently used the resources of NAL to promote his own projects, specifically sharing office space with the organization and using its members to man his Tawana Brawley demonstrations and various other marches.
Not satisfied with finding suitable victimized parties in his home state of New York, Sharpton has roamed the world looking for alliances with the downtrodden, including various missions to Haiti, Zaire, Israel, Palestinian-administered areas, and Eatonton, Georgia.
In 1999 Sharpton appeared for a rally in Eatonton to protect the “civil rights” of a New Age, Afro-centric cult, the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors. The Nuwaubians are led by the sociopathic, though charismatic, leader named Malachi Dwight York, whose philosophy is comprised of a surreal mixture of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian beliefs peppered with anti- government sentiment and black supremacy. York called white people "devils" and suggested that they should "go home" to Europe, while Sharpton railed against local officials, calling them "oppressors" for having the nerve to close the cult`s nightclub for operating without a license.
York`s lawlessness apparently was not restricted to local zoning ordinances. In May 2002, York, along with his "main wife" Kathy Johnson, was put into federal custody after a nine-year battle in state and federal courts; in January 2003, York pleaded guilty to 40 counts of aggravated child molestation, 34 counts of child molestation, one count of child exploitation (all against cult members` children), and two counts of influencing witnesses.
At his "Redeem the Dream" rally, held in August 2000 to commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr.`s historic march on Washington, Sharpton affirmed his philosophical support for Louis Farrakhan and permitted a speech by Malik Shabazz, a lawyer with a penchant for paramilitary garb who serves as a spokesman for the New Black Panther Party. During his engaging and spirited oration, "I Have A Black Dream," Shabazz suggested that "for every casket and funeral in our community there should be a casket and funeral in the enemy`s community," the enemy presumably being the police, the white establishment, and the American government.
Also present at some of these Sharpton-orchestrated hatefests was Khalid Abdul Muhammad, the now-deceased former spokesman of the Nation of Islam whose hateful speech was so extreme that even the vituperative Farrakhan had to distance himself. Muhammad`s repartee included the all-inclusive, if barely coherent, racist observations that "the white man is not only practicing racism and Zionism, and with the prostitution ring the so-called Jew man with the Jew woman all over the world to make a few dollars....He`s a racist, he`s a Zionist, a sexist, and imperialist. He`s a no good bastard. He`s not a devil, the white man is the Devil."
As Al Sharpton moves forward in his political career, he will no doubt address the needs of many who are indeed true victims. But if he continues to seek out and associate with false victims from the hateful, deluded underbelly of American society, he will have squandered a golden opportunity to doing something positive and lasting.
Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., writes frequently on public policy, law, real estate development, affordable housing, and business.
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"There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don't want the patient to get well." --Booker T. Washington, 1911
Remote? I dunno. Just imagine the Sharpton/*Crinton debates!
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