Essay 1396

From The Chicago Sun-Times…

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Let action replace endless race talk

BY LAURA WASHINGTON

Talk is cheap. Talk is also exceptionally plentiful these days. Lately, the talk around the nation about race and race relations has careened off the charts. This comes after the appropriately goofy star of the lily-white “Seinfeld” showed his true colors. Michael Richards has provided America’s professional race ranters with more grist and gristle than an Outback Steakhouse.

Juicy. The sizzle of this steak is a spicy mix of racism, police violence and limelight.

On Nov. 17, Richards spewed anti-black epithets from the stage of a Los Angeles comedy nightclub. The race men wasted no time in jumping on the bandwagon of Richards’ calamity. The Urban League and NAACP denounced the fading comic. The Rev. Al Sharpton took a call from a penitent Richards and went on CNN, offering to take Richards to South Central L.A. or Harlem for a chat. Sharpton, a 2004 presidential candidate, pronounced, “We need to deal with the lingering problem. … This could open a dialogue if we have the courage to confront it.”

The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson of Rainbow/PUSH brought Richards on his nationally syndicated show so that he could apologize again. And again. Jackson has also urged a boycott of the latest “Seinfeld” DVD release.

TMZ.com, an entertainment portal, reports that sales of Seinfeld’s seventh-season DVD are outpacing the previous release by more than 75 percent, natch.

Even Mel Gibson “Feels Michael Richards’ Pain,” according to the Associated Press. Gibson, in Hollywood recovering from his anti-Semitic diatribe, reportedly said he feels like sending Richards a nice note. “I feel really badly for the guy. He was obviously in a state of stress.” Gibson added, “They’ll probably torture him for a while and then let him go. I like him.” Schadenfreude seems to be the order of the day.

Even Richards’ so-called victims have jumped into the fray. Frank McBride and Kyle Doss, the African-American targets of Richards’ ire, have hired Gloria Allred. She’s the barracuda feminist attorney who has taken on other famous pariahs, including O.J. Simpson and Scott Peterson. The comic’s apologies are not enough, she says. How about some bucks?

Talk is cheap. Whenever there’s a race blowup (and they happen all the time), the race ranters talk, and talk, and call for more talk. They call for covenants and dialogues. Have you noticed that no one ever does anything? It’s easy to jump all over a washed-up, dyspeptic comic. Especially if it provides his critics with oodles of limelight.

Let’s talk about what happens on the ground. Take a look at the perennial tensions between the police and people of color. Take the recent fatal shooting of Sean Bell, a 23-year-old black man outside a strip club in Queens, N.Y. The cops shot 50 bullets at Bell and his friends on Bell’s wedding day. They were allegedly unarmed. Take Amadou Diallo in New York. Rodney King in Los Angeles. LaTanya Haggerty in Chicago. Not to mention the men allegedly tortured over the years by Chicago Police.

How about bringing together two groups -- the cops and young men of color -- that never talk to each other. Groups that are defined in the public sphere by their mutual distrust? That could be a conversation worth having.

OK. Take a breath. Hear me out. Racism exists. We can talk about it until we’re blue-black in the face. A memo to Sharpton and Jackson: Racism does continue, and it needs to be confronted relentlessly. Both of you have run for president. Let’s assume you fervently believe that electing an African-American commander in chief would be a huge step toward stomping out racism in this country.

You have taken a whack at the job. So how about getting behind the budding candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama? He has a real shot at becoming America’s first black president. You know he's going to run in 2008. Why dilly-dally and mumble about first waiting to see who gets into the field?

It’s now or never. Getting behind Obama now will show that we are ready to move forward and that black folks are ready to take a seat at the table of American politics. We’re done with the crumbs.

Can we put aside the egos, forget the TV cameras and get behind some real African-American empowerment? Something that could shut up the Richards and Gibsons, once and for all? To paraphrase Jackson: Let’s End Hate in ‘08. Elect Obama.