Essay 475

The following editorial appeared in The Chicago Tribune…

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Perceptual apartheid, Chicago-style
Racial disparities after all these years
By Salim Muwakkil

March 15, 2006

Fifty-two years after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed legal segregation, racial disparities in perception between black and white Americans remain so divergent we may as well be living in an apartheid state. Two current stories vividly remind us of this reality.

One story concerns the effort by Chicago Ald. Madeline Haithcock (2nd) to name one block of Monroe Street in honor of Fred Hampton, the Black Panther leader slain by Chicago police in 1969. Haitchcock’s proposal has sparked an explosion of criticism from the Fraternal Order of Police and some white aldermen. “It’s a dark day when we honor someone who would advocate killing policemen and who took great advantage of the communities he claimed to have been serving,” said FOP President Mark P. Donahue.

Ald. Tom Allen (38th) called the proposal “an embarrassment,” and Ald. Richard Mell (33rd) likened it to naming a street “David Duke Way,” after a notorious white supremacist. Allen and Mell represent wards with predominantly white populations.

Hampton and Mark Clark, another Panther leader, were killed by police as they slept in their West Side apartment. Investigations of the raid concluded that police guns were responsible for all but one of the bullet holes riddling the residence. No one has been held legally accountable for what appear to have been the assassinations of Hampton and Clark. The political defeat of Cook County State’s Atty. Edward V. Hanrahan, whose office coordinated the deadly 1969 raid, seems to have been the lone consequence. Donahue's rantings seem absurd framed in that historical context.

Equating the Panthers to white supremacists is a similar misreading of history. The group was relentlessly anti-racist and even incurred the wrath of other black nationalist groups for its multicultural perspective. Had Mell simply referred to historical accounts, he would easily have found that Hampton attracted multiracial support.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s appointment of Claudette Marie Muhammad to the state’s Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes is another issue best explained through historical context. Muhammad is chief of protocol for the Nation of Islam, led by Minister Louis Farrakhan.

As of the latest count, five Jewish members of the commission have quit because Muhammad refuses to repudiate Farrakhan’s latest controversial comments. A chorus is growing urging either Muhammad to resign or the governor to rescind her appointment. Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn so far is the only member of the Blagojevich administration to jump into the fray, urging her to resign.

“I think she should resign, and if she doesn’t resign the panel ought to be disbanded,” Quinn said. “I think Sister Muhammad has had ample time to repudiate the anti-Semitic remarks of Louis Farrakhan, and she’s not doing that.”

She will never do that as long as she’s an official of the group. Obedience to Farrakhan is a requirement in the authoritarian organization. One reason for the Nation of Islam’s continuing popularity within the black community is the group’s resolute image. Other civil rights groups have come and gone, but Farrakhan has managed to keep the Nation of Islam relevant with public shifts between charm and bile. Just when you think he has mellowed, the crafty septuagenarian will drop a rhetorical bomb that lands him back in the headlines. Cynics have suggested that the true target of his occasional bombs is a larger NOI membership.

Farrakhan’s willingness (eagerness?) to risk white disapproval is an attractive leadership trait for a people historically repressed by a rigid racial hierarchy.

That was the Black Panthers’ appeal as well. Long victimized by police departments that tolerated racist brutality in their ranks, black youths embraced the Panthers’ swaggering style and bellicose rhetoric like a long lost lover. This was the era of the “long, hot summer,” when charges of police brutality sparked explosions of violence in hundreds of American cities.

The Panthers sought ways to channel that destructive energy into programs designed for community empowerment. Their sense of mission and disciplined audacity gave black youth a new sense of relevance and greatly lessened the appeal of predatory street gangs. This historical context should frame attempts to name a street after Hampton, one of the group’s most revered leaders.

Most white Chicagoans don’t know this history; a history that included 12 generations of chattel slavery and four more of Jim Crow apartheid. This repressive history has produced an eccentric legacy and odd heroes. Farrakhan is one of those heroes, and Jewish groups gain nothing by avoiding dialogue with him. Perhaps they could help him understand how the tragedies of Jewish history have made them particularly sensitive to anti-Semitic expressions and why they take such offense at some of the minister’s rhetoric.

They could explain their reasoning that if Farrakhan isn’t anti-Semitic, he at least is tone deaf to Jewish sensibilities.

I humbly suggest that Blagojevich’s commission convene a dialogue somewhere on Chairman Fred Hampton Way.

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Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor at In These Times.