- Originally published in the LA Weekly August 6, 2004
by Erin Aubry Kaplan
The Democratic convention is over, and there's little left to say,
except: Damn, we're good. In yet another American political
event/performance, black people yet again dutifully did their part.
BeBe Winans brought down the house with a gospel rendition of "The
Star-Spangled Banner" to kick things off. But as has been the case for
at least 20 years, we played our role too well. We gave up too much; if
we don't get any political gains out of this -- and we won't, trust me --
we should at least get medals for uncommonly selfless acts in battle.
Yes, it was a battle this time out, what with the ugly prospect of four
more years of Bushification stiffening the resolve of the Democrats
(finally) to make the '04 convention the most focused and internally
dissent-free of any convention they've held in the last half-century.
Unfortunately, this often meant appearing as ruthless and militaristic
as the Republicans -- quashing anti-war sentiment (shared by more than
90 percent of delegates) enough so that it never reached any TV
broadcasts, setting up a caged "free-speech zone" outside Fleet Center
that crossed the line from irony into a kind of tyranny that, were it
not for the tyranny perpetuated daily in Iraq by that country and this
one, might have gotten more attention than it did.
But there was plenty of irony-cum-tyranny on display with the black
presence -- or absence. The contingent that has traditionally been cast
as the voice of the Dems' moral conscience, to say nothing of
America's, was missing in action in a big way last week, just when we
most needed to hear it. With very few exceptions, those blacks who took
the Fleet Center podium came off as loyal, uncomplaining and
unconditionally supportive of a party that for the past 40 years, if
that, has been only nominally in favor of policies and platforms that
benefit black people. This is not news, I know; Democrats have taken
black people for granted for generations now, a distressing arrangement
that we seem not to mind. But really -- wasn't somebody besides Michael
Moore going to muse aloud about the dire connections between a
burgeoning military and our permanent class of unemployed and
undereducated black men? Between obscenely excessive spending on
military and homeland security and obscenely neglected ghettos and
public schools where government spending is not only absentee, it's
become a downright dirty phrase? But when party unity is as big an
imperative as it was last week, you can kiss the racial specifics
goodbye. Illinois state Senator Barack Obama was hailed as an ascending
hero, sure, though only because he was much more eloquent in vetting
the unity thing than, say, Janet Reno (plus he's a lot more telegenic
than Reno and just about anybody else on the speaker roster). The
African-American Obama -- which he is, literally -- put the moral stamp
of approval on his party's all-for-one theme, and he elevated it with
some personal testimony and belly fire that so many in his party lack.
Without even trying, Obama did some important conceptual work for the
Democrats; the question, as usual, is whether they will do any work,
conceptual or otherwise, for us .
The biggest elephant under the Boston big top, almost bigger than the
economy and Iraq, was Florida. The Florida vote theft that turned into
the national-election theft in 2000 was the first great crime of the
century. But the Democrats dared not pursue the crime or the criminals,
because it overwhelmingly involved black voters and was therefore too
racial for comfort or political expediency. Yet Florida cost the
Democrats everything -- the presidency, for starters -- and Florida is
precisely why Bush is in office now and screwing things up all over the
world at an astonishing rate, and why everybody's blood was boiling
last week. But it was boiling only in hindsight, which meant Democrats
could not talk about Florida without talking about their complicity in
the crime by keeping silent. Only in the midst of iterating
anti-Republican peeves did convention talking heads raise the Florida
issue, and then somewhat gingerly; besides being generally avoided as a
black thing, it was surely too "negative" and potentially divisive to
pass muster with DNC officials and scriptwriters, who were determined
to stay on that message about a united front.
Though the caution about Florida goes way beyond a strategy of the
moment, or even of the last four years, it speaks to an ancient
American reticence to truly enforce civil rights protections for
blacks, even when such protections are claimed as a part of the
Democratic, or Republican, creed. But the reticence this time has had
particularly nasty consequences. The impunity of the Florida vote
theft, and the Supreme Court coronation of Bush, set the stage for
every shameless act that followed -- the Patriot Act, the Enron
bankruptcy, Cheney's corporate-clan Energy Commission meetings, the
broken global treaties, the bald-faced lies about weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq -- acts that quickly sealed America's new image as a
brute and a bully at home and abroad. If anybody was going to address
the bitter roots of this arrogance, at this convention, it was likely
going to be somebody black and angry, but with enough savvy to channel
that anger (black anger is inimical to American politics, remember) as
moral outrage, preferably in the form of a church sermon. Jesse Jackson
was that somebody in 1984, and this year it was Al Sharpton's turn. For
all his recent attempts to soften his image and go mainstream, Rev. Al
doesn't even have to open his mouth to deliver a good jab -- his
deep-fried hairdo is still a wordless critique of a white power
structure that demands conformity at all costs.
It took Sharpton to go off book and get unapologetically black,
addressing the empty Reconstruction promise of 40 acres and a mule,
criticizing an immigration policy that favors Canadians and Latinos
over Haitians. It took Sharpton to blow out the Florida travesty with
the force it deserved from all of us four years ago; speaking to the
sanctity of the vote, he invoked the blood of a host of civil rights
martyrs both black and white. He challenged Bush on his hastily
arranged stump speech before the Urban League convention last month,
roaring, "Mr. President, read my lips -- our vote is not for sale!" The
crowd went wild. CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer went into a kind of meltdown,
muttering non sequitur comments about how this speech was 20 minutes
instead of the expected six, how it confused the Teleprompter guy and
strayed further from the Message than Kerry would have liked. No real
questions from Blitzer or his co-anchors at CNN about what Sharpton
actually said or what issues he covered, though that kind of
sidestepping is something we've all grown to accept in the big media as
par for the course, especially post-9/11. Black people aren't the only
ones who've tolerated a bum deal for too long.
Though both Sharpton and Obama got pretty good marks and plenty of
coverage for their 15 minutes -- or 20 -- the figures they cut couldn't
be more different. With his smooth good looks and modulated delivery,
Obama emerged as my generation's golden boy, the dark-suited embodiment
of black people's best and highest impulses of inclusion and fairness
for all, diversity newly fortified but still digestible. Sharpton is
the race's ragged edge, its propensity to pop off and speak out of
turn; he's the political id that blacks are constantly encouraged to
throw away in the spirit of progress and cooperation. But whenever
we're inclined to do that, we're always reminded that a fighting spirit
is exactly what we need to preserve. When Congresswoman Barbara Lee
proposed having poll watchers in November -- not an idea that originated
with her, by the way -- the remark was assailed as "asinine" in the
pages of this paper. Given what we know now about what happened in
Florida, about illegally scrubbed voter rolls and eligible voters being
turned away at the polls in an election that hung on a handful of
ballots, I would call Lee's suggestion sensible. Racially discomfited
Americans may always be inclined to dismiss the lessons of Florida, but
blacks certainly can't be among them. Al Sharpton may be ready for
prime time -- he's already got deals to host a reality show and provide
regular news commentary for CNBC -- but his job is still to get prime
time ready for him.