President Obama’s meteoric political rise was built in part around his call for a new kind of civility in American public life — as he often put it, an environment in which people could “disagree without being disagreeable.” We support this goal, which is why we find it mind-boggling that his administration has sent not one, but five cabinet secretaries, to address the annual conference of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network.
It is easy to dismiss Sharpton, now an MSNBC host, as a harmless, buffoonish talking-head along the lines of Ed Schultz. But he isn’t. In 1995, the same National Action Network played a role in turning a Harlem landlord-tenant dispute into a deadly racial incident that killed seven.
At that time, the Jewish owner of Freddy’s Fashion Mart on 125th Street sub-leased space to a black-owned record store. When he tried to raise the rent (as it happened, to cover a rent increase imposed by the predominantly black church that owned the building), Sharpton immediately saw an opening for racial demagoguery. He went on the radio, vowing, “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business. … I’m going to go down there and do what is necessary to let them know that we are not turning 125th Street back over to the outsiders.” Sharpton also promised “a major reaction and major protest from us.”
The chairman of the National Action Network’s “Buy Black” steering committee, Morris Powell, was more direct: “This street will burn. We are going to see to it that this cracker suffers.” And burn it did. After months of daily protests, which Sharpton promoted on his weekly radio show and attended at least once, one of the demonstrators stormed into the store with a gun. He shot four people and started a fire, killing seven before he committed suicide.
The New York Times, citing court documents and audiotapes, later reported that during the protests, “the owner and managers were called ‘bloodsucking Jews,’ white employees ‘crackers’ and black customers ‘Toms,'” and that “threats of arson hung in the crisp, fall air.”
Sharpton, who even before this incident had a checkered history on race relations and anti-Semitism, washed his hands of the whole thing and claimed he was barely involved. His public image hardly suffered — which is particularly interesting today, when the mere placing of crosshairs on a congressional district map is perceived as an incitement to violence.
Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking at the same National Action Network’s conference Wednesday, praised Sharpton “for your partnership, your friendship, and also for your tireless efforts to speak out for the voiceless…” In a speech Thursday, U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said of Sharpton, “I am proud to march with him on any occasion.” Secretaries Kathleen Sebelius, Shaun Donovan and Arne Duncan, as well as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, are speaking as well.
Which is why we ask: What in the world is Obama thinking? Perhaps his praise for Sharpton at the organization’s 20th Anniversary Gala last year can be dismissed as a bit of pandering. But given Obama’s promise of a “new politics,” it is unseemly to see practically his entire cabinet kissing Sharpton’s ring this week.
