Considering the New Insiders - a View from the Outside

I should’ve known better.

For weeks, local print and broadcast media have heaped scorn and derision on former State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, accused of extorting $23,000 in an FBI sting — captured in grainy video stills stuffing her bra. With her fellow state senators, the media, public opinion, and the Black ministers arrayed against her, Wilkerson finally resigned her seat and retreated into seclusion.

Hinting at more revelations to come, FBI agents rousted Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner a few weeks later, whisking him away in handcuffs to a federal district court arraignment in Worcester. Reader responses to the arrest posted on the Globe’s on-line headline that afternoon were overwhelmingly, and gleefully, negative — tending to focus more on the man than on the allegations of wrong-doing against him.

Worse still, the Globe is aggressively marketing the notion of a rising, intergenerational Black insurgency intent on toppling the Old Guard — veterans of the civil rights era, variously described as “dinosaurs,” “mired in the status quo,” and “race-baiters.”

Reading "Insiders seek to recast black politics in Boston" by Michael Levenson (Boston Globe, 12/2/08; A-1, 15) my first reaction was, “is this all he mined from a forty-minute telephone interview and three long follow up calls?” The idea that there’s a brewing political coup d’ etat against Black incumbents, generated the article’s provocative headline and the photo depicting presumed “insiders,” Kevin Peterson, Rev. Mark Scott and Ego Ezedi brainstorming “how to reinvigorate Black politics in Boston.”

Consistent with the Globe’s insurgency scenario, Peterson predicts dire consequences for the Black community if fails to “generate a new corps of leaders…[to] realign and develop a new philosophy and practice.” Scott, echoing a recent nationally-televised interview of mentor Rev. Eugene Rivers, equates social justice struggle with the politics of “complaint, grievance, and deficits.” According to Scott’s logic, fighting for justice apparently contributes nothing to society.

Care to hazard a guess on who will comprise this New Leadership stratum, or what the general content of their new Leadership Philosophy might entail?

The Globe article follows the basic trajectory of its recent editorials, metro columns, and news coverage of the bribery scandal: Black incumbents abuse their power, Black incumbents are out of touch, Black incumbents nurture dependence on racial politics, and Black incumbents are sabotaging efforts of the African American community to move forward in post-racial America.

Since resigning her Senate seat last month, Dianne Wilkerson has kept a surprisingly low profile; taking a radically different tack, Counselor Turner is not only vigorously protesting his innocence, but aggressively challenging the motives of his accusers and detractors — the US Justice Department and corporate media — in the court of public opinion.

Perhaps it’s knowledge of the FBI’s long and sordid history of repression against radical and reform movements — the Palmer Raids, COINTELPRO, Fruhmenschen — or the unfolding internal investigation of Justice Department abuse following the indictment of former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, but US Attorney Michael Sullivan has been fairly tight-lipped about Turner’s contention that his pending prosecution is racially-motivated.

However, local media pundits have been quite vocal, claiming that Turner’s complaints of biased media coverage are unfounded and intended to cast himself as a victim.

“An argument of racial oppression overlooks the parade of white politicians taken down in Massachusetts,” insists the Globe’s opinion columnist, Joan Vennochi (“Turner plays the race card,” 12/7/08). Citing as examples Charles Flaherty and Tom Finneran, and Salvatore DiMasi, she concludes, “Perhaps there is a conspiracy to go after Beacon Hill legislative leaders?”

Yet, it’s obvious that some federal felons are not permanently disabled — or even greatly inconvenienced — by the experience.

Flaherty, pleaded guilty in 1996 to a Federal tax evasion charge and lying under oath about cooking his own books to justify bogus deductions, is today, a successful Beacon Hill lobbyist representing the state’s gambling interests.

Finneran, who succeeded Flaherty as Speaker of the House, was indicted on federal charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in 2001, however, his public shaming didn’t stop WRKO-radio from offering a short-lived talk show slot, or bar him from joining his former mentor on the Hill as a well-paid industry lobbyist.

In Massachusetts, even a disgraced politician can expect a soft landing into lucrative private-sector employment — if he’s White. How likely is it that Wilkerson or Turner will remake themselves as lobbyists or radio personalities?

Meanwhile, over in the Metro section, Vennochi’s colleagues, Kevin Cullen and Adrian Walker, agree that Turner’s charges of media bias are baseless. “Turner isn’t corrupt, he’s nuts,” Cullen asserted (“Double standard,” 11/24/08). “The man is either full of righteous anger or just plain delusional,” Walker affirmed (“Spin cycle to wind down,” 12/5/08).

Additionally, the skilled use of unflattering photographs, cropped to portray Turner in the worst possible light, help to paint him as arrogant, erratic, disruptive, and divisive — a crazed rabble rouser unworthy of respect or a fair hearing.

The US media establishment has a long and well-documented history of meddling in the political affairs of the African American community — selectively shaping popular opinion of Black political leaders and reform movements to alternatively discredit and devalue, or endorse and promote.

In the post-Reconstruction period, Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass suffered serial attacks on his integrity and competence. The near deification of Jim Crow apologist Booker T. Washington was a direct product of the consistently good press generated by his assurances that “The wisest among my race understand that the agitation on questions of social equality is the extremest folly.” Likewise, the remarkable rise of Martin Luther King, Jr. — as a political and ideological foil to the militancy of Malcolm X — is only surpassed by his dramatic fall after “breaking the silence” on the war in Vietnam and calling for a “revolution in values” recognizing the essential humanity of the poor and oppressed everywhere.

Like I said, I should’ve known better.

We might reasonably ask, what do these negative appraisal of Councilor Chuck Turner’s character have to do with the specific FBI allegations of malfeasance? And, further, what can we realistically expect from a new generation of Black political leadership that willingly takes the discussion of persistent racial disparity off the table?

Nothing. And nothing good.

Ty dePass is a Boston-based political writer, cultural worker, and social critic. A longer version of this essay can be found on his blog at http://el-cimarron.blogspot.com/2008/12/considering-new-insiders-view-fr... .