Politicians Sow Double Standards on Race

In the peculiar litany of American political invective, few charges cut as deeply as the epithet “double standard.”

When you consider our history, that’s not surprising. First among the Founders’ “self-evident” truths was the belief that “all men are created equal.” Moreover, as the philosopher Michael Walzer has noted, the American conception of moral progress consists not in the creation of new rights, but in the extension of existing liberties to groups and individuals from whom they have been withheld.

In other words, the strongest link in the chain of moral authority that binds us to our past is the notion of equal rights and responsibilities for all, special privileges and exemptions for none.

Strong stuff: It was so 200 years ago, and is still so today.

That’s why the candidates of both political parties--who are even shorter on moral authority than they are on approval ratings--recently have been trotting across the country looking for double standards at which they can point the bony finger of disapproval.

And, in the best American tradition, most of the double standards they’ve discovered have something to do with race.

Fair enough. There are few things this country needs more urgently than a thorough examination of the double standard it applies when deciding questions involving race. But is that really what George Bush, Bill Clinton and their surrogates have given us over the past month or so?

In the wake of the Los Angeles riots, Clinton, Bush and the flawlessly stupid Dan Quayle all have rushed to denounce young African-American musicians whose rap music advocates violence against white people generally and police officers in particular. (The rappers also seem to hate women, but somebody else is going to have to sort that one out.)

Clinton--in what his aides promoted as an act of profound courage--went before Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition and forthrightly condemned singer Lisa Williamson, who is better known by her recently adopted nom de nuisance, Sister Souljah.

She is an obscure performer who had the good fortune to be interviewed on the front page of the Washington Post Style section, where she provocatively said that because young black men routinely killed each other, every once in a while they should have a week where they killed white people--as in the Los Angeles riots, where, of course, no white people were killed.

According to Clinton, not to have censured Lisa Williamson would have meant endorsing a “double standard.” Bush and Quayle agreed. They also have rushed to condemn the rap singer Ice-T, whose real name I have not bothered to discover.

He is the writer of an appallingly stupid and offensive song called “Cop Killer,” whose lyrics I will not bother to quote because they already have been reprinted virtually everywhere in America.

Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that we really want our President and the other aspirants to what we used to call “the leadership of the free world” to tell us what they think about practitioners of rap music.

Shortly after this city’s riot--at about the same time as the great rap music controversy arose--the most respected human rights organization in the world, Amnesty International, issued a report on the conduct of the Los Angeles Police Department and the county sheriffs.

The report, chillingly entitled “Torture, Ill-Treatment and Excessive Force by Police in Los Angeles, California,” was based on a fact-finding investigation here and on a review of specific cases “where civil damages have been paid to alleged victims of police abuse.”

Not exactly a wild-eyed approach, which is what makes the report’s conclusion worth quoting at length:

“Amnesty International findings suggest that there have been a disturbing number of cases in recent years in which law enforcement officials in Los Angeles have resorted to excessive force, sometimes amounting to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The use of excessive force has included physical brutality and use of lethal force including firearms, in violation of international standards.

“Police dogs also appear to have been used to inflict unwarranted injury on suspects, particularly in black or Latino neighborhoods. In many cases officers appear to have acted with impunity or received only minor disciplinary sanctions. The evidence suggests that racial minorities, especially blacks and Latinos, have been subjected to discriminatory treatment and are disproportionately the victims of abuse.”

More strong stuff, particularly because it comes from an organization whose findings on human rights abuses from Chile to China have provided hundreds of news stories over the past 20 years. However, at this moment neither Bill Clinton nor George Bush nor the flawlessly stupid Dan Quayle have had a thing to say about it.

Double standard? Perhaps--and something else.

As an African-American friend of mine put it, “It’s race-baiting, plain and simple. What else can you call it when the men running for President of the United States spend more time talking about what a couple of black teen-agers said than about what dozens of rogue cops have done to hundreds of people of color over many years? Talk about your double standard.”

Then, of course, there’s the great family values discussion. In the week after the riots, both Clinton and the flawlessly stupid Quayle rushed here and concluded that the unrest reflected, in large part, a failure of values among African-American families.

Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that although more than half of all marriages between white Americans end in divorce, there is something particularly wrong with the values of African-Americans. Let us further assume that what occurred in Los Angeles was, in some way, the product of that particular wrong. Let us further assume that the Democratic nominee-to-be and the flawlessly stupid Quayle have something useful to say about all this.

What, then, of the President? Do you know how he spent his Fourth of July? Why, in a place called Faith, N.C. Now, Faith is distinguished by several things: First, it is entirely white. Second, it is in the center of Rowan County, which, according to an organization called North Carolinians Against Racist and Religious Violence, last year ranked second among the state’s 100 counties in the number of hate crimes committed against blacks. Finally, one year ago, it was the site of a major Ku Klux Klan rally.

Did the President of the United States chide the people of Faith for the failure of their families’ values? No. He praised them for their “all-American values” and told them, “Don’t let anyone knock your town.”

As my friend said, talk about your double standard.