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How far will DA Nifong set back race relations?
[Excerpt from Gaynor column quoting Taylor, October 23, 2006]

One would expect the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People to object to a rogue prosecutor and to resent Black voter manipulation by racial pandering. Yet the Committee, which had supported a Black candidate (Keith Bishop) in the Democrat primary, just endorsed Mr. Nifong in the general election.

The Committee's spokesperson, Lavonia Allison, insisted that quality-of-life issues explained its endorsement of Mr. Nifong. Ms, Allison added that the Committee urged voters to vote strictly Democratic, in the hope of having officials concerned with "the least among us as well as the most."

Stuart Taylor, Jr., America's top legal commentator and a lawyer who recognized the Duke case for what it was at the start, did not mince words about the damage the Committee did by endorsing Mr. Nifong:

"I believe that this endorsement and other support for Nifong by African-American leaders will come back to haunt African-American individuals, who are by far the most disproportionately numerous victims of prosecutorial and police misconduct in North Carolina and around the country.

"Nifong's grotesque abuses in a case involving well-off white kids who have already been proved innocent beyond any reasonable doubt could have had a powerful educational effect on well-off people like their parents, relatives, friends, and sympathizers.

"It could have taught such well-off people to guard against the abuse of police and prosecutorial power more generally, which goes on every day in hundreds if not thousands of cases that draw zero publicity. I have hoped to reinforce this education in a modest way in my book.

"Black leaders could have reinforced this education in a far more powerful way by standing on principle with other critics of Nifong — as they (and I) would no doubt be doing were Nifong persecuting black football players in this manner.

"Instead, the vast majority of black leaders — all those who have supported Nifong and many of those who have simply ignored or minimized his abuses — are teaching the rest of us that they don't give a damn about opposing injustice when the victims are white kids.

"As we see unfolding before our eyes the use against innocent white kids of the same police and prosecutorial powers that are more often used to ruin the lives of innocent black kids, black leaders are at best indifferent. Many are applauding.

"Some well-off whites will, I hope, continue to deplore such abuse of law enforcement power regardless of who the victims may be. I certainly will.

"But many will conclude that black leaders and those who support them are immoral and unjust people undeserving of sympathy when they or their children are persecuted by the Nifongs, Gottliebs, Himans and Claytons of this world. This is not only setting back race relations. It is setting back any hope of getting the prosecutorial-misconduct boot off the necks of innocent black kids."

http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/gaynor/061023

* The Committee is doing all the manipulating.