Posted on 05/26/2002 5:26:13 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
His Honor's outburst Mayor Street's unguarded remarks about black control of Philadelphia set people to thinking about race relations in the City of (Not Always) Brotherly Love. By Cynthia Burton
Everything seemed slightly off that Saturday. Seven hundred people had to wait in the chilly hall outside the Marriott dining room until waiters finished putting out salads, iced tea and water on the tables inside. When the doors finally opened, the members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People took their seats and waited some more for the program to start. Those at the head tables were introduced. Then Comcast Corp.'s Steve Burke and Gov. Schweiker made perfunctory remarks.
As Schweiker accepted polite applause and started working the room, it was announced that Mayor Street wouldn't make it to the lunch. A few disappointed murmurs subsided with the news that the meal was being served.
The NAACP board members and chapter presidents began to chat easily - mixing pleasure with business since the working part of the lunch seemed to be over.
Then from the side of the dais came Mayor Street, rushing to the podium.
Often when the mayor speaks at formal events, his presentation is similarly formal. He uses a prepared text and a delivery that suggests he doesn't want to make any mistakes. But here, to this familiar group, after being beaten up on the wage tax, his sluggish appointment of a new police commissioner, and his use of campaign money to send his wife to Rome, he spoke without notes, off the cuff. Little by little he warmed up the crowd: "Ladies and gentlemen, I promise to be brief no matter how long it takes."
He talked about his daughter, the coming of a new grandchild, his history with the group. He was comfortable, said one observer, as if he was "giving a report to kinfolk," telling family how things had been going lately.
The city's second African American mayor thanked the group for fighting to make achievements like his possible. Then in the rhythms of the pulpit he worked to a climax. Lawyers, doctors, educators, moms, dads, students, they responded to the call. And though the day had at last become harmonious, the reaction that would follow would be anything but.
"We're proud of this government," he said, and as he ticked off each important city job he had entrusted to people of color, the sophisticated group applauded more and more enthusiastically. By the time he told them excitedly, "The brothers and sisters are running the city. ... We are in charge! We are in charge!", the audience was on its feet.
But for the presence of a reporter, Street's comments might not have gone beyond that room. Once they did, they took on a different meaning with each reader. Appearing prominently in the Sunday Inquirer, Street's words were jarring. People were caught short. What he said touched a nerve sensitive from the city's long struggle over race.
Were we back there again?
What had we been focusing on before this? The local political discourse was about the wage tax, the state takeover of the schools, the mayor's war on blight.
But was race in the mix there too? Or, at least, couldn't it be read that way?
• A march against the wage tax led by big white business, and a mayor holding a news conference in a Latino neighborhood saying the poorest would suffer if the city lost revenue.
• Schools so rundown that a reluctant and mostly white state government snatched away local control. This after a former superintendent was run out of town for calling the state funding formula racist because it discriminated against poor, mostly African American students.
• Or, Street's trip to Mayfair to assure white Northeast residents that they'd be getting something out of the blight plan as well.
What Street did that Saturday afternoon was pull back the curtain, exposing the ugly tangle of power cables and braces that support the area's Truman Show-like denial of race as a factor in so many aspects of city life. Does anyone really believe that those fights between white and black students at George Washington High School aren't about race? Or, that at least part of the controversy about Section 8 federal housing vouchers isn't that they bring minority families into once-white enclaves?
And must everything always be about race?
The reactions to Street's words came slowly, simmering over the week of April 14.
On Sunday, an out-of-work chauffeur read Street's remarks and was outraged. He rushed to make 25 copies of the news story and then went up and down Oregon Avenue, handing them out to friends and pasting them on business windows and walls. He felt people should know who their mayor really was.
"It's racial," said Rich D'Agostino, 52, who is white. He spoke in the way some Philadelphians have spoken for years about racism - as in "I'm not racial."
"That statement was a racial punch in the eye to the white people of Philadelphia. If the whites leave Philadelphia, that's your tax structure right there."
D'Agostino felt marginalized and excluded, and he was hurt.
Liza Law, an Asian American who works in information technology, agreed. "I can't help but feel that he is neglecting the groups of people who fall into the nonwhite and nonblack categories. We don't need Mayor Evangelist. And I certainly don't need him as mayor again."
Other people found themselves asking, "Why do I have to be politically correct? Why can't I say what I want?"
And several indignant people who called and e-mailed the media took the discussion a step further - and over the line: White people pay taxes, they insisted bitterly, and minorities consume services.
In some households the inequity of it all was just so obvious. People asked, what if a white person had said those things? A white person would be in a lot of trouble, they said.
What they didn't seem to notice was that Street hadn't won himself many new friends this way, either.
And what they didn't seem to remember was that the last time a white mayor made a similarly insensitive comment, he did get nailed.
Midway through his second term, Frank Rizzo was contemplating the end of his public life and was none too happy about it. In a snit one day, he declared that it was time for "whites to join hands to get equal treatment. ... I'm tired of becoming a second-class citizen."
Decrying NAACP leader Benjamin Hooks as one who urged people to "vote black," Rizzo said, "in response the whites will vote for Rizzo." He also welcomed the votes of blacks who "think like I do."
Although Rizzo was color-blind in his personal relationships, many people remember the remarks as a call to "vote white." He was speaking for rowhouse white Philadelphia, the Philadelphia that in the 1970s and 1980s left the city or stayed and competed with minorities and new immigrants for dwindling jobs and deteriorating neighborhoods.
Even though he tried to make amends with the African American community, Rizzo never won another election, and died being thought of as one of the most racially divisive political figures in the city's recent history.
There was a flood of reaction on white radio, but on black radio just a trickle.
On Monday, WPHT-AM (1210) evening host Dom Giordano, whose audience is 94 percent white, had noticed the story and asked listeners what they thought. But he didn't get too many responses, he said - at first.
By Tuesday morning, WIP-AM (610) Morning Show's clubhouse atmosphere turned from sports to politics when cohost Al Morganti read the comment over the air to his 84 percent white audience and rendered his own opinion: Street was a racist. Within minutes, the station got 25 calls, though it had time to broadcast only about five, said host Angelo Cataldi.
"It was extraordinary both because [the reaction] seemed a little delayed and when it finally sank in, there was this unbelievable undercurrent of anger and shock," recalled Cataldi. "I think it's going to take on a life of its own."
By Tuesday afternoon, sports talk radio was almost all about politics and race. Callers vented, asked for Street to apologize or resign.
By Tuesday night, WPHT, which calls itself the "Big Talker," was getting dozens of calls. At the end of the week, Giordano said they had received hundreds.
Black radio didn't get as much traffic on the subject.
Longtime radio personality Mary Mason, who hosts Mornings With Mary on WHAT-AM (1340) and whose audience is 89 percent African American, said she thought Street's comments were "very interesting," but "I had to bring it up three mornings before I got any juice out of it." She said she got fewer than a dozen calls; a couple said Street "had no business talking like that." Some saw the comments as just a report on his record to the NAACP. Mason herself questioned the initial premise. "John says the brothers and sisters are in charge, but they're not. Take a look at his departments."
By Wednesday, when Street finally swore in Sylvester Johnson as the city's 13th police commissioner - the third African American to hold the job - the mayor was surrounded by a gaggle of television and radio reporters still chasing the story. It was almost as if people had forgotten that much of Street's political success came from his coalitions with conservative whites.
In the sunlit hallway of the Convention Center, radio reporter Tom MacDonald, of Metro Networks, repeatedly asked Street, "Mayor, do you think you made a mistake? Did you make a mistake?"
Street answered calmly with a qualified apology.
"Did I make a mistake? I don't know whether I made a mistake. All I know is, if people are offended, I regret anybody being offended. And I don't intentionally offend people. I try to be as congenial and as cordial as I can."
He stuck to his guns that it was important to give opportunity to people who in the past had been denied a fair shot at good jobs.
In the days that followed, Street took pains to say that he'd taken top city officials to all city neighborhoods to investigate problems and quickly solve them, whether it was knocking down a rat-infested house or ordering tougher littering enforcement.
"I've reached out into areas of this city that traditionally vote Republican. They don't even vote Democrat," Street said.
By April 22, when he appeared on Tavis Smiley's public radio show, he was viewing the negative reaction to his remarks this way: "Some [people] are offended because they don't want brothers and sisters to be in charge."
When a politician makes a misstep, his opponents try to turn it to their quick advantage. Yet the entire time Street was on the griddle, many in the political community - home, after all, of the instant analysis - didn't want to touch this one.
For white politicians there were the pitfalls both obvious (being seen as a racist) and less so (being viewed as egging on a racist reaction among their constituents). Black politicians walked a delicate line. They didn't argue with what Street said. After all, breaking through the glass ceiling was a common goal. But they did take issue with the way he said it.
On one point, however, his opponents agreed: If Street had shot himself in the foot, why not just let him bleed?
Some loved what they thought they heard - Street self-destructing. One called from a golf vacation to chortle.
"It's all anybody's talking about," said another pol.
But not Street's longtime political archenemy, state Sen. Vincent Fumo. Fumo has crossed the lines of discretion a few times himself. In the 1999 mayoral campaign he predicted that if Street became mayor, people would move out of the city. Would Sen. Fumo have something to say now?
"Probably not," said Gary Tuma, his annoyed spokesman.
But Fumo did try to get Sen. Anthony Williams to deride Street for him. The theory was that an African American's criticism would be given more weight in this instance. Williams didn't take the bait.
What about former Mayor Edward G. Rendell, who hoped that Street's endorsement of his gubernatorial candidacy would help him with black voters in the primary? Any comment?
"Ohhhhh nooooooo," sweated Rendell's spokesman, Dan Fee. "I don't want to talk about that."
State Rep. Dwight Evans was philosophical. "What he says out of his mouth, people will have to judge it for themselves," he said. "I'm neutral on him. Maybe he was sending a message to some people."
To Councilman James Kenney, that message was pretty clear.
"I think it sends a terrible message to the people in this city as a whole, black, white, brown, whatever. ... It sends a general divisive, nasty message to the people who live in the city and the people who live around the city."
At first, Terry Gillen, the liberal Democratic leader of the city's racially and economically mixed 30th Ward just south of Center City, tried to make excuses for the mayor, she recalled. Maybe he was misquoted, maybe he didn't mean it.
Eventually, she concluded that Street "made a calculation about who his base was and who it wasn't. I think white people just feel confused. They don't understand why he would say it or they're angry that he would say it."
"I won't talk on the record. I think he's dead meat," said one politician. Why? "There are very few white votes left for Street."
Those hurt or angered by Street's remarks may forget. "They have to be reminded of it on the Saturday before the election," said one Republican.
He was practically drooling at the thought of one of those sleazy last-minute mailers: the words in red letters splashed like blood over grainy black-and-white photographs that can make even a church choir look sinister.
Another hopeful Street enemy said the mayor's remarks "put white liberals on edge. It certainly put non-liberal whites on edge. It makes people suspicious of him."
Those defending Street noted that he had helped solidify his core constituency even though he had handed a wedge issue to his enemies.
But a close Street supporter bellowed: "When you have an enemy, do you want to ship him over ... grenades to send back at you?"
Both sides - those who support Street and those who hope to defeat him in November 2003 - know that raw race politics is a way of life in Philadelphia. That's because it works. It rallies a base, or even creates one from the cloth of your community. But while it bands one group together, it excludes others.
People vote along racial lines time and again. Someone who looks like me, goes the theory, is going to understand me and take care of me.
Take the last mayoral race, the Olympics of Philadelphia politics. Although both general-election candidates had some interracial support, voting broke down mostly along racial lines: Republican Sam Katz won in white areas. Street won in African American areas.
In the final days, Street carefully injected race into the campaign, using white surrogates to help rally his support.
At a rally in La Salle University's huge gymnasium, President Clinton argued that there was something wrong with Philadelphia if it couldn't vote for someone with Street's 19-year record of public service. How could someone so qualified, so skilled, not be embraced? Then U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, the Democratic party chairman, brought the point home in the most direct terms. Pointing to his white face, he criticized voters who might not support Street because he "doesn't look like me."
"That is wrong," he shouted. "We're not going back a hundred years."
The challenge was laid down: If you were white and didn't want Street, it had to be because of his race. If you were black, you had a responsibility to prevent an injustice from being done. You'd better get out and vote, because otherwise the guy who did look like you wouldn't get in.
In the primary, candidate Marty Weinberg had tried a similar tactic when he sent out a mailer with a bullet on the cover. The mailer said, "John Street would be a disaster when it comes to fighting crime." What was Weinberg saying here? Some could take the message as an encoded question of whether Street would be tough on black criminals. Implicitly, white voters were being urged to be fearful.
At the same time, select voters got a letter from former Fire Commissioner Joe Rizzo that made reference to "people like us." It was no secret whom Rizzo, the brother of Frank Rizzo, was referring to.
Or, how about the most naked of racial appeals in recent history - the 2001 Democratic primary for district attorney?
Relatively unknown Alex Talmadge Jr., an African American, had a platform attacking District Attorney Lynne Abraham, who is white, for requesting the death penalty too frequently, something she argued the law compelled her to do. And he attacked her for not being aggressive in prosecuting rogue cops who killed or framed African Americans. Again, something she vehemently disputed.
But he really got attention with an ad comparing Abraham to Eugene "Bull" Connor, the notorious Birmingham, Ala., police chief who in 1963 let club-wielding cops, vicious dogs and fire hoses loose on thousands of civil-rights demonstrators.
That $10,000 spent on the radio ad gave Talmadge $500,000 worth of free publicity, his political consultant D.A. Jones estimated, as other media picked up the story.
"If we hadn't done that, nobody would have heard of Talmadge," Jones said.
In the end, Talmadge captured 41 percent of the vote.
"No way that would have happened if we hadn't made it racial," Jones said.
Still, to this day Abraham thinks Talmadge's campaign was "low and mean-spirited." The sting of racial attacks lingers a long time, and the hurt and anger remain acute.
If racial tension is a sleeping beast politicians are willing to wake every few years for their own advancement, how big a shadow does it cast over the city?
That depends. Every few years, the fire that politicians play with so blithely seems to ignite in some neighborhood, often when one group tries to move onto another's turf.
In 1985, when a black couple tried to move into a house in Elmwood, 400 people, most of them white, demonstrated outside their home. The couple fled and someone torched their house.
In 1989, Kensington boiled over as Latinos moved to the other side of the El. By the end of that year, a white and a Latino boy had been killed in race-related street fights.
And in February 1997, whites attacked a black family in Grays Ferry. In April, protesters, predominantly black, marched in anger through the neighborhood as Rendell and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan pleaded for peace.
Judith Goode, one of the country's leading urban anthropologists, says racial animus is complex.
Her years of research in the city show that usually when people of different backgrounds have a chance to mix, they learn to work together and actually prefer a diverse environment. The problem is, the Temple University professor said, there aren't a whole lot of opportunities because in this city neighborhoods remain racially and economically isolated.
"So many City Council districts and state Senate districts are so dominated by one group or another, you can't make the group boundaries invisible," she said. "People are not forced to accommodate, to create all kinds of alliances on different interests across racial lines."
Her research among children in Olney, the city's most diverse neighborhood, showed that friendships crossed all barriers. When students went to high schools that seemed racially isolated, they felt uncomfortable and kept their social ties to neighborhood friends.
At the beginning of May the mayor's comments were still being discussed. The flap - which began in a statement of pride among friends and played so poorly before a larger, more diverse audience - is not over yet. That's because some people still feel excluded from employment and wealth, while others are having trouble holding on to what they have. And when anyone taps into that frustration and anxiety, he may not be able to control the results.
As Street himself said, "Anytime you say anything about race in this city, people's attention is gathered and sometimes in an unprecedented kind of way."
For Bernice Bricklin, of Roxborough, who is white, Street's comments weren't offensive, just terribly awkward.
"It's his lack of communication skills and it's not good for Philly," she said. "If he said it better, I would have said it was fine, and it would have been a real plus for Philadelphia."
Eight hundred miles south, in Atlanta, Candace Ringgold, who is African American, heard about the controversy on talk radio and e-mailed The Inquirer. She grew up in Southwest Philadelphia, and her father used to work for the city Health Department.
"This nation - if everyone wanted to be honest - was built on slave labor," she said. "Don't act like we are not entitled to a city!"
She thought Street's words were "harmless, and I thought people were taking it out of context. Since when is Philly so sensitive?" •
Plenty of food for thought.
The only mitigating factor in his otherwise dismal administration is that he and his staff have shown such laughable incompetence that little (good or far more likely, bad) has been accomplished.
In fact, when a crisis strikes (not directly of his own doing), it’s uncanny how often the mayor is “out of town”. It makes one suspect that he’s secretly kept in a hay filled crate in the bowels of city hall.
In the 2 ½ years to date, his legacy has been nothing but adding to the arsenal of his potential future opponent. In fact, when one looks at how close the city came to actually electing Sam Katz (fewer than 10,000 votes) on a day that featured all day rain, yet a remarkably high (some would say unbelievalby high) turn out.
Poll results from the Committee of Seventy
Could Philadelphia possibly elect a Republican Mayor? If so, we’ll have Big John to thank!
Owl _ Eagle
“Guns before butter.”
Whew! When the facade falls and plain words are spoken, it looks kind of ugly, doesn't it?
What? Where? A bit of South Philly west of Broad? Roxborough? Northeast?
"Entitled"??? Must be a liberal...
The truth of black racism in this country is indeed ugly. What is even more ugly is the truth of white narcosis when presented with it.
Oddly enough, the River Wards have been known to come out Republican when faced with the choice of a certifiable idiot like John Street. Also, while almost 100% democratic registered, the Italian Market area has been known to come out for the Right candidate (remember, it was widely thought that neo-Rep Frank Rizzo was going to give Rendell a run for his money in ’91). While historically, both areas tend to vote for pro-union Dems, they’re not beyond hope of redemption.
Hopefully a few more idiotic comments from Big John will assure us of enough registered turn out to offset the suspiciously high ones turned out by the criminal democratic machine.
Owl _ Eagle
“Guns before butter.”
An excellent point. The question is one that will assuredly produce a stammering response from a liberal who will in short order cite “different sensibilities”, “history of oppression”, and “comparing apples and oranges”. When posed to a member or supporter of such an organization, rest assured that after a long, scornful look the phrase “You just don’t get it” will be used to illuminate the pro-segregationalist side of the debate.
Owl _ Eagle
“Guns before butter.”
I worked for a company in Center City, and my colleagues and I would routinely schedule meetings and other activities for our other facilities outside the city, or work at home, so we could avoid the wage tax for the day...
And all to support the People's Republic of Filth-a-delphia, where bums, er, I mean John Street's constiutents, urinate on the streets and subways, and accost families in the shopping malls and tourist sites.
The Philadelphia Police air wing had it right - There were a whole lot more neighborhoods they should have bombed...
If everyone really wanted to be honest and factually- the whole country wasn't built on slave labor, the South certainly was, but that was destroyed for the most part.
I didn't realize the South was still in post - Civil War ruins
< / sarcasm >
WHAT?? ENTITLED!! Give me a break! The Constitution guarantees you life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; but it doesn't guarantee any entitlement to running a city.
This is what the democrat's have brought us to. They have instilled in black people this "entitlement" stuff by their incessent entitlement handouts.
If everyone really wanted to be honest and factually- the whole country wasn't built on slave labor, the South certainly was, but that was destroyed for the most part.
In fact, as Lou D aptly pointed out, the country IS being built on slavery- from the wage earner, being taxed to fund the parasites.
bandleader
Is He In Arrears With The IRS As Well?
Why, how could you make such a rashist comment about a fine African leader such as Mr. Big John Street? There is no public evidence that he is in arrears with the IRS, only PECO (the power company) and his school loans. And in all fairness to big John, he used his political clout to have the debts forgiven. A responsible role model, Takin’ care uh Bid’ness!
Owl _ Eagle
“Guns before butter.”
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