“You wanna run that by me again?”
That was my favorite line from Good Times, a situation comedy
about a poor Chicago family that I watched all the time when I was a kid.
The expression belonged to the father, James Evans, nobly played by John
Amos. Whenever his nitwit eldest son uttered some senseless remark, Evans
would invite him to rephrase it in more reasonable terms.
When I hear prominent folks make outlandish statements, I like to
imagine John Amos encouraging them to run it by him again. Two notable
Democrats recently conjured the ghost of James Evans for me: New Orleans
Mayor Ray Nagin, who borrowed a page from Pat Robertson’s book; and Hillary Clinton, who borrowed a page from Newt Gingrich.
Nagin told an audience that God wanted New Orleans to be rebuilt as a
“chocolate city,” then quickly – and wisely – backed off from that
wacky revelation. He has been under considerable stress lately, laboring at
a job that would challenge the most able of public servants.
Clinton, who likened the difficulties of Democratic members of Congress with those of slaves, has no such excuse.
At a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event at Harlem’s Canaan Baptist
Church of Christ, Clinton told the audience that the House of
Representatives “has been run like a plantation, and you know what I’m
talking about. It has been run in a way so nobody with a contrary view has
had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard.”
Who knew that failing to get one’s bills out of committee is roughly akin
to a life of endless toil for no pay, little rest and barely enough grub to
eat?
Gingrich made an equally preposterous statement back in 1994. As spokesman for an upstart group of ambitious House Republicans, Gingrich said of his Democratic rivals, “Since they think it is their job to run the plantation, it shocks them that I’m actually willing to lead the slave rebellion.”
Neither Clinton nor Gingrich are rocket scientists, and both on occasion pander to the worst instincts of their respective parties. How else to explain their willingness to compare a bunch of pampered, whiny political elites, members of the most powerful legislative body in the world, to captives who had no rights at all?
That either of them would liken their status to that of slaves would be surprising if not for the fact that mindboggling cluelessness is so deeply ingrained in congressional history. Next to firebrands such as “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman or Strom Thurmond, Clinton and Gingrich are soft-spoken paragons of reason.
Actually, American leaders’ fondness for spouting such absurdities is older than Congress. When writing the Fairfax Resolves, founding father (and slaveholder) George Mason pledged that the colonies “will use every
means which Heaven hath given us to prevent our becoming slaves.”
George Washington, Mason’s fellow Virginian, predicted that the
Revolutionary War would determine whether the “once happy and peaceful
plains of America are either to be drenched with blood or inhabited by
slaves.” Both men were talking about the British crown’s oppression of the
landed aristocracy, not the hundreds of Africans planting their crops and
powdering their wigs.
That unfortunate tradition doesn’t excuse Gingrich and Clinton from playing fast and loose with analogies. Clinton compounded her tastelessness by doing so while ostensibly honoring the legacy of Dr. King, a decision that reeks of the basest kind of political manipulation.
According to the eminent historian John Hope Franklin, the cotton
plantation “was the typical locale of the Negro slave.” He describes the
work done on such places in his classic book, From Slavery to Freedom.
In addition to picking an average of 150 pounds of cotton in a day, a
slave’s tasks included “splitting rails, carrying water, mending fences,
spreading fertilizer, breaking soil, and the like. Many slaves worked
not merely from sunrise to sunset, but frequently long after dark.”
Someone should send Clinton a copy of the book. Her calculated use of
racially charged code words – “You know what I’m talking about” – not
only condescends to black voters, but also disrespects their heritage.
At least as troubling, though, was the “thunderous applause” that
reportedly greeted Clinton’s remarks. Too bad. All that clapping likely
drowned out the sound of many thousands gone: countless slaves, rolling
over in their forgotten, unmarked graves.
A former reporter for the American, Jabari Asim is a columnist for the Washington Post. His e-mail address is asimj@washpost.com.