Van Jones Talks about Sherrod, President Obama and Race

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

In March, 2009 President Obama named attorney and environmental activist Van Jones, Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. It didn’t last. 6 months later he was out. He resigned after rightwing bloggers spurred by Fox talk show hatchet man Glenn Beck smeared him his for his activist past.
The White House took much criticism for quickly accepting Jones resignation, and not fighting back against the rightwing attack on Jones. In an exclusive interview with The Hutchinson Report, Jones talks about the parallels to his resignation and the pressure to resign on Shirley Sherrod, the power of the right wing smear machine, and President’s Obama’s caution on race.


EOH: The attack on Shirley Sherrod was very similar to the rightwing attack on you. You both were forced to resign, and your names were drug through the mud. What was your reaction to her forced resignation?

VJ: I had great sympathy for her. I know what it’s like to go from being a relatively anonymous government worker to then find yourself in the middle of a media firestorm. There was a difference though. I was an activist in the Bay Area. I was an easy target. But Mrs. Sherrod was like Rosa Parks. She was pure as the driven snow. She emerged as a force for healing.
But we’re also in a different media environment today. You don’t have old gatekeepers of truth and objectivity you once had in the media. You now have people who are deliberately distorting information, pumping viruses into the body politic and creating confusion. This is not just an attack on individuals. It’s an attack on democracy.

EOH: President Obama in his apology statement to Sherrod hinted at the power of the right wing smear machine to set an agenda of fear. But are they succeeding?

VJ: There is great power there. But the plus to that is that there is a pushback. So the next time someone deliberately distorts and doctors a tape, or disinformation. There will be those in the media that will say let’s slow down and take a closer look before we go public. In my case, the lies about me, that he’s an ex-convict, a communist, had been imprinted with the public by the right-wing. And by the time we could respond with the truth, the media had already moved on.

EOH: President Obama overreacted initially to the doctored tape of Sherrod when he supported her forced resignation. My concern is that this could happen again.

VJ: The Obama Administration is not full of dumb people. It was a learning experience for them. The bigger problem though is that Andrew Breitbart and those like him that distort and create distraction deliberately in essence will win if they prevent us from talking about jobs, energy and the environment crisis, and other crucial people’s concerns. These are the issues that really matter and for which Republicans have no answers. We also over obsess about what Obama is going to say or do on an issue or events which he often has absolutely no control over.

EOH: President Obama has been repeatedly challenged to frontally address the issue of race, even hold a much talked national racial dialogue. Should he?

VJ: We do need the dialogue. Race is an issue that will not go away. Many whites are fearful that they are becoming a minority in some places in the country. They are beginning to react. On the other hand, there are millions of whites who strongly oppose racism, but they are silent. Blacks are uneasy about continuing discrimination, and many Hispanics are disillusioned over the failure of the Obama Administration on immigration. If we are going to have a national dialogue on race we’ll have to learn to listen to all sides.

Jesse Jackson Fouls Out on Lebron and Race

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Jesse Jackson should be slapped with a sixth foul and a fast ejection from the Lebron James game. Jackson should get the much deserved boot for shoving race into an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with race. Jackson likened Cleveland Cavs owner Dan Gilbert’s much publicized open letter tirade against James for jumping ship in Cleveland to treating James as a “runaway slave.” Jackson’s race card sound bite would have gotten a splashy news note if he had stopped there. But Jackson couldn’t let it go at that. He demanded that the league chastise Gilbert for his James outburst. That’s hyperbole and neither Gilbert, the NBA, nor James bothered to dignify the inanity with a response.

Jackson didn’t bother to explain how a slave, let alone a runaway slave, can orchestrate their own media self-coronation. Or, how a slave can have the entire sports media genuflect in front of him, shove the BP spill, financial reform bill, and looming immigration reform debate, and the Oscar Grant shooting case verdict off the front page for a day. Nor did he say, how a slave can get a president, a slew of senators, and congresspersons, and Florida’s governor to gush on about the importance of James’s announcement. And certainly, no slave can turn an entire city (Miami) gaga over his decision to head their way, and stir excitement that he will create jobs, boost tourism, and business revenues to the tune of tens of millions dollars for an entire region.

The Jackson race play with James was more than a desperate grab to snatch a moment of media limelight. That could easily be flicked aside and forgotten. But Jackson is still regarded in some circles as the bellwether for black opinion. That’s not a good thing since much of the media is still profoundly conditioned to believe that all blacks think, act and sway to the same racial beat. They freely use the words and deeds of the chosen black leader as the standard for African-American behavior. When the beleaguered chosen one makes a real or contrived misstep, he or she becomes the whipping boy among many whites, and blacks are blamed for being rash, foolhardy, irresponsible and prone to shuffle the race card on every social ill that befalls them.

Jackson’s twist of the James flight from Cleveland into an issue of black victimization fits that bill. The issue in the James wildly inflated media overkill saga is the media’s insatiable thirst to make athletes and entertainers demi-gods, turn millions of fans and even the disinterested into celebrity peeping toms, and then cash in on the ratings surge (and of course increased advertising revenue) from the hype.

James understands how the media hype game is played, and simply elevated himself to a pedestal higher than the other athlete demi-gods with his self- celebratory ESPN special. To Jackson, these are all mere trifles. What counted was that he got a chance to pop off on the one and only issue that was guaranteed to get a dab of media ink, namely James and race. He deserves the bench for that.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Will Race Trip up Rand Paul Too?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Kentucky GOP senate candidate Rand Paul may or may not learn what his father Ron learned. And that’s when you pop off on the always thorny issue of race there’s a consequence. The horrid thing is that the consequence might not be the same for Rand as it was for dad. The senior Paul and his backers went apoplectic during presidential campaign 2008 when it was amply and correctly pointed out that Ron Paul’s official newsletter was stuffed with oft color unabashed racial jibes and barbs. It bashed Martin Luther King Jr. as a "pro-Communist philanderer." It declared that the 1992 L.A. riots petered out “when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks." And it branded black males as "the criminals who terrorize our cities -- in riots and on every non-riot day.” And then assured the reason for that is they were genetically engineered “to hate whites and to steal and loot as much money from the white enemy as possible."

An outraged Ron Paul vehemently denied that he uttered the vile racial slurs and claimed that he did not know they were said or written by him or anyone else in his camp. The colossal problem with his denial was that the racial bile appeared in his officially approved newsletters. There was no evidence then or later that he wrote a correction, issued a clarification, or even as he hinted they were written by someone else, and, if so, that he publicly disavowed and fired that someone else.
Ron Paul had to denounce the racially loaded quips in 2008 because for a brief moment he was deliriously embraced by thousands as the populist alternative to the supposedly hopelessly corrupt, bought and paid for, corporate interest Democrat and Republicans presidential candidates. Paul’s fanatic backer’s mix of blind adulation and desperation meant more media and public scrutiny than Paul had ever gotten. That in turn meant that his past, or alleged past words, were now wide open for public dissection and accountability. The senior Paul knew that he had to indignantly deny he wrote or uttered anything that could be construed as fanning racial bigotry. The issue quickly faded mostly because Paul’s presidential candidacy quickly faded.

Things may be different with Rand. There’s his widely quoted smoking gun interview with the Louisville Courier Journal in which he blew off the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a slap against private businesses’ right to racially discriminate. He had a second and third chance to eat his words in two separate interviews after his primary win. He blew both. He did the obligatory disavowal of racism, but did not back away from his belief that the Civil Rights Act went way too far in telling private businesses that they couldn’t racially discriminate. Junior Paul, unlike dad, is suddenly a national figure and counted on by legions of revved up tea party activists to carry the party flag into battle against President Obama. Rand hasn’t disappointed. He made it clear that he’ll pound Obama and his agenda at every turn.
Even if Rand, as his dad, didn’t trash the Civil Rights Act, his odd mish mash of ultra conservatism and libertarian pronouncements would mark him as racially suspect. A cornerstone of the jumble is his view of government and what it should or should not do about civil rights. Rand, as Ron, holds that government should have minimal or better still no role in civil rights laws and enforcement. The government passed and enforced civil rights laws, did nothing to solve the country's racial ills, and worse, fueled even more racial polarization, he says. That old, worn, and thoroughly discredited view warms the hearts of the packs of closet bigots who pine for the old days when racial and gender discrimination was the American norm and government did little to protect black and gay rights.

Rand pretty much said the same thing in the Courier-Journal interview. Any other time and place in recent American politics that would instantly make him unfit to hold any state or national office. And those who defend his view would be branded as bigots and crackpots. But this is not any other time or place. Rand, unlike Ron, has the most inviting and vulnerable target in President Obama to level his fire at. He has the cheers and backing of untold numbers who share his belief that the President is leading the country to social and financial ruin. They will do everything they can to drive him from the White House.

If Rand and company have to reach back nearly half a century and dredge up a monumental piece of legislation that totally remade the racial map in America to fire up the faithful, then so be it. After all, why let a little thing like racial bigotry trip a Paul up. Ron tipped around it. Rand will do the same. The frightening thing is that he may get away with it.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Obama Makes it Official: He’s African-American

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

President Obama unequivocally and unhesitatingly made it official: he’s African-American. That may sound silly and facile to say that but his checking the box “African-American” on his census form did two things. It made meaningless the incessant chatter of whether Obama should be called mixed race or African-American. It recognized the hard and unchanging reality that race relations and conflict in America are still framed in black and white. The one-drop rule in America renders anyone with even a trace of African ancestry in their genealogy as black. The delusion that calling oneself mixed race, no matter how light complexioned they are, will not earn them a pass from the lash of racial persecution.


Obama has never gotten a pass despite having one of the world’s most recognizable names and faces and power positions. As other blacks, he could fume at being bypassed by taxis, racially profiled by police on street corners, refused being showed an apartment by landlords, followed in stores by security guards, denied a loan for his business or home purchase, confined to living in a segregated neighborhood, or passed over for a corporate management position.

The roughly six million or 2 percent of Americans who checked the biracial census box may take comfort trying to be racially precise, but most also tell of their own bitter experience in feeling the sting of racial bigotry in the streets and workplace. Obama has related his racial awakening in his best selling bare-the-soul autobiography “Dreams from My Father.” He self-designated himself as African-American, and took pride in that then, and that hasn’t changed.

A mere check of the biracial designation on his census form would not spare Obama from any of the routine petty racial harassments and annoyances – the subtle and outright forms of discrimination. The biracial box is a feel-good, paper designation that has no validity in the hard world of American race politics. The venom and relentless, vile that From the moment The instant that Obama tossed his hat in the presidential ring in February 2007, and through his relentless, hyper pressurized presidential battles, the vile, venomous, racial pounding has been non-stop. The Joker Posters, the Confederate and Texas Lone Star flags, the racial taunts, digs, cracks, insults, and slurs, the ape and monkey depictions of he and First Lady Michelle on tens of thousands of web sites is horrid testament that even a president is not exempt from racial loathing, bi-racial or not.

Despite the real and feigned color-blindness of many voters, nearly 60 percent of whites still did not vote for him. Most based their opposition to him on Republican political loyalties, ties, regional and personal preferences. But a significant minority of white voters did not for him because he's black, and they did not hide their feelings about that in exit polls in the Democratic primaries and the general election. Tagging him as multiracial or biracial made absolutely no difference to them, let alone changes their perception that he was black.

Even though Obama has never called himself anything but African-American, and now has made it official on the census form, the sideshow debate over whether Obama is the black president or the biracial president still creeps up. The debate is even more nonsensical since science has long since debunked the notion of a pure racial type. In America, race has never been a scientific or genealogical designation, but a political and social designation. Anyone with the faintest trace of African ancestry was and still is considered black and treated accordingly.

Blacks were ecstatic over Obama's candidacy and his presidential win. They were unabashed in saying that they backed him with passion and fervor because he is black. Many would not have cheered him with the same passion if he touted himself as a mixed race candidate.

The thrill and pride for them was that a black man could beat the racial odds and climb to the political top; substituting biracial for black would not have had the same meaning or significance to blacks. The talk about Obama being anything other than black infuriates many blacks. Their anger is legitimate. If Obama doesn’t run from his black identity then the biracial card appears as a naked effort to snatch Obama’s history-making presidency from them. It’s also an implicit denial that an African American can have the right stuff – the smarts, talent and ability to excel in any arena.

Obama’s presidency was and still is a significant step forward for black and white relations in America, not mixed-race relations. The nagging racial slights and indignities that many African Americans suffer, and the racial ridicule that Obama is routinely subjected too, is an eternal reminder that race still does matter, and matters a lot to many Americans. Obama’s self-designation of himself as African-American made what’s painfully obvious official.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His nationally heard talk show is on KTYM-AM 1460 AM Los Angeles, Fridays 9:30 AM and KPFK Pacifica Radio 90.7 Los Angeles, Saturdays Noon PST.

Good Reason Blacks Give Obama A Racial Pass

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The undeniable fact is that President Obama has gotten a racial pass from blacks. This tormenting fact ignited brief finger pointing between the Reverend Al Sharpton and talk show host Tavis Smiley. It’s hardly the first time that blacks publicly and more often privately have wrung their hands over Obama’s absolute unwillingness to say and do more for blacks. This prompts even more hand wringing over why blacks still give him an irrevocable pass. The hand wringing is as pointless as the demand for Obama to embrace a black agenda. It’s not going to happen, in fact it can’t happen.
Obama etched that in stone from the first day of his presidential campaign. In his candidate declaration speech in Springfield, Illinois in February 2007, he made only the barest mention of race. The focus was on change, change for everyone. He had little choice. The institution of the presidency, and what it takes to get it, demands that racial typecasting be scrapped. Obama would have had no hope of winning the Democratic presidential nomination, let alone the presidency, if there had been any hint that he embraced the race-tinged politics of Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. His campaign would have been marginalized and compartmentalized as merely the politics of racial symbolism.

Obama will cling tightly to the centrist blueprint Bill Clinton laid out for a Democratic presidential candidate to win elections, and to govern after he won. The blueprint requires that the Democratic presidential candidate tout a strong defense, the war against terrorism, a vague plan for winding down the Iraq War, while escalating the Afghan conflict, mild proposals to control greenhouse emissions, limited tax reform for the middle class, a cautious plan for affordable health care, pro business solutions to joblessness, and make only the most genteel reproach of Wall Street, and then stick to this script once in the Oval Office. Race talk is nowhere to be found on a Democratic president’s must list. The only time that changed was midway through Clinton’s second term. With no reelection cares, Clinton made a mild, tepid, public relations glossed stab at setting up a race panel to talk about the plight of black America. The panel talked, and talked and talked some more, made a few half hearted recommendations for change, and then promptly forgot about them.

But that didn’t matter. Blacks still swooned, gushed, and reveled in the Clinton magic and mystique. In polls, he ranked even higher than Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan as the “black” leader blacks most liked. It’s no different with Obama. He’s a Democrat. For the past half century a Democratic presidential candidate has been guaranteed an automatic 85 to 90 percent of the black vote. Blacks have been the party’s loyalist foot soldiers even as blue collar whites, and a significant number of Latinos, and Asians defected to the GOP. The withering assault from assorted racists, kooks, cranks, zanies, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, tea baggers, and GOP ultra conservatives further guarantees that blacks fear if they utter the most bland and meek criticism it will give aid and comfort to the enemy, and earn a slap as a race traitor.

But Blacks also sincerely want him to succeed. That’s not solely out of a mix of race pride, the eternal thirst for positive black male role models, and his eloquence. They’re fervently convinced that he truly has their interests at heart, and even though he can’t spout a “black agenda” he’ll work hard, quietly, behind the scenes to improve conditions for the black poor and needy. Then there’s the horrific alternative of a GOP takeover. Blacks are in stark terror that a resurgent GOP will mean a sink back to greater impoverishment, political disempowerment, racial polarization, and even racial violence.

Obama has repeatedly protested to the black critics that he’s not the black president, but the president. He’s pulled and tugged hard by corporate and defense industry lobbyists, the oil and nuclear power industry, government regulators, environmental watchdog groups, conservative family values groups, conservative GOP senators and house members, foreign diplomats and leaders. They all have their priorities and agendas and all vie hard to get White House support for their pet legislation, or to kill or cripple legislation that threatens their interests.
If he gives the company store to Wall Street, waters down health care reform, and further bloats a bloated military, that’s the price anyone who sits behind the desk in the Oval Office, must pay to govern. The rules of presidential governance demand no less. Sharpton, the NAACP, Urban League, and the Congressional Black Caucus, have at times lightly chided Obama to do and say more for blacks, but they’re also realists. They’ll push him to work through the back door to increase spending and expand education, health care, and job creation programs for blacks. That’s more than enough reason they and most other blacks are willing to give him a racial pass.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His nationally heard talk show is on KTYM-AM 1460 AM Los Angeles, Fridays 9:30 AM and KPFK Pacifica Radio 90.7 Los Angeles, Saturdays Noon PST.

Matthews May Have Almost Forgot Obama Was Black But Many Others Haven’t

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Chris Matthews got a mini-version of the Harry Reid treatment for his honest slip that he almost forgot Obama was black when he watched him during the State of the Union Speech. Matthew’s operative word is not black but “almost.” But it really wouldn’t have made much difference if Matthews had dropped the almost. The meaning, or at least the thought behind it, would still have been the same. Matthews just couldn’t stop thinking about race when Obama spoke.

Can’t be too hard on him, though, for his foot-in-the mouth blurt. Matthews, as Reid, simply muttered an uncomfortable but tormenting reality for Obama; and that’s that Obama’s presidency, eloquence, political acumen, and still sky high personal likeability has not buried thoughts about Obama and race in the skulls of many.
The racial pillorying of the president has been ruthless and relentless. There are countless active anti-Obama websites filled with demeaning racist cartoons, depictions, characterizations and racially poisonous verbal bashes and attacks. The sites have received millions of hits and posts—almost all unflattering.
The digs have worked. Polls show that a majority of Republicans and a significant percent of other respondents still think there's something to the charge that Obama is an illegal alien. On the eve of Obama’s State of the Union Address, and fully one year after his election, a California Field Poll found that, fully one-third of Californians nation's most populous state are not satisfied that Obama was U.S.-born. More than ten percent have convinced themselves that he's a Constitution-violating foreigner and nearly one-quarter aren’t sure.
The silly talk about a post-racial America after Obama’s presidential win was not merely exercises in self-delusion, honest wish and hope, or deliberately disinformed media chatter. Race, Obama or no, is and continues to be America's oldest, deepest and touchiest issue. Politicians know it. And they can subtly work the race card to inflame passions, deepen divisions, and bag votes. Or they can ignore it and hope that it goes away, at least until the votes are counted. With presidential candidates, and as we’ve seen with Obama in the White House, race has been a taboo subject for presidents and their challengers on the campaign trail for the past two decades. No president or presidential challenger, especially a Democrat, can risk being tarred as pandering to minorities for the mere mention of racial problems.

The double standard on race is troublesome to Obama. He backpedalled fast from his first, and impulsive, quip that the white Cambridge officer who man handled and cuffed Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates was out of line. The reaction to Obama’s Gate’s defense was savage and the backlash momentarily sent his poll numbers down. When the Congressional Black Caucus saber rattled Obama in December with the threat of voting against one of his financial reform measures if he didn’t do more to help black businesses and the black unemployed, Obama was unfazed. He told an interviewer that he would not do anything special to help blacks. He had too. He has one eye always nervously fixed on public opinion. The Gates flap reminded him again in no uncertain terms that race is a deadly minefield that can blow up at any time and the explosion can fatally harm him, his image, and his presidency.

But polls, white voter wariness over race and Obama's nervous eye on them can't magically make racial issues disappear. In each of its annual State of Black America reports the past decade the National Urban League found rampant discrimination and gaping economic disparities between Latinos and whites in every area of American life. In the past decade, the income, and education performance gaps between blacks and Latinos and whites have only marginally closed, or actually widened. Discrimination remains the major cause of the disparities.

Shunting race to the back burner of presidential campaigns invariably means that presidents shunt them to the backburner of their legislative agenda. Yet, presidents have not been able to tap dance around racial problems. Reagan's administration was embroiled in affirmative action battles. Bush Sr.'s administration was tormented by urban riots following the beating of black motorist Rodney King. Clinton's administration was saddled with conflicts over affirmative action, police violence and racial profiling. W. Bush's administration was confronted by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, voting rights, reparations, and affirmative action battles, gang violence, and failing inner city public schools.
The pile of racial or race leaden problems that always lurk just under the surface haven’t and won’t go kapoof and vanish. Matthews’s “almost forgot” crack about Obama’s blackness was just one more reminder from a windy, and obnoxious, talking head of that.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is, How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).

Even the King of Pop Stirs Racial Divide

Earl Ofari Hutchinson


The first nasty inkling that even the King of Pop can stir the racial divide came with the the Mt. Everest size list of postings on blogs, chat rooms, and websites the week after the death of icon Michael Jackson. The comments ranged from mild rebuke to pure venom in which the writers dredged up all the old drug, child molestation, and other dirt digs on Jackson. In many cases they explicitly took big racial swipes at Jackson, papa Joe Jackson, and Jackson family members. Then there was the inevitable instant poll taken days after his death to measure just how popular Jackson really was with Americans.
A CNN poll found that a bare majority of Americans were thrilled by the Pop King. But as always buried in the numbers was the racial kicker. The overwhelming majority of African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians hailed Jackson. A decisive majority of whites, especially older whites, said that Jackson had no appeal to them. The age factor in the line in the sand on Jackson is to be expected. Though Jackson at the time of his death was uncomfortably ensconced as a middle-age pop star on the rebound, his music, dance and style appeal to the young and hip.

But age alone doesn’t explain the top heavy racial split. A majority of older blacks in informal surveys and interviews clearly like Jackson, if not solely for his music, for smashing musical and racial barriers in his artistry, in defying Sony and MTV and demanding top money and billing for his music, and for the role he played in opening the doors for other black artists. They remember a few years back when he marched on and picketed Sony with Al Sharpton in tow and his blasts at it as a racist institution. This tagged him in their eyes as a black man ready to challenge the corporate musical establishment. The snickers and wisecracks that Jackson had betrayed his racial roots by remaking himself as a whitish, cartoon caracture didn’t cut much ice with most blacks.
Jackson is no Mike Tyson, O.J. Simpson, or Michael Vick. There would never be a gaggle of sportswriters, talking head commentators, and pundits heaping every pejorative that they could think of on his head. Jackson’s innate sweetness, childlike innocence, vulnerability, and his big hearted charitable giving insulated him from that type of vilification. Yet, none of this is enough to obliterate the tint of race from Jackson.
There are some distinct markers that Jackson has beyond age and musical tastes that send a racial signal up. He lived an opulent and princely lifestyle. This always engenders grumbles and resentment in some quarters.There was a widespread rush to judgment during his child molestation trial that he was guilty of the terrible things that he was charged with. His clean and full acquittal didn’t totally wipe the smear away. And he is an African-American male.

This can’t be cavalierly shrugged off. The finger point at President Obama as the supreme example to refute any charge that black males are still routinely stereotyped, negatively typecast, and reviled is not a compelling argument that the old the racial myths have totally vanished. During and after the Presidential campaign, polls consistently showed that while Obama got a high likeability rating from a big majority of whites, many whites still clung tightly to the ancient negative, stereotypical fears of black males and strongly questioned their work ethnic and competence. Though Obama did soften the racial barrier when the final vote was in, he didn’t demolish it. The majority of whites still voted against him.
Jackson found out the hard way that at the first touch of legal taint that fan adulation, goodwill, and fame can vanish faster than a Houdini disappearing act. Long before he touched a toe in the courtroom, much of the old racial typecasting of black males when the allegation is a sexual crime quickly kicked in. The aquittal prompted more finger wags that Jackson was able to use his fame and name, and his A team, high priced attorneys to massage the legal system to skip away scot free.
While Jackson, unilike O.J. Simpson, was not a public pariah and polarizing figure, for a time he was damaged goods. The ill fated 50 city concert tour was a monumental risk and a gamble, given his tattered image.
Millions will hail Jackson at his public memorial tribute. They will continue to hail him for his enduring world class music and artistry. But sandwiched in between this some will continue to pick, probe and nag at him for his alleged drug use and addiction, and oddity. Jackson likely will never get a complete pass in death from the negative stuff. Sadly this comes with the turf when the racial divide inevitably rears its ugly head; even for the King of Pop.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com

No Race Card This Time for O.J.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

O.J. Simpson and his attorney loudly complained that the jury in his Las Vegas robbery trial has no blacks on it. But there was never much doubt that it would. That’s the kind of jury that most minority defendants get in Clark County courts. He’s fortunate though that he did get two black juror alternates. Only 5% of the potential jurors among the 500 in the Simpson juror panel were blacks. African Americans make up about 10 percent of Clark County's population.

But even if blacks were on his jury, it wouldn’t much change the fact that this time around there is no race card to play. In the first trial, black and white tongues endlessly wagged and fingers furiously pointed about whether Simpson was a victim of racial persecution in his double murder trial. Polls taken immediately after Las Vegas prosecutors hit Simpson with multi charges showed that the racial divide was a marginal issue.

Oh, there were still more than a few African-Americans who complained that an African-American can’t get a fair trial in any court in America. They even said that was the case with Simpson in Las Vegas. However, there is no hint that blacks are willing to expend an ounce of emotional capital railing that Simpson is a victim of a racist system. Virtually none of the prospective jurors, blacks and whites, uttered anything about race during the jury selection process.

Too much has changed in the decade since the ill-fated trial of the century for that to happen. At the center of that change is Simpson himself; or rather his antics. He hasn’t exactly been the picture of the humble, empathetic, fade into the woodwork former sports icon, and much vilified double murder suspect. Simpson has had multiple encounters with the police and courts, been sued, and has appeared to take every opportunity he could to thumb his nose at the civil court that found him liable for the death of Ron Goldman and his ex-wife and slapped him with a multi-million dollar judgment.

This hardly does much to win Simpson friends let alone convince anyone that he was indeed the victim of a malicious, racist prosecution. Then there are the Las Vegas charges.

There's absolutely no evidence that Simpson was framed or that Las Vegas police licked their chops at the thought of getting him back in a legal noose. He was at the hotel, the goods were taken, and a robbery complaint was filed. There is no evidence that police in any of the cities that Simpson traveled to peddling sports cards and memorabilia routinely subjected him to a special get-Simpson profile. The best or worst that can be said is that Las Vegas prosecutors have taken great pains not too give any hint that they are giving him any special treatment because of his celebrity status. If anything they may be piling the extra heavy felony charges on him precisely not to give the impression of celebrity favoritism.

But then again Simpson of all people should have known that any allegation of his involvement in a crime he'd get the fast collar. That still has everything to do with his murder trial acquittal. Polls still show that a majority of the public think that he is a murderer who skipped away scot-free, and that the trial and his acquittal were a farce and a blatant travesty of justice.

Simpson didn't invent or originate this sometimes ugly divide in public opinion about celebrity guilt. It has always lurked just beneath the surface. But his case propelled it to the front of public debate and anger. The horde of Simpson media commentators, legal experts and politicians that branded the legal system corrupt fueled public belief that justice is for sale. His acquittal seemed to confirm that the rich, famous and powerful have the deep pockets to hire a small army of high-priced, high-profile attorneys, expert witnesses, experts and investigators that routinely mangle the legal system to stall, delay, drag out their cases and eventually allow their well-heeled clients to weasel out of punishment. Even when prosecutors manage to win convictions against celebrities such as Paris Hilton or Lindsey Lohan, their money, fame, power and legal twisting often guarantee that they will get a hand slap jail sentence, if that.

Whether the police did rush to judgment as Simpson claims -- and there's some wiggle room to debate the magnitude of the charges -- the chatter from most is that a killer is finally getting at least some of his due. Others will say that even Simpson can be a victim of a vindictive and unforgiving criminal justice system. The truth as always may lie somewhere between the two views.

But one thing is certain; race isn’t on the table of public opinion this time around. That’s not a bad thing.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson wrote Beyond O.J.: Race, Sex and Class Lessons for America. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).