This is an interesting OpEd by a professor of economics at Brown University.
The author Glenn Loury (read his Brown University profile) pulls no punches in his first two paragraphs, but then goes on to explain why he makes these claims.
When I first heard that President Trump had gone after the Rev. Al Sharpton — and that Mr. Sharpton had responded in kind — I must admit that I laughed. Are there two New York City hustlers who deserve one another more?
But 48 hours later, I feel differently. That’s thanks to the leading Democratic candidates for president, who have rushed to Mr. Sharpton’s defense, extolling his supposed virtues as a civil-rights paragon while denouncing Mr. Trump’s attack as racist. In doing so, they have, yet again, taken Mr. Trump’s bait, handing him another easy victory while yoking themselves to a genuine bigot.
Here’s my take on this. If you aren’t familiar with the cases I reference you will have to read the OpEd or read my summaries on the bottom of this page.
There are certainly times when righteous indignation is called for when you have a public megaphone as Sharpton had back in the day starting with the Tawana Braley affair. Having this megaphone, as he did as a community leader without a national profile he expressed righteous outrage but he didn't make the effort to assure that he was right.
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This incident and its aftermath propelled Sharpton to national notoriety.
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By the time Crown Heights came alone he hadn't learned his lesson about being wrong with Brawley, instead he learned that his inflammatory rhetoric was effective. This was his modus operandi, or one could say his schtik, so four years later he used it again in the Fred Harari case.
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I see this through the lens of a psychotherapist putting myself in the place of a client who is someone who craves attention as a way of obtaining self-affirmation, like Trump and Don King who Sharpton is pictured with, there are people who need to validate themselves through others and those whose identity is based on internal factors including doing good and helping others without needing to be recognised for their altruism.
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Of course recognition by others is gratifying for anybody save someone worthy of sainthood. However someone who is evolved and psychologically healthy should engage in good works not for the glory and spotlight, but for the intrinsic rewards that come from devoting one's life or career to helping others. By HB
Above is the comment I put on the NY Times OpEd. I would add that I wish MSNBC had another black leader from the black community, whether a faith leader or not, who didn't carry the baggage Sharpton does. Those outside of New York City probably don't know how he staked out extreme positions and used divisive inflammatory language during his early days after several incidents and was viewed by many liberals as a huckster.
The three incidents, abbreviated from the OpEd:
- 1) The cases referenced: Tawana Brawley was 15-year-old African-American girl from the New York City who said she been abducted and repeatedly raped by six white men. She was found with “KKK” written across her chest, a racial epithet on her stomach and her hair smeared with feces. She was so traumatized, according to reports, that at the hospital she answered yes-or-no questions by blinking her eyes. Making the crime seem more vile she and her lawyers later claimed that two of the rapists were law enforcement officials. The only problem it turned out was that it was later discovered Brawley made up the whole thing.
- 2) The next incident describes is known as the Crown Heights affair. A Hasidic rabbi accidentally killed a black child which led to riots in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Sharpton led hundreds of protesters on a march at which there was a banner declaring, “Hitler did not do the job,” He let loose with a eulogy blaming “the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights,” and insisted that “the issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid.” He continued: “All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no kaffeeklatsch, no skinnin’ and grinnin’. Pay for your deeds.”
- 3) Four years later in 1995 Sharpton incited violence again. Fred Harari, a Jewish tenant of a retail property sought to evict his longtime subtenant, a black-owned record store. That August Sharpton led a series of marches against the planned eviction. He led protestors outside the store day after day and referred to Jews as “bloodsuckers” and threatened, “We’re going to burn and loot the Jews.” “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” In December a protester entered Harari’s store, told all the black customers to leave, shot several remaining customers and set the store on fire. The gunman fatally shot himself, and seven store employees died of smoke inhalation.
Much is being made of Vice President Biden not forthrightly being able to admit he was wrong in the past, and to a lesser extent Senator Kamala Harris has deflected attacks about some of the things she did as California attorney general. Also Corey Booker pretty much ignored Biden’s accusation about stop and frisk in Newark when he was mayor.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg has been refreshingly forthright in addressing the problems with policing in South Bend following a fatal police shooting.
Why do some people have so much trouble admitting to the error of their ways or deeds in the past, to saying those three seemingly simple words: I was wrong?
I find it difficult to believe people like this don’t know they made mistakes in the past, did things that in retrospect they wish they hadn’t. People like Sharpton, Biden, and Harris aren’t malignant narcissists like President Trump who never even admits to himself he was wrong and therefore will never utter those words.
Is it possible Sharpton, Biden and Harris and others think that admitting they were wrong is a sign of weakness, that it exposes a vulnerability that others will exploit? If this is the case I consider this a personality flaw, and being a psychotherapist I think they would benefit from doing some heavy duty introspection, whether they get therapy or not.
If you take God and spirituality out of the AA 12 steps you are left with these which I think everyone can benefit and grow from doing whether or not they have an addiction problem.
- Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
- Make a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admit it.
This is advice which a moral self-aware person who others have pointed out or suggested may have made bad decisions should take, and I am not even a reverend.
Afterthought:
If MSNBC wanted to give an African-American faith leader their own show, I’d suggest another one of their frequent guests, Rev. William Barber, left in 2013.
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Footnote — Tulsi Gabbard to Kamala Harris:
"Senator Harris says she's proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she'll be a prosecutor president.
"But I'm deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.
"She blocked evidence -- she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California. From CNN