Michael Tracey: Al Sharpton, civil rights fraud
It’s no great shock when Al Sharpton’s antics send white conservatives into veritable rage spasms, but he’s finally ticked off the wrong crew.
Young black activists from Ferguson had trekked to Washington for Sharpton’s “National Justice for All” march last Saturday, only to find themselves relegated to the backdrop of what looked more like an MSNBC stage production than any genuine showing of grass-roots resistance.
“This whole thing is basically for media,” observed Leon Kemp, a St. Louis activist who tweets under the handle @WyzeChef. After “Black Twitter,” as it’s called, erupted into several days of heated talk about Sharpton’s co-optation, @WyzeChef added: “I didn’t have issue with Al Sharpton as a person. That has changed.”
The levee seemed to break once and for all Saturday evening when Sharpton’s daughter, Dominique, declared the event “Al Sharpton’s March” on Twitter. Though she quickly deleted the offending tweet, activists were already apoplectic.
Sharpton, it seems, has finally worn out his welcome among younger black leaders, who until now had at least been willing to tolerate his presence and the cameras that come with it.
That’s even as the rabble-rouser-turned-MSNBC-host now enjoys a level of access in the corridors of power once unimaginable, winning regular praise from and one-on-one time with the likes of President Obama, Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo.
For those on the right, Sharpton is a useful nuisance, if sometimes an infuriating one, who can be used as a cudgel against his powerful allies and a fund-raising driver for the conservative base.
But for the young black activists of Ferguson and New York, who have put their bodies on the line to foster a nationwide movement against police violence, Sharpton’s pernicious influence is much more acute, and damaging.
He puts on a status-quo-challenging performance for TV cameras while serving the Democratic Party establishment, which has no use for black street anger, and wishes to contain it lest our elected leaders, too, be implicated for enabling police malfeasance .
Sharpton's Washington rally, which drew U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan as the Obama administration's representative, even featured a VIP section for the reverend and his cronies.
When the high-profile Ferguson activist Johnetta Elzie attempted to speak, she was thwarted by National Action Network security personnel dispatched by Dominique.
Is that what grass-roots resistance looks like? The Ferguson cadre no longer thinks so. “This is a professional event. Not a protest. Rev. Al Sharpton, YOU TRIED IT,” tweeted @Nettaaaaaaaa.
Their grievances have been validated by some of the black intelligentsia. Eddie Glaude , a professor of religion and African-American studies at Princeton, tweeted exasperatedly, “Some of Sharpton’s people suggest that ego motivates the young people of Ferguson. Sharpton and ego are freaking synonyms!”
Of course, Sharpton’s march even never really made sense in the first place, except to bolster his own image. If he has the ear of Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, as he frequently boasts, why lead a march to demand change instead of picking up the phone?
Because he’s made a fine living for himself putting on a ritual show of first raising and then calming passions on behalf of his corporate and political patrons.
Of course, this process always pays handsomely for Sharpton, who — despite well-publicized snafus with the IRS — finally seems positioned to put his money problems behind him, given the bevy of corporate sponsorships his recent stardom has attracted. These riches were on full display in October at his decadent 60th birthday party at the Four Seasons Hotel, funded by the likes of AT&T and Walmart and attended by nearly every political power player in New York.
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