TRY O. J. FOR THE CRIMES HE COMMITTED NOT THOSE FOR WHICH HE WAS ACQUITTED!

My cynicism regarding O. J. Simpson’s recent arrest in Las Vegas for violating the terms of his bail release was misplaced. I was all but certain that his bail would be permanently revoked and his re-arrest would be the beginning of the life sentence that so many White Americans wish on him. But the White judge fooled me when she released him after doubling his bail. The judge’s fairness is a sign that Simpson may have a chance at a fair trial. Simpson’s stupidity does not warrant much sympathy but even he has a right to be tried for the crimes he committed and not for those for which he has been acquitted.

“ARE WHITE LIBERALS HALTING BLACK DREAMS?”

The headline over Charles Krauthammer’s Washington Post article on Hillary Clinton’s comment that it took a president for Dr. Martin Luther King’s “dream” to be realized was “Are White Liberals Halting Black Dreams?” The headline raised my normal suspicion of White conservatives who defend Black folks by trashing White liberals but, after reading the article, it became clear to me that Krauthammer and I shared a common view. He wrote: “Forty years ago, that arrangement—white president enacting African-American dreams—was necessary because discrimination denied blacks their own autonomous political options. Today, that arrangement—white liberals acting as tribune for blacks in return for their political loyalty—is a demeaning anachronism. That’s what the fury at Hillary was all about, although no one was willing to say so explicitly…. The King-Johnson analogy is dead because the times are radically different. Today an African-American can be in a position to wield the emancipation pen—and everything else that goes along with the presidency, from making foreign policy to renting out the Lincoln Bedroom (if one is so inclined). Why should African-American dreams still have to go through white liberals?” Krauthammer is right. That old “devil’s” deal is all but dead. And liberals, whether running local Black agencies, local governments or Hillary for president of the mightiest nation in the world, are having a hard time letting go. So, our appreciation for “Bill and Hill” notwithstanding, Barrack Obama’s campaign symbolizes a welcome transition from liberal paternalism to Black self-determination, a transition that will eventually prove good for all of America.

YOU DON’T ASK WHITE OFFICERS TO TAKE A DNA TEST! WHY ASK BLACK OFFICERS?

Connecticut State police officials found an African-American hair at the scene of the murder of a White Mansfield woman and asked three veteran Black police officers, who had been the investigating officers on the scene, to take a DNA test to rule themselves out as a source of the hair. The Black officers refused, claiming discrimination, since White officers were not asked to take DNA tests under similar circumstances. The issue was not whether or not one of them was a suspect in the crime. The idea was to determine if the hair was real evidence of an outside killer or accidentally discarded hair from one of the Black officers. Nonetheless, it seems strange that White officers had never been asked to take the same test.

BARRACK OBAMA’S TIGHTROPE WALK

“When it comes to power, it’s fair to say, white people tend not to follow any black leader who doesn’t transcend race—that is, who doesn’t speak impeccable English and doesn’t act or dress like someone from the middle class. African-Americans, in turn, are cool to any aspiring leader who doesn’t speak in their vernacular, who goes against the civil rights orthodoxy, and who seems too close to the white man…. Both attitudes are toxic. The former is a latent, subtle expression of racism, as limiting as a black person’s physical appearance used to be under Jim Crow. The latter confines black people to a prison of our own creation—a rejection of the sort of multicultural fluency required of any leader in 21st century America.” (The Boston Globe’s deputy chief of its Washington Bureau, Joe Williams, writing in a January 13, 2008 column about the similarities of his run for high school president in a predominantly White school to Barrack Obama’s presidential campaign.)

A DREAM DEFERRED

Blacks are projected to lose 71.5 to 121.6 billion dollars to the subprime mortgage meltdown. Combined with losses among Hispanics it is the greatest loss of wealth for communities of color in modern U.S. history. No wonder! Blacks got 54.7 percent of all high-cost mortgages issued nationwide even though African-Americans represent just 13.4% of the U.S. population. And the income level of the borrowers did not matter. Among upper income buyers 54.4% of Blacks received high-cost loans compared with only 16.4% of White borrowers.

I APOLOGIZE!

New Jersey will become the first northern state to apologize for slavery, if its legislature has its way. It joins four southern states, Maryland, Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia. New Jersey had one of the largest populations of captive Africans in the Northern colonies, was the last Northern state to pass an emancipation law (1804), and was also one of the few Northern states to sanction the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required Free states to return runaway slaves to their owners. It will be nice to see apologies from states where the big money was made on slavery, such as Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island, to name a few.

TAKING?

It will be interesting to watch how the folks who claim to be upset about the Mason Square Library takeover respond to the move to retake it by eminent domain. From a legal perspective, of course it can eventually be taken, though not without a prolonged fight. The real test is a test of will, meaning whether or not those involved have the political will to launch and sustain the battle. City Councilor Timothy Rooke seems to have the “political,” but those who claim to have the “will,” while still clamoring about those phantom “Black leaders” who haven’t reclaimed the real estate, have remained strangely silent about an eminent domain battle.

SPRINGFIELD POLITICS IS STRANGE!

It appears that City Councilor Rosemarie Mazza-Moriarty is not going to get a plum job in the school department, which means former City Councilor Morris Jones, tenth place finisher in the last municipal election, is not going to fill Mazza-Moriarty’s council seat. And Bud Williams knew what he was talking about when he said he was going to serve another term as city council president, which also means, of course, that he will also serve on the Springfield Finance Control Board. We are all still waiting to see who is running the city and the controversy over who will be our next police commissioner hasn’t helped. While the Control Board has launched a national search, new Mayor Sarno, who sits on the search committee, in a letter to The Republican has reaffirmed that he has already made his selection. It seems fair to say that Mazza-Moriarty will not be anointed, Mo Jones is disappointed, Bud Williams has been reappointed, and city government is disjointed.

PALMER TO DOUBLE IN SIZE

If a casino is built in Palmer, it is projected that Palmer’s taxable real estate will double in size from 1 billion to 2 billion dollars. And, that is without factoring in the rise in current property values that will occur when property speculators are reasonably certain that Governor Patrick’s casino proposal will make it past the legislature.

IT’S ALMOST TOO PAINFUL TO REPORT!

A Journal of American Medical Association study of 150,000 emergency room visits over 13 years revealed that doctors prescribed less pain killers to Black patients than to White patients in both urban and rural hospitals all over the country and for every type of pain. Speculation is that doctors harbor the biased belief that Black folks will abuse prescription drugs more than White folks even though studies show that Blacks are the least likely group to abuse prescription drugs. In the study, opiod narcotics were prescribed in 31% of the pain-related visits by White folks, 28% by Asians, 24% by Hispanics and 23% by Blacks. By way of example, in more than 2,000 visits for kidney stones, Whites got narcotics 72% of the time, Hispanics 68%, Asians 67% and Black folks only 56% of the time. Of all the documented discrimination in medicine reported in this column, this one is almost too painful to report.