D.C. Councilman Marion Barry’s racist election night attack on Asian businesses underscored why he is bad for Ward 8 and for the city. He is a divisive personality.
Let’s review: He said, “We got to do something about these Asians coming in and opening up businesses and dirty shops. They ought to go. But we need African-American businesspeople to be able to take their places too.”
If someone white or Asian had said that about blacks, Barry would have screamed discrimination while the two reverends — Jesse Jackson Sr. and Al Sharpton — led a march down Pennsylvania Ave., demanding action from the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. You know that’s the truth.
Racial discrimination isn’t the sole domain of whites, however. Blacks also can own some of that territory.
I embrace a post-racial, culturally diverse America; too many people I knew and admired died trying to realize that dream.
Fortunately, I am not alone. Hundreds of District residents and elected officials — Mayor Vincent C. Gray, Chairman Kwame R. Brown and Ward 6’s Tommy Wells — slammed Barry. Local and national Asian organizations — among them, the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of the Greater Washington D.C. area, the Network of South Asian Professionals, and the Asian American Action Fund — also expressed disgust.
Here’s what’s puzzling: If Barry was so concerned about the “deplorable” state of Asian businesses, why didn’t he meet with them? Why didn’t he ask the city’s small business administration for assistance?
“That’s exactly what Councilman Jim Graham did with Latino and Asian businesses on Park Rd.,” Chuck Thies, a co-host of WPFW’s D.C. Politics, reminded me recently.
Barry could be a character from some Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel: A peripatetic politician shuffling through city hall, making pronouncements he delusively thinks profound and sacred. He’s supported by generals of questionable distinction — Vernon Hawkins and Sandy Allen, for example — and 4,500 people who predictably vote for him every four years — although he has done nothing to improve their lives except replay old black and white movies.
The candidate I supported in the primary lost. But, it’s not too late for Ward 8 residents to effect a leadership change. The November General Election is another opportunity. Surely there is someone of good standing who can galvanize more than 6,000 voters.
Barry eventually offered an apology for his “choice of words” and for “any harm I may have caused.” But he remained dissatisfied by a “number of Asian-owned neighborhood stores and carry-outs in Ward 8 that sell only highly caloric food and, that unlike some Asian businessmen in Ward 8, don’t reach-out to neighborhood groups, make financial contributions to the neighborhood, or help young people in the neighborhood improve their quality of life.”
Eugene Dewitt Kinlow, the other D.C. Politics host and a Ward 8 resident, speaking on News Talk Friday, offered this persuasive explanation for the entire episode: Barry was upset because several Asians businesses provided financial contributions to his opponents — not him.
It’s only about Barry — all the time.
Jonetta Rose Barras’s column appears on Monday and Wednesday. She can be reached at [email protected].
