Harlem, New York
Last Monday night was like any other here in Harlem — or it would have been, were it not for all the white people. On a typical day, you won’t see too many of them strolling the boulevards past the Fubu clothing billboards, hair-braiding shops, and shutters bombed with graffiti. But on Democratic presidential debate night, a night made possible by Reverend Al Sharpton’s threat to mobilize against Al Gore and Bill Bradley if they did not debate in Harlem, white people are thick on the ground. There are white people with earpieces talking into their sleeves, white campaign sign-holders trying to pass themselves off as “the community,” white scribes at the United House of Prayer press room across from the Apollo Theater, working out variations on the hackneyed It’s Show-time at the Apollo theme.
There’s also me, a longtime white person, on my way to see Al Sharpton a few blocks away. Escorted from my cab by Sharpton’s publicist (a job description that’s redundant), I notice the office above his belongs to the Israeli Church, a group of Black Jews. At first it seems like a karmic real-estate joke. Sharpton, the man responsible for fanning the flames of violence against the Hasid in the 1991 riots in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, shares a building with the Lost Tribe of Sammy Davis Jr. They are not real Jews, however, but black militants, which one can ascertain from their military-style uniforms and the pictures of Black Jesus on their wall (as in the Messiah, not Earl Monroe).
Inside Sharpton headquarters, I’m introduced to Moses Stewart, the father of Yusuf Hawkins, a black youth who was murdered a decade ago by a band of Italian toughs in Bensonhurst. Stewart is now Sharpton’s Crisis Coordinator, and conducts a tour of the premises (though Sharpton’s organization has only 10 full-time employees, it has 21 committees — from the Court Patrol to the Buy Black Steering Committee). The building is a Hollywood set decorator’s cliched notion of black-activist digs. A red-oak black-power fist sits in the lobby. Books about Che Guevara and the prison-industrial complex line the shelves. Inside the cavernous, folding-chaired meeting room called the “House of Justice,” where Democrats from Hillary Clinton to Bill Bradley have dropped in on their ring-kissing tours, the walls are trimmed with photos of men of respect (Dr. King, Adam Clayton Powell), men of action (Johnnie Cochran), men with bad haircuts (James Brown and Don King, two of Sharpton’s mentors). There’s even a Reverend Ike-style concession cabinet that sells herbal colonic and intestinal cleaners. “They’re amazing!” says Moses. “They’ll clean you out, take care of built-up residue or backed-up anything!”
Sharpton appears not to have plowed much of his $ 10,000 speaking fees into office decor: lime-green carpet, exposed electrical wires, and a coiled flystrip, complete with deceased black bug, hanging from the ceiling. Sharpton himself is immaculately tailored in a Brooks Brothers pinstripe with symmetrical four-point pocket square. Though he still sports the Mother Popcorn conk (James Brown made Sharpton vow to always wear his hair that way), Sharpton long ago forsook his civil-disobedience “jail clothes,” the jogging suits that made him look like a waddling ball of iridescent Jell-O.
While Sharpton is most often seen exhorting “No Justice, No Peace,” today he is playing the savvy party elder, patiently explaining to a BBC reporter on the phone the legal intricacies of the Amadou Diallo case (Sharpton is spokesman for the family of the West African immigrant, who was shot to death by four white police officers who mistook Diallo’s wallet for a gun, a mistake Sharpton calls an “assassination”). Sharpton has come to wield considerable power in New York, despite perpetrating the Tawana Brawley rape hoax and other acts of shameless race-baiting. On Martin Luther King Day, Hillary cheerfully rolled through the House of Justice, and shared a stage with another Sharpton invitee who slighted her people (the Jews). Bradley hired Sharpton’s old campaign manager and courted Sharpton on three occasions, but has still managed not to secure an endorsement. Even Gore, who initially resisted Sharpton’s charms (or threats, as Sharpton tells me he was prepared to paper the black community with anti-Gore literature), ended up granting Sharpton a covert sit-down at daughter Karenna’s apartment, while Gore aides misled reporters about the summit meeting.
More impressive, Sharpton was chiefly responsible for cowing two of the whitest candidates in politics into an open-mike format at the Apollo, a venue with an audience so legendarily pugnacious, that they booed Luther Van-dross off the stage on four different occasions, caused Sammy Davis Jr. to fall mute, and prompted Ella Fitzgerald to give up dancing as she was incapacitated by fear.
Sharpton, who regularly rails against party bosses, has come to resemble one — he pulled 85 percent of the black vote in his failed Senate and mayoral bids. He ignores the ringing phone, though it might be Donna Brazile or Tony Coelho (who “called last night to make sure I was comfortable about the debate”) or one of the Bradley minions who have been pestering him of late. Instead, he sits beatifically behind his desk in Buddha-meets-Boss Tweed mode, flipping debate tickets to an assistant to be distributed to the steady stream of supplicants loitering outside his office.
In private, Sharpton talks not like a flame-throwing activist, but a clear-eyed pragmatist. Despite obsequious overtures from both candidates, Sharpton harbors no illusions that Gore or Bradley actually likes him. “Bill Bradley and Al Gore can count,” Sharpton says. “To come to somebody [before New York’s March 7 primary] who got a third of the Democratic primary vote for mayor and a quarter for U.S. senator is not exactly a sacrifice.” As for charges that the entire debate, intended to address “community concerns,” is yet another publicity drive for Sharpton — well, what of it? “I get credit for doing this, because I did it!” he says. “Who should get credit for it — someone who didn’t do it?”
Sharpton compares his newfound legitimacy to that of Jesse Jackson. One can deduce that Sharpton’s a bit obsessed by Jesse, his dear friend and mentor. He exhibits pictures of Jesse with his children. He recalls the minutiae of long-ago conversations with Jesse. At one point, he grabs a remote control from his desk and flips on the VCR, which contains an already-cued Frontline documentary on Jesse — in order to prove that Jesse wore the same MLK medallion that Sharpton used to sport over his track suits.
He even knows exactly what Jesse was doing at the same stage in his career (Sharpton’s 13 years younger). Sharpton relates all this in a sort of stream of consciousness: “Most media don’t remember that Jesse was considered controversial too — for-calling-Daley-Pharaoh-boy-cotting-stores-hugging-Yasser-Arafat-Hymietown-saying-Zionism-was-a-poisonous-weed-saying-he-lied-about-holding-Dr.-King-when-he-died.” Though he obviously swells with admiration at Jackson’s metamorphosis, Sharpton allows that “in many ways, I made headway that Jesse hasn’t made. Let’s not forget, [in 1988] Ed Koch said a Jew would be crazy to vote for Jesse Jackson. Today, Koch is bringing candidates up to my headquarters.”
Sharpton gets defensive about where he fits into the civil-rights movement, because of course he has sullied the King legacy beyond recognition. While King marched for fundamental freedoms, Sharpton stakes his leadership claims on microscopic issues, imagined slights, and frequently successful shakedown schemes. Just this month, Sharpton parachuted into the University of Michigan student union to protest a privately funded student society that uses Native American trappings for its ceremonies. “They have a little plaque that says ‘chief scalper,’ and they salute him — real offensive stuff,” says Sharpton, of the club that once claimed Gerald Ford (or “Flipp ‘Um Back,” as he was then known) as a member.
As Sharpton treks off to the debate, he studiously avoids the daffy supporters in his lobby, like Rolando, an Ecuadorian immigrant who is convinced the city’s child services department has, as part of a government plot, kidnapped his vegetarian son and forced him to eat meat. (“Why would they do that?” I ask Rolando. “It beats me up,” he says in broken English.)
Sharpton’s entourage pushes through the crowd at the Apollo like a pig through a boa. The hem of his garment is repeatedly touched. Old men say “Reverend Sharpton” in the admiring tones of someone watching his son accept a diploma, while other hosanna-singers call out “doctor” and “senator” and confer all sorts of honorifics Sharpton has yet to earn. Inside the debate, CNN’s Bernard Shaw introduces Sharpton, who is permitted to throw out the first pitch to the candidates, asking their position on police brutality. Gore and Bradley strike bold stands — they’re against it. From there, the evening turns into pure pander-monium.
Bradley praises this “path-breaking debate” in the middle of “Black History Month.” Gore introduces, apropos of nothing, Martin Luther King III, seated in the audience. Bradley vows to make the Voting Rights Act permanent, so that minorities’ right to vote “will never be endangered,” though it’s not clear exactly who today is endangering them. Gore praises the merits of black radio shows like Tom Joyner’s. Bradley promises to consider selecting a black vice president, to get natural-gas buses for Harlem, and to implement “info stamps,” affording inner-city children the same chance as the rest of us to e-mail dirty jokes to their friends via the Internet. Gore notes that tonight is the 35th anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination, forgetting perhaps that he had been shot by Black Muslims. In the most tortured metaphor of the night, Gore says he rubbed the Apollo’s stageside lucky charm, the tree of hope, because “I want to make the tree of hope the tree of reality for Harlem.”
The debate turns out to be the most raucous in recent memory. Audience members yell “time” when they tire of a candidate’s response, an innovation that the League of Women Voters might want to adopt. One angry environmentalist conducts a minute-long, off-mike Gore harangue at the top of his lungs. Audience members cheer and jeer and gasp when Bradley accuses Gore of doing a “Gore dance,” a slanderous allegation as anyone knows who has seen Gore dance. When Gore sleazily suggests that Bradley though the Congressional Black Caucus was on the left end of the bell curve, Spike Lee, sitting in a velvet box above the stage, begins heckling Gore as if he was courtside at the Garden.
Back in the celebrity-packed spin room, Sharpton calls the debate a “victory for Harlem.” It’s obviously a victory for him. He is received like a visiting deity, earning embraces and soul shakes from the likes of Spike Lee and Usher and Cornel West, a fierce Bradley partisan who rails against Gore’s lack of authenticity and his dorky tree-of-hope metaphor. “C’mon man,” says an admonitory West, a Harvard professor. “This ain’t no pop solo — with you tryin’ to get on the tune, bitch! You runnin’ for president.“
Sharpton has still not given his endorsement. But back at his office, I convince him to try the pop quiz at selectsmart.com, the Internet candidate selector. After answering a series of position questions, the machine spits out the candidate that most closely adheres to Sharpton’s worldview. Coming in third is Gore, just ahead of Bradley. Both finish behind Ralph Nader, who’s in second place. But the big winner is David McReynolds, the Socialist party’s nominee for president.
“Who’s McReynolds?” a puzzled Sharpton asks. “He’s the man you should be endorsing,” I offer. Sharpton permits a slight grin, while staying fixated on the screen. “Maybe we should have him down to the House of Justice.” McReynolds will probably come. But he’ll have to take a number.
Matt Labash is a staff writer for THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
