Sunday, October 30, 2005

Forced to choose, business picks the race baiter

By Nolan Finley / The Detroit News

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I've been trying to work up a hot dose of outrage about the racist ad that ran in the Michigan Chronicle on behalf of the Kwame Kilpatrick mayoral campaign, but I can't get my mad on.

And it's not just because the mug shot under the headline "The Media Lynch Mob" makes me look a lot less bald.

It's just too absurd to fester over. For one thing, my fellow media mobsters, Jack Lessenberry, Brian Dickerson and Mildred Gaddis, would make a more menacing book club than a lynching party. Mildred's the muscle of that group, for sure.

But mostly, I believe the genius of the First Amendment is that it encourages even the most despicable ideas to be brought into the sunlight, where they can be debated and discredited. Otherwise, they'd percolate in the shadows, becoming even more poisonous.

Racism still the demon

There's a strong undercurrent of black racism in the city of Detroit, and this full-page ad puts it on the street where it can't be denied.

Rooted in black nationalism, the latest racial scourge to devastate Detroit feeds off the twisted theory that a legion of white, suburban power brokers are poised to swoop in and take back a city that is the birthright of African-Americans.

Only a strong, tough talking, truly black leader can turn them away. Kilpatrick has positioned himself as that leader, fanning the irrational fears as he desperately tries to hang on to his office.

No surprise there. Kilpatrick will do whatever it takes to win, even if it means keeping his city in the dark ages.

What's puzzling is that the very white businessmen whom the lynching ad degrades will gather this week at a major fund-raiser for the mayor.

Ask these business leaders to identify the biggest obstacle facing Metro Detroit, and they'll inevitably say the region's horrible race relations.

And yet they are writing checks to a race baiter. Most of them are employers, and if their workers were associated with anything as racially obscene as the lynching ad, they'd fire them.

But freshly seduced by Kilpatrick's potential, they pretend not to see his destructiveness.

In condescending acquiescence to Detroit's worst nature, they accept the wisdom that exploiting the racial divide is the only way a politician can get elected here, and hope the damage can be repaired later.

Detroit's better nature

But I believe that the majority of Detroiters are better than this, and that they'll repudiate the hate mongers on Election Day.

They understand that the region's challenges are so immense that they'll only be met by city and suburbs, black and white, pulling together. We simply don't have the luxury of hating each other any longer.

Kilpatrick denounced the image of the lynch mob ad, but supported its sentiment.

That sentiment of divisiveness and hatred is a millstone around Detroit's neck.

Kilpatrick has no interest in removing it. My bet is that Detroiters will choose someone who will.

Nolan Finley is The News' editorial page editor. Contact him at (313) 222-2065 or nfinley@detnews.com. Watch Nolan Finley at 8:30 p.m. Fridays on Am I Right on Detroit Public Television, Ch. 56.