THESE
ARE THE BREAKS
BY
JULIANNE MALVEAUX
|
If Al Gore were a black man, he would have conceded the election along
time ago. He would have been like the manager of a 7-11 who saw
someone come in and steal a ham, who saw the perp leave fingerprints
on the shelf, who heard the metal detector go off when the ham left
the store, and who stood outside his store, sadly shaking his head,
saying "my ham is gone." Like the brother who witnessed the
conclusive theft of the ham, he would have concluded that running into
the night, trying to get the ham back, would be a pointless exercise.
So he would have shaken his head sadly, even angrily, and said these
are the breaks.
Black folks understand that life isn’t fair, that the rules get changed even as we master them, that you have to be twice as good to get half as much, even in this post-civil rights era. Consider black men like Lloyd D. Ward at Maytag, the CEO who bumped heads with his Board of Directors and was gone 15 months after he took the top spot there. Apparently he moved too slowly to clean up a mess that his predecessor (who hung for 7 years) managed to make; or like Frank Raines at Fannie Mae who watched his company’s stock get shaky as soon as he took over the reigns and stabilize only after he had "proven" himself once again. These black men understand that the bar is set much higher when we are trying to leap over it. They could cry foul, but they suck it up and keep working. They tell themselves, "these are the breaks." Black folks understand political chicanery. We understand Jim Crow laws, grandfather clauses, and gerrymandering. We understand FBI scrutiny comes unevenly and in an unwarranted way. We live with it. Inside, we may have the same staunch sense of entitlement that Al Gore does. But when we don’t contain in we’re described as arrogant or haughty. So we swallow our medicine, bitter though it may be. These are the breaks. I know just how Al Gore feels. He’s smarter than Baby Bush is, he got more popular votes, he’s better prepared, and he would make a better President. He says he isn’t angry, but he has to be seething. HE GOT MORE VOTES but the rules favor his opponent. Plus that which happened in Florida was nothing but stealing, and not even sneaky stealing. They left fingerprints. Because of Florida there is likely to be electoral reform, and at the end of the day we may even learn that Al Gore got more votes in Florida But that isn’t likely to help him now, not when you have a Republican legislature, a Republican governor, a Republican Senate and a Republican Congress. Gore feels just like the supervisor who has to train her boss, especially when supervisor is a middle-aged African American woman and boss is a wet behind the ears white boy. Gore must feel like the civil servant, stuck in GS-9, watching the promotions march past him even as he runs the office. He must feel like the bar exam applicant, back in the day, which passed the test but missed the oral examination given by biased testers. The difference between Gore and all these folks, though, is that this is probably the first time he’s had to swallow the bile of unfairness. Until now, he’s been one of America’s golden boys, one of the smarter and abler who had everything go his way. Now he is learning, like many a brother or sister has learned, that it doesn’t always go your way, even if you’re better, smarter, and more able. These are the breaks. I’m not suggesting that Al Gore change his course. He has the luxury and the resources to fight this one out to the bitter end. Even as he finds this system skewed against him, he is fighting, taking chances, chances that he must take to defend his honor and that of the 50 million people who voted for him. I’ll give Al Gore high props, in fact, for his tenacity. He deserves credit. At the same time, we shouldn’t forget that Gore was a lukewarm supporter of affirmative action, until this campaign. He hasn’t been as supportive of African American issues as we might have liked, even though he got most of our votes and gained much of our support He’s spoken of the rules as if they are fair, but now he is learning that they aren’t. He may not have a set of homies to hang with, like Bill Clinton does, nor did he grow up with enough black folks to gain the gift of racial empathy. But now Gore is learning a brother’s lesson and swallowing a brother’s bile. You can watch a thief walk off with your stuff and, fight though you may, not get it back. Life ain’t fair. These are the breaks. I’ve been told there’s a blessing in every lesson. What will Al
Gore do with his blessing? Will it change our nation? |