WHAT'S
FAIR?
BY
JULIANNE MALVEAUX
|
I am having yet another conversation
about the election, and those talking are divided along predictable
lines. Republicans think Gore ought to go on and concede the election.
Some Democrats are outraged that Gore "got robbed". The cite
one election imperfection after another, from people being turned away
from the polls, to Republicans tampering with absentee ballot
requests, to ballots that have yet to be counted. As they cite these
imperfections, their tone turns aggrieved, almost whiney. I notice, in
this conversation, that I agree that Gore was robbed, but that I am
far less outraged about it than my colleagues are.
Why? I’m used to the fact that the system isn’t fair. I simply don’t expect it to be. Call it the racial divide, if you will. 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. We understand that the bar is set much higher when we are trying to leap over it, that the rules of the game change as soon as we master them. Some of us cry foul, but most of us suck it up and keep on going, reminding ourselves that life isn’t fair. You want to talk unfair? Talk to the office worker who has to train her boss, especially when office worker is a middle-aged African American woman and boss is a wet behind the ears white boy. Or talk to Eric Hughes, an African-American civil servant who fought discrimination in federal government employment, and won lawsuits against both the State Department and the Commerce Department. Talk to workers at Coca-Cola, who were stymied in careers for years because of discrimination, and whose careers will not be made whole by a recently announced legal settlement for $193 million. Talk to the folks who have experienced discrimination and swallowed it because they need to keep their jobs. That’s unfair. Being Gore is like waking up to find a thief in your house. The crook left fingerprints on the mantle before he took some of your valuables, and you may have even seen him run down the street. But there were no witnesses, and you don’t move quickly enough to catch him. So your valuables are gone, and there is not much to be done about it. The police don’t arrest the thief, because nobody saw him stealing. A trial in civil court takes a long time, and may not make a difference, especially if the thief has fenced your stuff. So you have no recourse but to move on. What’s fair? How will you be made whole? This has to be a new feeling for Al Gore. This may be the very first time he has 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 an African American has learned, that it doesn’t always go your way, even if you’re better, smarter, and more able. Life just isn’t fair, and neither is politics. The African American community understand political chicanery. We understand Jim Crow laws, grandfather clauses, and gerrymandering. We understand that investigations are a political weapon that can be used unfairly. We live with it with the grace and dignity that Labor Secretary Alexis Herman did when she was unfairly investigated for two years, or with the stoicism that former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy did when the government spent millions of dollars to investigate him for accusations that a jury acquitted him of. Inside, we may have the same staunch sense of entitlement that Al Gore does. But when we don’t contain it, we’re described as arrogant or haughty. So we swallow our medicine, bitter though it may be. It’s not fair, but that’s how it is. And here’s how it is in this election. Al Gore is smarter than George W. Bush, he’s better prepared, he got more popular votes and he’d make a better President. But in a state with a Republican governor and Republicans controlling the legislature, in a country where there is a Republican House and a Republican Senate, he really doesn’t have a prayer. Even if he prevails in court, the election can be taken from him. Still, I don’t think that Al Gore should concede this election. I
think he ought to use every remedy to make sure there is a full and
fair count of the votes cast. When it’s all over with, though, I
think he, and those around him, need to use that same sense of fight
to bring fairness to the lives of the many who have been treated
unfairly in politics and in the economy. |