Black Columnists Discuss Race Politics

Accusing President Clinton of shying away from his responsibility to the black community, a panel of nine journalists at the ARCO Forum last night discussed where to place the blame for the continued racial divide that exists in America.

"The President has not shown courage up to this point on race," said panelist Lewis Divguid, a columnist for the Kansas City Star, to an audience of approximately 300 people. The event entitled "Can Clinton Create a Constructive Dialogue on Race and Activism Against Racism?," was moderated by Professor of Law Charles J. Ogletree.

Ogletree asked the panelists to explain their almost uniformly negative stance on Clinton in their columns.

Les Payne said that Clinton's apparent indifference to the Geronimo Pratt case demonstrated his lack of true commitment to black America.

Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, former Black Panther, was released last spring after being imprisoned for 25 years for murder. Many believe that Pratt held as a political prisoner.

"[Clinton] should realize that [the Pratt case] is a massive problem that deserves his attention," Payne said.

Divguid said that the Pratt case points to the larger issue of U.S. prison expansion and conditions.

"We're building more and more prisons for more and more people for things that shouldn't have happened," Divguid said.

If Clinton has defaulted on such important issues, Ogletree asked, then why do his opinion polls continue to rise?

Adrienne Washington of The Washington Times replied that Clinton's support rests on "feel good" issues.

"The problem with this President is he's more symbolic than he is substantive," Washington said.

Vernon Jarret, a retired Chicago Sun Times columnist added that although Clinton may be less than an ideal figure, he's more sympathetic to the issues the black community finds important than many other leaders.

"We are in a position where we have to walk a tightrope between a disaster on one side and near disaster on the other," Jarret said.

However, Betty Baye, who writes for the Louisville Courier Journal, said she fears that Clinton's stance is too malleable.

Because Clinton has raised the expectations of the black community by promising to address its concerns, it is his duty to move on the issue, according to Baye.

"If we believe that an integrated society is right and it's not negotiable, then we have to go for it," Baye said to applause and cheers from the audience.

Blacks must continue to lead the discussion the way they led the Civil Rights movement, Divguid said, adding that Clinton may have been advised to avoid addressing race by whites who see it as too divisive an issue.

Ogletree suggested that perhaps Clinton is the multicultural president, positioning himself to speak for minority groups other than blacks.

But some panelists pointed out that they are not expecting the President to be responsible for magically changing ingrained racial prejudices and that he has not totally neglected the needs of the black community.

Sheryl McCarthy, also a columnist for Newsday, said she was "impressed by the President's initiative to put aside 15 million dollars to give to non-profits to fight housing discrimination."

However, she also criticized him for glossing over the issue of race by appointing a panel to study the problems faced by blacks.

When people "don't really want to do anything serious [they] appoint a commission to study the problem," McCarthy said.

The panel is part of the three day meeting of the Trotter Group, which is an annual meeting of American black columnists.

The first Trotter Group meeting was held at Harvard in 1992 after several black columnists noticed a conspicuous lack of black writers of commentary pieces in American newspapers, according to Payne, a who was a Trotter Group founder.

Since its first meeting, the Trotter group has convened three times at other institutions. Half of the group met with President Clinton in the fall of 1996, and the other half early in 1997 to advise him on his racial agenda.

William Monroe Trotter, a Harvard alumni was the first black American Phi Beta Kappa. During his career as a journalist, Trotter brought the racial debate to the front page of American newspapers, according to literature distributed at the forum.

"We refuse to allow the impression that to remain that the Negro-American assents to inferiority, is submissive under oppression and apologetic before insults," Trotter wrote with W.B. DuBois in the Declaration of Principles for the Niagara Movement.

The Trotter Group was established to preserve Trotter's legacy of protest.