What the Frank Rizzo Statue Says About Race in Philadelphia
Aug. 23, 2016
Let'southward become this straight from the starting time: Though I'm amid those who accept said information technology ad nauseum, the truth is, we don't need to accept a conversation about race. Nosotros have them all the fourth dimension—witness the kerfuffle over the Frank Rizzo statue or Starbucks' ill-advised program last twelvemonth to have your barista announce his or her position on affirmative activeness to you while mixing your grande mocha latte. They're not really conversations, of course, so much as a agglomeration of people listening to themselves talk while talking past others. What passes for our race dialogue focuses more on symbols than real substance and sheds considerably more heat than light, so I'm issuing forthwith a moratorium on calls for more than of the same.
No, what we need, in this city and in this country, is more smart discussions virtually race relations. You know, the kind of byplay that features non but facts, figures and conclusions drawn from verifiable show, but also listening and introspection and well-pregnant intentions to feel one some other's pain. What we need, what I've just described, is a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. If yous weren't around in the mid-'90s, S Africa, after decades of a brutal, racist organization, undertook reform, and part of that endeavor included coming to terms with its own past. It was truly stunning, because it featured a long-oppressed black majority coming to ability and, together with the ruling form that had tortured and held it down so long, taking the moral loftier ground.
Instead, what we have hither, in both our metropolis and our country, is tired name calling and dog whistle sloganeering; information technology is only the appearance of conversation. Let's take the Rizzo case. What would a existent conversation look like?
First, some background: The Philly Coalition for REAL Justice started a petition to remove the ix foot bronze statue of the legendary two-term Mayor that sits in front of the Municipal Services Building, calling Rizzo an "unrepentant racist who stopped at null to torture and agree Philadelphia's African-American community as his personal hostages." To date, 1,268 Philadelphians accept signed the petition, and 3,622 have since signed a counter-petition to leave the statue where information technology is.
Passions are running high. When a group supporting the statue held a rally, activists in opposition showed up and things got heated.
When, earlier a sparse crowd of mostly media, some Black Lives Thing activists placed a KKK hood on the Rizzo statue, Billy Penn reported on a disturbing exchange, in which BLM activist Asa Khalif upbraided an African-American police officeholder: "Where the hell were you at when he was terrorizing your community?…Y'all're disrespecting your customs. You boldness yourself. Tear this motherfucker downward!."
In stark contrast to such vitriol, there was Michael Smerconish'southward affectionate tribute to Rizzo in Sunday's Inquirer. Smerconish, Rizzo's long agone adjutant, paints the larger-than-life Mayor as someone who cared deeply nigh public service and his urban center. But he glosses over the race-based critique that and then animates the other side with ane sentence: "Rather than fence new facts, the petition that promotes the removal of the Rizzo statue offers a diatribe of specious generalizations nigh a man not here to defend himself."
If ever we needed a case written report of how we talk past one some other, this is it. Whatsoever enlightened conversation about the legacy of Frank Rizzo should brainstorm with Black Lives Thing activist Khalif conceding that an African-American cop in Philly in 2016 is serving his community, and with erstwhile Rizzo adjutant Smerconish admitting that his dominate was a racially polarizing effigy. And both should agree on a baseline set of facts before letting hyperbole get in the way.
Frank Rizzo was a complicated character. He ginned up white ethnic fear in the '70s for his political advantage, and he was too a compelling, big-hearted man honey by many Philadelphians. Ralph Cipriano and Tom Infield captured the dichotomy that was Rizzo brilliantly in their 1991 obituary in the Inquirer.
Equally they handsomely document, there was a lot to be concerned almost when information technology came to the reign of Rizzo. Equally police commissioner, Rizzo'south cops violently broke upwards a educatee demonstration for a blackness studies plan—and Rizzo was quoted as saying, "Get their black asses." (He denied making the comment.) Investigating a cop shooting, he strip-searched members of the Black Panther Party, parading them naked before media onlookers…before dropping the charges and finding the real perpetrators elsewhere.
As Mayor, Rizzo had iron-clad control of the police and it garnered a national reputation for brutality. The United States Justice Department sued Rizzo for a pattern of unlawful law behave that included "physical abuse, unlawful use of deadly force and disciplinary procedures which condoned abuse."
In her 2005 memoir, NBC News' Andrea Mitchell, who got her offset in Philly, perfectly illustrates the us versus them mindset Rizzo wielded—one that made him a folk hero to working form white ethnics in the dawning of the age of affirmative action. She recounts that the Inquirer had reported that Rizzo'southward police force had shot an unarmed teenager in the back in West Philly and the community was outraged: "I chosen the Mayor to see if he would agree to investigate the police," she writes. "No, he said. 'My men are right when they're right, and they're right when they're wrong and they're trying to exist right.'"
Any enlightened conversation almost the legacy of Frank Rizzo should begin with Black Lives Matter activist Khalif conceding that an African-American cop in Philly in 2016 is serving his customs, and with former Rizzo aide Smerconish admitting that his dominate was a racially polarizing figure.
Too equally Mayor, Rizzo fabricated an ends-justify-the-means argument that he made Philadelphia safer for all police-constant citizens of the urban center, black and white. Indeed, information technology was safer than comparable cities, though there were allegations that the criminal offence statistic numbers Rizzo furnished to the FBI were misleading, at best.
1 would hope that there's something else the Black Lives Thing activists and the Rizzo ally can concord upon: We spend entirely also much time arguing over symbols instead of debating ideas that tin can assistance bodily individuals.
"The ane ceremonious rights cause I was well-nigh involved in was the push to make Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday a national holiday," says Wharton's Ken Shropshire. "I don't regret it. But, now, decades subsequently, I wonder, later on all those marches, that was it? We got a vacation. Only what effect did nosotros have?"
Regarding Rex, every bit I've written before, nosotros got a substantive twenty-four hours of service, only also a mainstream whitewashing of King's real legacy—the dude was much more of a badass than pop culture now renders him. Similarly, for all this finger pointing over the Rizzo statue, did the crusade of social justice advance for even 1 existent person?
Smerconish is a smart guy, and he's correct when he says the Black Lives Affair instinct in this case is part of a trend. It seems similar, rather than contend and learn from our history, the tendency is to want to erase information technology. At Harvard, in that location were calls to remove the school'due south seal considering information technology was tied to a slaveholding family that endowed the college. And at Princeton, the Board decided concluding bound not to acquiesce to educatee demands that, attributable to his segregationist past, Woodrow Wilson's name be removed from its School of Public and International Affairs. Wilson was a past president of Princeton, President of the United states, and had won the Nobel Prize for his work developing the League of Nations—merely he besides had a decidedly racist past. The administration, while rebuffing the demand to whitewash history, turned the showdown into a teachable moment, creating an exhibition—In the Nation's Service? Woodrow Wilson Revisited—that tries to go at Wilson's complicated legacy.
"One of the things we heard from protesting students was that it is non just a trouble that Wilson was flawed, but it is a problem that he is so venerated across this campus," a school official told NPR. "So the exhibit tries to get at the centre of the protestation about how Wilson is honored at Princeton."
That seems to be a pretty healthy way to appoint these matters, no? Some have gone even further. At Georgetown University, more than just lip service has been paid to the institution's racial past. Nearly 180 years agone, the Jesuits running the schoolhouse needed to pay off a substantial debt to stave off bankruptcy, so they sold 272 slaves—saving the university. Georgetown President John DeGioia has taken what could turn out to exist groundbreaking action. He has met with some of the descendants of the very slaves his institution in one case sold, and he'south engaged his school community in an ongoing, still-evolving real conversation about what they collectively owe these families whose lives were probable impacted by Georgetown's actions generations ago.
That, it seems to me, is an open up-minded way to handle the vexing issue of race. DeGioia has lowered the book and opted for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission-type approach. Wouldn't that blazon of arroyo be interesting hither? I'm non smart enough to know what a real discussion almost Philly race relations ought to expect similar, only I'm interested if anyone has any ideas. Only I know this: Black protestors placing KKK hoods on a twenty-twelvemonth erstwhile statue while yelling profanities at a blackness cop and op-eds with charming personal anecdotes about ane of our most racially divisive figures aren't ultimately constructive, and really proceed polarized sides glued to their corresponding corners.
Header photo by Flickr/ann gav 
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/frank-rizzo-statue-philadelphia-race/
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