Philadelphia Has Buried the “N-Word,” Now Let’s Bury “Race Card” Accusations

Now that the Philadelphia NAACP has successfully held a funeral for the “N-Word,” I’ve got a suggestion for the very next thing that should be buried, if we are really serious about bringing economic parity and respect to blacks in Philadelphia and across the country. Next to be “funeralized” should be the trite, mean-spirited accusations that African-Americans are “playing the race card” whenever they attempt to discuss issues that impede black progress.

It seems that any time mainstream institutions want to humiliate and intimidate African-Americans into inaction, any time they want to end what has been a reasonable discussion of a quantifiable, race-based disparity, they simply dredge up the phrase “playing the race card,” and blacks and their supporters run for cover.

This “race card” is a relatively new and destructive term that’s been used in recent years to stifle meaningful discussion and black dissent and, unfortunately, we, as African-Americans, far too often, play right into the hands of those who want to keep us marginalized. When I was a kid and I brought up a topic my mother didn’t want to discuss, she’d simply say, “I don’t want to hear about it.” America’s new “I don’t want to hear about it,” for all discussions of black disparities, is the accusation that African-Americans are “playing the race card.” Curiously, the term seems only to apply to the black race.

When leaders of the Anti Defamation League bring up legitimate issues that are meaningful to the Jewish Community, media don’t accuse them of “playing the Jewish card.”

Even as Mexican illegal immigrants clog the streets and demonstrate, to fight for full and immediate U.S. citizenship, they’re not accused of “playing the Mexican card.”

When the people in Philadelphia’s Chinatown rose up, a few years ago, to successfully resist the plan to have a Center City ballpark built near their community, they were praised as activists by media, and not one newspaper, broadcast outlet or elected official accused them of “playing the Asian card.”

This kind of word game has been played before. There was a time when there was a clearly identifiable political spectrum in the U.S., with conservatives at one end and liberals at the other. But, beginning during the Reagan administration, leading elected officials and their supportive pundits launched a concerted effort to make the word ‘Liberal’ a political position of which to be ashamed. No one, now, no matter how fair-minded or decent, wants to be called a ‘Liberal.’

In the same way, media, elected officials and business leaders have now created the rationale that it is somehow passé, somehow taking a cheap shot, or somehow making an inappropriate excuse to raise the legitimate issues that still impede black progress.

As a recent example, in its post-Mayoral Primary Election editorial, the Philadelphia Inquirer said that the “race card” had proved to be a “loser” because “it didn’t get played much” during the campaign. What the paper’s editorial board was trying to say is that, in a city wherein 61 percent of the Democratic electorate is comprised of black voters, there had been a concerted and successful effort to avoid meaningful discussions of issues that have special impact on the city’s 700,000 black residents.

In fact, the “gentleman’s agreement” signed by all of the candidates kept such issues “off the table” in most televised or untelevised debates. Issues such as the fact that 50 percent of Philadelphia’s black males are unemployed; that African-Americans are segregated into the lowest-performing public schools; that illegal drugs and guns are disproportionately channeled into our city’s black communities; that the excessive, disproportionate poverty rate in black Philadelphia contributes to our city being the most poverty-stricken large city in the country; that black businesses participate in less than one percent of city contract revenues; that the city’s skilled trade unions have systematically excluded blacks from full, card-carrying membership for nearly 125 years, were all classified during the campaign as inappropriate for polite discussion, and were, therefore, relegated to “race card” status.

And speaking about unions and race cards, I see that Frank Keel, the public relations representative for Electricians Local 98, in a recent article in the Philadelphia Tribune, accused a rare, black Local 98 member and businessowner of “playing the race card.” Keel did so, apparently, because the African-American contractor disclosed, at a School Reform Commission meeting, a despicable pattern of harassment of his company and his employees by Local 98 since he began, three years ago, to work as a prime contractor on what had always been an exclusive preserve of white prime contractors who did School District construction work.

Among other things, Keel slanderously accused the black contractor of refusing to take a drug test and not paying union benefits over a three-year period, statements designed to damage his personal and business reputation.

As I mentioned, Keel and Local 98 also accused the black contractor of “playing the race card,” even though it is common knowledge that the union has steadfastly refused to divulge its limited black membership for as long as anyone can remember. With the union’s shameful record of black and minority exclusion, on what grounds can Keel or Local 98 credibly bring up the issue of “race,” especially in the pages of the Tribune? But they do it anyway and, once again, the "race card" trumps all legitimate discussion of the embarrassingly low levels of black workforce inclusion on the city's construction work sites.

Regrettably, this kind of “harassment by race card accusation” goes on virtually every day in our city. If we don’t have meaningful discussions about economic issues that affect nearly 50 percent of the city’s population during an election cycle, then when can we ever have such discussions?

If we can’t finally have meaningful inclusion of black and other minority contractors in our city’s development projects, with billions of dollars of Convention Center, Casino, School District and University construction on the horizon, then when will we ever have such inclusion?

This “cheap trick” of using the term “race card” as a pejorative to stifle all meaningful discussions having to do with race, is a major, lingering impediment to economic and social growth in our city.

Now that we have buried the “N-Word,” let’s hurry up and do the same for the term “race card,” and for all of those who continue to use those two words to keep us from open and honest discussions about real racial disparities.

We can do the funeral service at Savin’s Funeral Home at 12th and Brown Streets, or at the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, at 17th and the Parkway. I don’t care where we do it; let’s just get it done.

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