The Farrakhan Distraction

Monday began with President Clinton firmly denouncing Mr. Farrakhan and ended with Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich both following suit and attacking Mr. Clinton for not denouncing Mr. Farrakhan by name. Perhaps tomorrow Phil Gramm will accompany his attack on Mr. Farrakhan with an attack on Mr. Dole for not attacking Mr. Farrakhan at greater length. The game can be played indefinitely with short-term political profit, since no white candidate is ever going to lose by decrying the Nation of Islam. But what exactly is being accomplished? Yes, Mr. Farrakhan is a menace and must be watched vigilantly. Still, white America makes a fetish of him at its own peril.

The passage above was written by New York Times columnist Frank Rich on Oct. 18, 1995, two days after the Million Man March. Just weeks after the impassioned O.J. Simpson trial, millions around the country watched the televised rally, hearts beating with trepidation, vicarious adrenalin flowing, as hundreds of thousands of black men led by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan convened on the Capitol. The march was a major success for Farrakhan. Participation was high, and in the months following the march, grass-roots efforts to increase black male voter registration and community involvement paid off. But Farrakhan himself wasn't able to claim the national spotlight again for almost 13 years. Not until his name was bandied about before a national television audience during Tuesday's MSNBC Democratic primary debate.

Watching the debate, it appeared that Sen. Hillary Clinton had learned from her husband's rhetorical mistakes after the Million Man March. She was now the one denouncing her rival for failing to denounce Farrakhan strenuously enough. But her rival, a man who has spent his life challenging social divides, is running a campaign for the presidency that threatens to undermine many of our nation's divisions, and in the process, hate speech itself, whether it emanates from Farrakhan or from someone else. Which is why all of the attempts to torpedo Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign are of serious concern.

Denouncements and their opposite, endorsements, serve as ideological cues for voters deciding among political candidates. They're a way to transmit information about a candidate's ideological leanings, not only within an organization but also to other voters in the general electorate. In the presidential nominating contests, an endorsement by an important labor union would presumably compel a large swath of liberal voters to support a particular candidate. In contrast, an endorsement by Louis Farrakhan, a known anti-Semite, would likely encourage only a small subset of voters while repelling, or at least provoking uncertainty in, the vast majority of others. With this same logic, one would think that a denouncement of Farrakhan would have mass appeal. It might alienate the thousands scattered across the country who respect Farrakhan, but a strong enough condemnation would resonate with the millions who detest him and garner support from the politicians, media and other opinion leaders who blithely force the Farrakhan litmus test year after year.

People watching the Democratic primary debate on Tuesday may not have heard about Farrakhan's speech two days earlier at the annual Nation of Islam convention and his strong words of praise for Obama, and few would have considered its impact. But co-moderator and NBC Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert spelled it out quite clearly. Russert's repeated questioning of Obama on the endorsement and his relationship to Farrakhan was felt by many to constitute the debate's most cringe-worthy moment. If Russert had moved on after his initial question about Obama's relationship with Farrakhan, that would have been standard fare. But he didn't.