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It was simply coincidence that Mark Ridley-Thomas was convicted of corruption final week on the identical day that ex-President Trump was indicted on falsifying enterprise information to hide different crimes.
But each moments had been historic.
Each had been the outcomes of aggressive makes an attempt to carry elected officers accountable for alleged wrongdoing. And each figures have stalwart supporters who say justice hasn’t been served as a result of these males imply an excessive amount of to the general public to be taken down by crimes that don’t look that severe on paper, even when they’re felonies.
Let’s notice the apparent: MRT isn’t Trump.
Trump practiced corruption in plain sight, from Day 1, throughout his one time period in workplace. He has actively flouted the legislation, espoused racist views, inspired largely white supporters to riot on his behalf, deliberately undermined the tenets of democracy .
Ridley-Thomas comes from a protracted historical past of Black activism that strives to meet the true promise of multiracial democracy, one thing Trump and GOP America routinely deride. As a veteran public servant — one thing Trump by no means was earlier than being elected — MRT has superior insurance policies and tasks based mostly on that activism and over time turned a touchstone, particularly in his years as Los Angeles County supervisor, for the likelihood for large-scale institutional change.
And but Ridley-Thomas shares with the previous president an aura of untouchability, of being above the legislation. Earlier than his indictment final yr for corruption stemming from a scheme to reward USC with contracts in change for transferring cash and getting a educating place for his son, the feds spent years conducting a probe that more and more started to look damning. But Ridley-Thomas shrugged it off. Maybe he thought all his years in workplace — Metropolis Council, state Legislature, county supervisor, again to Metropolis Council — earned him the good thing about the doubt. Maybe he thought that doing good and doing one thing for himself on the general public dime weren’t incompatible.
The truth that he’s Black and a part of a shrinking cohort of influential Black politicians in L.A. might need truly bolstered that sense of untouchability. After the indictment there was loads of insinuating from Ridley-Thomas supporters that Black pols like him are scrutinized way over non-Black counterparts.
The Rev. Kenneth Walden, pastor of Holman United Methodist Church and a part of a Ridley-Thomas assist group known as the South L.A. Clergy for Political Accountability, mentioned in an announcement launched earlier this yr that the indictment was a part of the racial purge mentioned within the now-infamous spherical desk through which a few of Ridley-Thomas’ fellow metropolis council members tossed round racial insults and plotted an influence seize. This, Walden urged, was the true crime.
“It speaks to the pernicious impact of racially motivated animosity and a stage of injustice that would simply be visited upon any Black chief,” he declared.
Was Ridley-Thomas focused? I don’t consider so. However the actuality {that a} double commonplace is imposed on Black folks is all of the extra motive to maintain issues clear and never anticipate the sort of insulation sometimes given non-Black of us (however not at all times: former Metropolis Councilmembers Mitch Englander, who’s white, and José Huizar, who’s Latino, each went down for corruption).
Extra importantly, it’s best to maintain it clear exactly as a result of it serves the pursuits of your Black constituents who depend on you to be truthful and accountable to them. They want you in workplace. To get bounced due to a corruption conviction is a tragedy not due to racism however as a result of Ridley-Thomas made selections. For job safety for his son, and for funneling $100,000 to his son’s nonprofit, he imperiled the illustration of all of us. He bought us out for affordable. That ought to make us indignant.
Too many Black Angelenos appear to overlook that time on function. They’re indignant as an alternative that somebody like Ridley-Thomas, who cared a lot about justice, was discovered responsible. Subsequently, of their minds, justice wasn’t served.
However it was. Proof was introduced and a jury rendered a call. Nor was this a case of flimsy documentation or an instance of a Black man being railroaded or blindsided. The trial made it clear: Good deeds can’t be a protection of dangerous ones. Apart from, all the nice Ridley-Thomas has achieved was by no means in query. It was by no means on trial.
Probably the most disturbing implication of all of the grumbling about Ridley-Thomas’ conviction is that he ought to have gotten a cross as a result of he merely took liberties different politicians take on a regular basis, that he did what white folks do with impunity (Trump, as an illustration). For any advocate of racial justice that is the slipperiest of slopes: Criticize the ethics of the mainstream, then argue when handy that you just’re entitled to these ethics, too. Such doublethink serves Black folks in no way, not least by fueling cynicism about the potential for change, about politics on the whole. That’s precisely what we don’t want proper now.
Self-serving habits didn’t finally serve Ridley-Thomas, who has tarnished if not completely sunk the legacy his supporters extol. His protection argued that what he did might need been unethical, but it surely was not unlawful. Even when that had been true, how is being merely unethical OK? Such assertions are usually not simply totally unconvincing, they’re damning.
Unconvincing and damning explanations for his prolific, unsavory misdeeds are to be anticipated from Trump, however for somebody like Ridley-Thomas, it’s unacceptable That we had such excessive hopes for him is the silver lining in all this. Our nice expectations, on the finish of the day, might stay a very powerful a part of a legacy we thought we already knew.
Erin Aubry Kaplan is a contributing author to Opinion.
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