Paterson, at N.A.A.C.P., Warns of Racism’s Power
By JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: July 18, 2008
CINCINNATI — David A. Paterson, in his first major speech to a national
audience since becoming governor of New York, said on Thursday that even as
black Americans rejoice about the possibility that Senator Barack Obama
could become president, they cannot lose sight of the serious social and
economic ills that plague their community and should remain mindful of the
racism that still exists.
“The gap between the haves and have-nots right in our own community is
wider than it has ever been before,” Mr. Paterson told a crowd of thousands
at the N.A.A.C.P.’s annual convention here.
“No matter how prosperous we are, no matter how well heeled we may be, no
matter how ambitious and successful we have been, we still can be cast
under the same net regardless of our circumstances.”
Mr. Paterson, who is New York’s first black governor and only the third
black man since Reconstruction to lead a state, addressed the convention as
the intersection between race and politics in the United States appears
especially fraught. Recent polls have shown that whites and blacks hold
very different views of Mr. Obama, and that despite the senator’s
candidacy, blacks do not believe that race relations have significantly
improved.
Addressing those fissures in his speech, the governor said that he was not
sure whether Americans would be able to put their differences aside in this
election and support Mr. Obama.
“Can America reject the crucible of race that has dictated and pervaded all
of our history to embrace an African-American man who has the right
policies?” he said. “We will find out.”
The speech demonstrated how Mr. Paterson, a 54-year-old Harlem Democrat who
never experienced the days of segregated lunch counters but still felt the
sting of discrimination during his Long Island boyhood, has taken lessons
from the civil rights struggle of his parents’ generation and melded them
with the experiences of his and younger generations of blacks, who he said
too often play down racism’s lingering taint.
“This is why the Jewish community has the motto, ‘Never again,’ ” Mr.
Paterson said in an interview after his speech, as he rode in a car through
downtown Cincinnati. “There are those who, if they had their way, would
return us to an era of separate but equal.”
Mr. Paterson’s speech was interrupted repeatedly by applause and
enthusiastic cries of “Yes we can!” the common refrain of Mr. Obama’s
supporters. His trip to Cincinnati was part of an effort by his advisers to
raise his profile, and after he spoke at the convention he gave interviews
to National Public Radio and MSNBC, among other media.
Mr. Paterson said he often felt pulled between two generations of black
Americans: those who grew up fighting for civil rights and those who grew
up benefiting from their parents’ victories. He said that he understood
where the complacency that some younger blacks feel about civil rights
comes from, but that he thinks it borders on ignorance.
“The struggle was clear in that generation,” he said. “If you sit in the
back of the bus, you know you’re in the back of the bus. If there’s a
‘whites only’ sign, you know you can’t go in.” But coming of age in the
1970s, as he did, when racism was less pervasive than in the first half of
the 20th century, some of his peers lost perspective, Mr. Paterson said.
“What you had were a number of people who thought this struggle didn’t
affect them,” he said. “They were the beneficiaries of it. And the fact
that they could be comfortable saying such ignorant things is a testament
to how far we’ve actually come.”
As easy as he had it compared with his parents, Mr. Paterson said he still
encountered some painful instances of discrimination as a boy, which serve
as a reminder to him that bias will never truly fade away. He attended
grade school on Long Island because the New York City schools did not teach
blind students outside of special education. He was one of the first black
students to enroll at his elementary school in Hempstead.
One afternoon when a white friend invited him over to play, a neighbor
unaccustomed to seeing black children in the neighborhood accused him of
destroying her flower pots, he said. Mr. Paterson said his friend’s mother
rose to his defense, saying that he had been in the house the entire time.
The neighbor responded, according to Mr. Paterson, “You bring them in this
neighborhood, and then you don’t want to take responsibility for them.”
Mr. Paterson’s views on discrimination have been shaped by the fact that he
is both black and legally blind. He said one of the most painful
experiences he had with discrimination came from a black businessman who
refused to hire him because of his blindness.
“That’s when I realized this is kind of a universal problem that exists,
this fear of the unknown, fear of others displaying difference,” he said.
That experience persuaded him to start imploring fellow blacks to examine
their own attitudes about prejudice, he said. “What I could try to be was a
symbol of the resistance,” he said, “but also one who would point this out
internally in our own community.”
And on Thursday, he seemed to draw on that lesson as he asked black
Americans to remember the gulf between prosperous and poor: “How are some
of us, who have many times been luckier than we have been good, going to
help those who unfortunately haven’t been able to receive prosperity as we
have?”
