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 data 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 critical on paper, even when they’re felonies.
Let’s observe the plain: 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 regulation, 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 initiatives based mostly on that activism and over time grew to become a touchstone, particularly in his years as Los Angeles County supervisor, for the chance for large-scale institutional change.
And but Ridley-Thomas shares with the previous president an aura of untouchability, of being above the regulation. Earlier than his indictment final 12 months for corruption stemming from a scheme to reward USC with contracts in alternate for shifting 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 really bolstered that sense of untouchability. After the indictment there was quite a lot of insinuating from Ridley-Thomas supporters that Black pols like him are scrutinized excess of 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, stated in an announcement launched earlier this 12 months 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 actual crime.
“It speaks to the pernicious impact of racially motivated animosity and a degree of injustice that might 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 cause to maintain issues clear and never count on the form of insulation sometimes given non-Black of us (however not all the time: 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 decisions. 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 reasonable. That ought to make us offended.
Too many Black Angelenos appear to overlook that time on objective. They’re offended as a substitute 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 choice. 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. In addition to, all the nice Ridley-Thomas has achieved was by no means in query. It was by no means on trial.
Essentially the most disturbing implication of all of the grumbling about Ridley-Thomas’ conviction is that he ought to have gotten a move 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 example). For any advocate of racial justice that is the slipperiest of slopes: Criticize the ethics of the mainstream, then argue when handy that you simply’re entitled to these ethics, too. Such doublethink serves Black folks in no way, not least by fueling cynicism about the opportunity of change, about politics generally. 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, nevertheless it was not unlawful. Even when that had been true, how is being merely unethical OK? Such assertions will not be 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, could stay crucial a part of a legacy we thought we already knew.
Erin Aubry Kaplan is a contributing author to Opinion.
