James Meeks, the reverend and state senator, has a powerful voice.His reach stretches beyond the confines of his 22,000-member SalemBaptist Church on Chicago's South Side. It's bigger than thepolitical boundaries of the Illinois Legislature where he has servedsince 2002. His voice is even broadcast in 28 prisons in Illinois andLouisiana thanks to $175,000 in satellite equipment and downlinksSalem Baptist provides for inmates who could not otherwise attendMeeks' two-hour Sunday service.
When the Rev./Sen. Meeks speaks, people listen. That's why hisquote from a July 5 sermon has taken on a life of its own. In it hetalked about "house niggers."
And yes, I spelled out the n-word. Not because I think it'sanything other than a despicable, disgusting word. But because onTuesday, Meeks and I were able to talk at length about exactly whathe said and why he said it. It's a word he does not shrink from.
Meeks' remarks, though they were made three weeks earlier andgenerated no stir at the time, came into wider public view last week.That's when Meeks led a march downtown to denounce the quality ofChicago public schools under the leadership of Mayor Daley. Some ofthe protesters carried signs saying "End apartheid in Chicagoschools." Chicago public schools are overwhelmingly black andHispanic. Meeks doesn't rule out a 2007 mayoral bid.
That theme of "apartheid" was something Meeks preached about fromthe pulpit in early July. He compared white elected officials to"slave masters" who "never want the slave to learn how to read andnever want the slave to learn how to write. So now we don't haveslave masters," he said, "we got governors . . . we got mayors."Taking aim at black leaders who support those white politicians, hesaid, "What makes me so mad is . . . you got some preachers that arehouse niggers. You got some elected officials that are houseniggers."
He didn't name names but it didn't matter.
It is, to my ears, an awful charge.
Would Meeks talk to me about all of this? "I would be 100 percentglad to talk to you about that," he said. He was on a cell phone inhis car just leaving the installation of Bobbie Steele as the firstAfrican-American woman head the Cook County Board of Commissioners.Meeks had delivered the invocation there.
I asked if he regretted saying what he said. "The thing I regret,"he told me, ". . . is that it's taken the educational argument out ofits context and it's diverted attention away at a time when I canleast afford to have people focusing on something different than theeducational argument."
But, he hastened to add, he spoke to his congregation for thebetter part of an hour and offered a much larger context for hiswords. He talked about how state constitutions in the days of slaveryhad legislated black ignorance and illiteracy. That terms like "slavemaster" and "house nigger" were an accepted part of the language atthat time in history.
I know a little bit about soundbites. And I confess, I didn't hearMeeks' whole sermon. But I would argue this isn't 1865.
It's 2006. And Chicago.
Today we are in desperate need of a better civic discourse than weever seem to have. And race is always a combustible part of ourconversation in this town.
As my Sun-Times colleague, Mary Mitchell, has pointed out in herrecent columns on the use of the term "white boy," words can bethrown like rocks.
And while I understand, sort of, how black people can call eachother names that white people can't and vice versa, I don't like thedouble standard, no matter what the race or ethnicity, and neverhave.
In 1983, I covered Bernard Epton's election campaign againstHarold Washington. Epton, a white long-shot candidate, didn't evenneed epithets against Washington, a black man, to get his racialpoint across. His campaign message was only five words: "Epton . . .Before It's Too Late."
Meeks and I talked a lot about words. Words we once usedthoughtlessly, words we would never use today. As a child growing up,he admits, he and everyone he knew called Maxwell Street "Jewtown,"something he would never say today. As a beginning reporter inChicago, I can remember asking "Who's his Chinaman?" when trying tofigure out somebody's political clout. I do not ever say that now.
Words matter.
Meeks has a lot to say about the issues, and I look forward to hismessage and the debate it provokes. But unless I miss my guess, thiscould prove to be a brutal, even poisonous political season. He, andwe, need to be mindful.
Words matter.
e-mail: cmarin@suntimes.com
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