Moore V. Mumia: Duplicity On The White Sheet

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MOORE V. MUMIA: DUPLICITY ON THE WHITE LEFT

By Linn Washington Jr.

What does liberal icon Michael Moore and liberal-lambasting Rush Limbaugh share in common?

Both mega-media stars have drawn criticism recently for stooping to exploit racist sentiments about Black men for their professional enrichment.

Curiously, there is a Philadelphia connection to the Black men recently exploited by filmmaker Moore and radio loud mouth Limbaugh. Like Limbaugh's low blow to Eagles' quarterback Donovan McNabb, Moore's maligning of Philadelphia death-row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal in Moore's latest book has sparked widespread criticism.

Last week Philadelphia political activist/author Ewuare Osayande flipped the script on Moore by pointing a verbal lens at this Academy Award winner's published remarks questioning the innocence of Abu-Jamal.  Osayande focused on Moore's anti-Mumia barb during a thought provoking presentation in Center City.

However, Osayande merely used Moore as an evidentiary prop for his searing, documentary style examination of racism and chauvinism within the white political Left…from the anti-war movement to non-profit organizations.

"Michael Moore is a fraud…There, I said it," Osayande quipped, mocking the phrasing of Moore's published comment about Abu-Jamal. "Moore is the latest manifestation of what white liberalism means today. Until the white left becomes accountable to the oppressed they claim to represent, they will continue to mislead," Osayande charged during his presentation entitled, "With Allies Like These You Don't Need Enemies: Racism, War and the White Left."

Moore, Osayande contended, bases part of his anti-Mumia posture on the "racist premise of presumed guilt of Blacks" - a stereotype shared by some white liberals and most white conservatives.

Osayande questioned why the white Left has not mounted a campaign to denounce Moore's calculated-to-sell-books slap at Mumia. The fact that Moore has told a few key (white) Mumia supporters that his book comment was perhaps "too flip" fits into what Osayande said is an all too typical antic of too many Left-liberals.

"Well meaning is not the issue. Results are the issue. White folks get stuck in, "This is not what we meant to do,"" Osayande said during his presentation at the Friend's Center, sponsored in part by the AFSC's Criminal Justice Program.

The danger of Moore's anti-Mumia slap, Osayande argued, is its potential to confuse persons uninformed about crucial details of the internationally controversial case but who will accept Moore's position as fact because of their esteem for Moore.

"There is a man who has confessed to the murder that put Mumia on death row. You mean Mr. Research, Michael Moore, doesn't know of this confession," Osayande asked rhetorically.

Osayande pointedly criticized Moore for pandering through using the anti-Mumia slap at the beginning of a book chapter where Moore "is making concessions to white conservatives."

Moore, in his hot selling new book, says Mumia "probably killed that guy. There, I said it." - offering no proof for this assertion while maintaining his longstanding posture that Abu-Jamal should not "be put to death."

Philadelphia area author David Lindorff pilloried Moore's presumption of Abu-Jamal's guilt in an article posted last month on the Counterpunch news/commentary website.

"Sadly Moore…has joined a short-list of other purported leftists…who seem ready to bolster their "independent" credentials by trashing Mumia supporters," stated Lindorff, author of "Killing Time: An Investigation Into the Death row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal" - the most comprehensive book on this case published to date.

Lindorff, himself a white Leftist, noted in his widely-circulated article that Abu-Jamal's 1982 murder trial "stank from the beginning…If the evidence presented at the trial was weak, cooked and hidden, how can [Moore] or anyone come to any kind of "probable" conclusion based upon it?"

Moore concedes that Abu-Jamal did not get a fair trial, a fact acknowledged by many including Amnesty International investigators yet a critical fact rejected by Pennsylvania and federal courts.

Osayande, zooming beyond filmmaker Moore in his presentation, blasted the white-Left anti-war movement for its silence on the shabby treatment of Shoshana Johnson, the Black US soldier wounded and captured during the same Iraq war battle that produced Pentagon manufactured hero Jessica Lynch.

"Shoshana Johnson is not getting any book deals, movies, magazine covers and she is getting an Army disability pension far less than the pension given to Lynch. Where is the white Left on this issue," said Osayande, who's new book is entitled, "Black Anti-Ballistic Missives: Resisting War/Resisting Racism."

Osayande assailed local white Left lead anti-poverty and other self-proclaimed progressive organizations, charging they have become the "gatekeepers between the oppressed and the capitalists…They are a Non-Profit Industrial Complex!"

Osayande said tensions have always existed between the white Left and Blacks since the 19th Century anti-slavery movement because the white Left refuses to aggressively address the issue of racism.

"When it comes to racism experienced by people of color, the reaction of the Left is to deny it or defend it, never to eliminate it," Osayande said.

Osayande's critique of the white Left echoes concerns raised by a succession of Black leaders, like Rev. Richard Cain's 1865 complaints about white liberals and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 criticisms of white moderates in his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail." White liberals "are responsible for several critical roles in the maintenance of peaceful white supremacy," asserts the 2002 published book, "The American Directory of Certified Uncle Toms."

For Osayande, the question remains: "Are white organizations in the movement willing to be accountable to people who are oppressed?"

-THE END-

Linn Washington Jr. is an award-winning writer who teaches journalism at
Temple University.