Tolerance 2

“Here’s the secret for talking with Henri Brooks,” our friend advised.  “Just pretend like it’s 1968 and everything will be fine.”

It was years ago and we had asked him about Ms. Brooks because he was a long-time friend of the former state legislator, current county commissioner, and aspiring Juvenile Court Clerk.  These days, like most of her friends, he can only shake his head at her blistering verbal blast at a Hispanic Memphian whose only crime seemed to be trying to explain his experiences in his hometown.

Ms. Brooks sees herself as the defender of the African-American majority in Memphis, but her behavior and lack of common civility do more to shut down meaningful lines of communications about race than to open them up.  Even when her charges against Juvenile Court led to its investigation and a plan of improvement, she forfeited the credit due her when her behavior became more of an obstacle to solutions than encouraging one.

Rather than extol her role in that episode in her campaign for clerk of Juvenile Court, apparently she has decided that voters would reward her for her serial misbehavior at the meetings of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners.  There are many co-conspirators on that body for the way that its meetings have devolved into a biweekly display of pettiness, sarcasm, and hostility.

Rhetoric With a Reason

It’s a sad decline for a legislative body that was once considered one that demonstrated the kind of public leadership that could lead to balanced decision-making although they featured occasional bombastic comments by Vasco Smith.

Mr. Smith could be a firebrand, but it was always rhetoric with a reason. He could deliver an indictment of the white-dominated county legislative body with a wink. Once, after increasing his decibel level to a volume level more in keeping with a revival tent, he turned in his chair, winking at reporters and said: “I bet that gets things moving.”

As he once explained it, if the civil rights movement had taught him anything, it was that often the rhetoric had to be overblown. “If I want to move these folks to the middle, that means I have to move way over there so that when they compromise with me, they end up where I wanted them in the first place,” he said.  More to the point, he positioned himself to be in the middle of the negotiations on the issues that mattered most to him.

It’s lesson lost on Ms. Brooks.  Her outbursts never appear to be in pursuit of a wily political agenda and seem more akin to an out-of-control five-year-old than a seasoned politician.  We admit that even Job would have lost his patience on a legislative body populated with several members intent on constantly proving their Tea Party bona fides (we’ve written our criticisms of them often in the past), but it’s one thing to lob her comments at other elected officials, but it’s altogether something else for her to have attacked 20-year-old Pablo Pereyra whose only crime was to express his heartfelt opinion at the public meeting of public officials.

Minority of the Minorities

Mr. Pereyra was not even at the commissioners’ meeting in relation to the $1.7 million roofing contract that set off Ms. Brooks, but in light of her comments, he attempted to provide her with insight into the Hispanic experience in Memphis.  He said: “I know what it’s like to be a minority.  I grew up in Memphis.  I can tell you being a Hispanic in Memphis is definitely a minority of the minorities.  Am I any less American?  Am I any less a minority?  I challenge you to think clearly of the message that you are sending.”

Mr. Pereyra was then upbraided by Ms. Brooks in remarks that walked uncomfortably close to being anti-Hispanic.  She said: “You asked to come here.  You asked to come here.  We did not and when we got here, our condition was so egregious, so barbaric.  Don’t ever let that come out of your mouth again because – you know what – that hurts your case.  Don’t compare the two.  They’re not comparable.”

It’s unfortunate that Commissioner Brooks was unwilling to display enough intellectual curiosity and empathy to engage in a meaningful conversation about the Hispanic experience in Memphis.  We suspect that Commissioner Brooks is unfamiliar with the data for Memphis which show that Hispanics have the highest poverty rates here and often are forced to deal with exploitative employers.  While minorities are victims of structural bias and institutional racism, Ms. Brooks is so invested in her own victimhood that she is unable to help victims of the system who rely on her for her leadership.

In the past, we have defended Ms. Brooks’ constitutional right to refuse to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or to stand for the Star-Spangled Banner, but we find no defense for her behavior at Monday’s board of commissioners meeting.

Failing the Test

In his response for Latino Memphis, executive director Mauricio Calvo affirmed his well-deserved reputation for diplomacy and equanimity.  He said: “While we hope her comments were made in a genuine effort to promote the interest of the African-American community, divisive comments that pit one demographic against another are unproductive and fundamentally undermine the goals which she sought to accomplish.  We should not engage in behavior that results in fighting over scraps from the table.”

So far, Commissioner Brooks has made no moves toward an apology, and based on her past behavior, we’re not holding our breaths.

That said, we had been weighing our vote for Juvenile Court Clerk, and we were giving her serious consideration.  But the qualities of a court clerk should be similar to a judge’s.

The test for both is a commitment to equal treatment, fair play, temperament, and professionalism.   It’s a test that Ms. Brooks has now failed.