But the reality is, in that flash statement Booker portrayed Black America as a cowardly collective for a presidential highlight, and he has a history of misrepresentation.
When Booker ran for Mayor of Newark, he told a story about a drug dealer named T-Bone at every campaign stop. T-Bone threatened his life when they first met, then they became friends, eventually T-Bone came to him for advice, then T-Bone confided in him when he had warrants for his arrest, T-Bone cried on his shoulder, and T-Bone’s background was similar to a lot of the Black men that Booker knew. Booker’s intimate story generated sympathy and support for a campaign aimed at deterring others from going down T-Bone’s path, but it also generated a media search for T-Bone, the drug dealer who befriended Booker, the Stanford and Yale graduate.
T-Bone couldn’t be found.
A Newark City Councilman and Booker supporter said the T-Bone story was a “fixture” of Booker’s unsuccessful 2002 mayoral bid. A Rutgers University professor and mentor to Booker said T-Bone was a “composite” of several people he’d met while living in Newark. The professor said he disapproved of Booker inventing T-Bone because it was offensive and pandered to a stereotype of inner-city Black men. A political analyst stated Booker’s T-Bone story was created to counter the criticism that he was an outsider who had a privileged upbringing in a wealthy suburb. So Booker felt he had to create a stereotypical story to be accepted because his “Black privilege” made him unacceptable in the world view of Black politics.
In an interview Booker said T-Bone was a real person and an “archetype,” a metaphor for the failure of democracy, parenting and life in the inner-city.
If you let a person talk enough, they’ll reveal themselves, especially when they’re grandstanding for presidential highlights.
(J. Pharoah Doss is a contributor to the New Pittsburgh Courier. He blogs at jpharohdoss@blogspot.com)
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