Buying into stereotypes

There's an infamous scene in

Birth of a Nation

, D.W. Griffith's groundbreaking yet despicable 1915 film, that depicts a session of the South Carolina legislature under the control of African Americans during the early days of Reconstruction. Outfitted in clashing clothes more likely to be worn by performers in a minstrel show, the black legislators swig whiskey, feast on chicken legs, prop their bare feet on desks, and stare lasciviously at two modestly attired symbols of white maidenhood peering down at the vulgar proceedings from the gallery.

The film was an unmitigated box-office success despite boycott efforts by the NAACP and others seeking racial harmony. Feminist social worker Jane Addams accused Griffith "of gathering the most vicious and grotesque individuals he could find among colored people, and showing them as representatives of the truth about the entire race."

Nearly 100 years later, many African Americans still worry that the wrong people are seen as "representatives of the truth about the entire race." It is even more disappointing when people you expect more of perpetuate the stereotypes black people have been trying to escape since Birth of a Nation and before.

For some of us who grew up when segregation was not history but a fact of life, it is hard to understand why some African Americans in high-level positions, which they know place them under greater scrutiny, wittingly provide fuel for those who cling to the old stereotypes.

Include among them the four Philadelphia legislators and former traffic judge caught on tape discussing money and jewelry they allegedly took from an undercover informant wearing a wire. State law doesn't prohibit legislators from taking gifts. But the officials didn't follow the law by reporting what they got - omissions that suggest they knew taking the gifts looked bad.

The five were caught in an undercover sting that predated the current attorney general, Kathleen Kane. Investigators in the Attorney General's Office negotiated a deal with a lobbyist, Tyron B. Ali, who was being prosecuted for fraud. Ali agreed to wear a wire and offer money to Philadelphia legislators he thought might be susceptible to bribes.

According to official documents and people familiar with the investigation, State Rep. Ronald G. Waters accepted $8,250 in multiple payments; State Rep. Vanessa Brown, $5,000; State Rep. Michelle Brownlee, $2,000; and State Rep. Louise Bishop, $1,500. In addition, former Philadelphia Traffic Court President Judge Thomasine Tynes has acknowledged receiving a $2,000 bracelet from Ali.

None of the five has had much to say since the allegations were reported by The Inquirer - although Bishop, an ordained minister, at one point denied knowing Ali despite evidence that he attended a function at her house. The void created by the public officials' silence, however, has been filled by others, including some who have tried to portray the politicians as victims of racism.

The same allegation has been made by Kane. She says evidence of a racial motive in targeting these particular individuals was one factor in her decision not to pursue what she described as a botched case after she took office in 2013. The investigators who gave Ali the plea deal, one of whom is black, say Kane is wrong to allege racism.

There have been enough white politicians who went down on corruption charges - including former State Sen. Vince Fumo, who was a kingmaker in this city before he was sent to prison for four years in 2009 - to justify doubts about the racism charge. But if Kane has the evidence she says she has, the truth about the motives behind the investigation will eventually come out.

Being as old as I am, that matters to me, but it's not all that matters. I grew up during a period in America when black people took for granted that they would be treated unfairly, that their intelligence would be denied and their integrity questioned. Children were cautioned by their parents at home, teachers at school, and pastors in sermons from the pulpit to expect racism.

But with that warning came an exhortation that excellence can beat prejudice; that if we defied the stereotypes with excellent behavior, the stereotypes would eventually fall. That has been true to a large degree, though some new stereotypes have supplanted the older ones.

The politicians accused in the Ali sting weren't thinking about stereotypes. Images of the chicken-eating, whiskey-swilling legislators in Griffith's odious film didn't enter their minds when they allegedly accepted cash-filled envelopes from a slick-talking interlocutor. But I wish they had.