![]() White people don’t feel threatened by black people who use drugs. Nobody thinks 86 percent of the people smoking dope are black and Hispanic: More white people do it. Last year in Manhattan, 86 percent of the arrests for marijuana were blacks and Hispanics. The next important phase of the civil rights movement is to get fair treatment out of law enforcement. What’s happened is we have finished this stage of legal equality but there has been this law enforcement issue that people only nibbled around the edges of, for instance, crack versus powder cocaine. Some people only look at the one, not the other and that’s the problem. But there is also more crime committed by African Americans for socioeconomic reasons. The fact is, for historical reasons, there is more unfair law enforcement against African Americans. Because human beings, by nature, are self-oriented. Because whites don’t understand blacks and blacks don’t understand whites. But attitudinally, there is more prejudice against blacks.ĬW: Why don’t white Americans understand African Americans’ frustration with police brutality?įRANK: Because people generally don’t understand each other. What’s interesting is that legally there is full equality under the law for African Americans more so than for gay people. In the mid-1980s, I said that I thought the average American was less homophobic than she thought she was supposed to be, but more racist than she was prepared to admit. What broke the back of homophobia was when people found out that they had all these gay friends, relatives, etc. The movement for fair treatment of people who are gay and lesbian started much later, but sadly made more progress. What do you make of recent events in Ferguson, Baltimore, and Charleston?īARNEY FRANK: We are in the next phase of the movement for racial equality. This is an edited transcript of our recent, wide-ranging conversation that touched on issues like race relations, the financial sector reforms that bear his name, international politics, and the world classiness of Boston.ĬOMMONWEALTH: You were a civil rights activist in the 1960s. Asked why he decided to give journalism a shot, he says, “It’s a way to influence public policy without having to work as hard.” ![]() He serves up commentary on CNBC and writes for Politico Magazine and the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. Behind his caustic, but often entertaining, wit is an accomplished wordsmith who cares deeply about politics and policy. ![]() Today, Frank, now 75 and sporting a salt-and-pepper beard, remains a man in demand. He went on to serve in Congress for more than 30 years and retired in 2013 on a high note, having helped usher in major reforms in the US financial system after the Great Recession. When Pope John Paul II ordered priests to forgo political office in 1980, the decision set the events in motion that forced Father Robert Drinan from Congress and sent a left-handed, gay Jew to Washington replace him.Ĭoming out in 1987, Frank survived a sex scandal two years later that might have destroyed the career of a less adroit politician. The New Jersey native volunteered in Mississippi during the civil rights movement’s 1964 Freedom Summer, worked for Boston mayor Kevin White, and turned down an offer to be Michael Dukakis’s transportation secretary. Th e book, Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage, charts his unlikely transformation from a closeted Harvard PhD student to a young City Hall aide and Beacon Hill lawmaker desperately hoping to not be outed to an openly gay congressman representing the sprawling Fourth Congressional District in Massachusetts.
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