http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/27/international/worldspecial/27RACE.html?pag ewanted=print&position=top
March 27, 2003 New Yorkers' Sharp Divisions Fall Roughly on Racial Lines By RANDY KENNEDY and DIANE CARDWELL If part of the strategy of the war is trying to win more support for it at home, then a battle was being lost badly the other afternoon on a concrete bench in Harlem.
Magic Britt, a porter, and David Sinclair, a maintenance worker, were taking a break in front of the Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building on 125th Street. Mr. Britt said that he had never supported the war in Iraq and that he now angrily opposed it, and he enumerated the reasons.
It is distracting the nation from the failure to capture Osama bin Laden, he said. It is being run by a conservative Republican administration, while Mr. Britt is a Democrat. It was ordered by a president who Mr. Britt does not even believe was legitimately elected. But there is also a much more personal reason: Mr. Britt is black, and he said he could not trust a president who he feels has little concern for black Americans either at home or on the battlefield. "He's a racist, plain and simple," said Mr. Britt, 40. "We're going to be in the front lines - blacks and minorities," he added. "The white folks are going to be way back here." He pointed into the distance of the sunny plaza behind him.
Mr. Britt's perceptions, true or not, offer a stark, but not unusual, example of the kind of divide among black and white Americans found by the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, which was based on five days of interviews conducted after the war began.
The poll showed that black Americans were far more likely to oppose President Bush's policy in Iraq, and were much more likely to say that defeating Saddam Hussein was not worth the cost in American lives.
For example, 78 percent of white respondents to the poll said they approved of how Mr. Bush was handling the situation, while just 37 percent of blacks agreed with that position. At the same time, 59 percent of blacks said they disapproved of the president's handling of the war, while only 17 percent of whites said the same thing. Among many black New Yorkers interviewed from Harlem to Brooklyn, opposition to the war seemed to have more to do, in fact, with animosity toward Mr. Bush himself than with disagreement over his administration's policies. "You got a president who stole his way into the place, who went into it with this on his mind," said Willie Roper, 65, at the Bay View Houses public housing project in Canarsie, Brooklyn, referring to Mr. Bush's election. "That's why we have this war." Those kinds of feelings speak directly to Mr. Bush's standing among African-Americans as expressed in the poll of 2,383 adults nationwide. Thirty-four percent of blacks said they approved of the job he is doing, compared with 75 percent of whites.
Although in a city as overwhelmingly Democratic as New York the division is undoubtedly not as sharp as in the rest of the nation, a wide variety of differences surfaced again and again in conversations with dozens of black and white New Yorkers.
Across the city, many blacks echoed Mr. Britt's sentiments, saying that poor people would feel the brunt of the conflict, both at home and on the front lines, and that the tens of billions of dollars being spent on fighting in a distant country would be better spent on education and social programs at home.
Many white New Yorkers seemed quicker to see Mr. Hussein as an immediate threat to domestic or international security who must be stopped.
"I hope that the United States should win," said Murray Sol, a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz. Mr. Sol, 72, is now a barber at the Seaview Plaza Family Haircutters in Canarsie. "It's very important," he said, rolling up his sleeve to show the number tattooed on his forearm. "You can't have another Hitler." But in numerous interviews Tuesday and yesterday, black New Yorkers said that they had not been convinced that Mr. Hussein was a Hitler-like threat, and they suspected other motives for the war, like power and oil. Some said they saw it as Mr. Bush's personal vendetta against a man his father failed to remove from power.
"Oh, they tried to kill my Daddy," Julias Dukes said in a mocking singsong. Mr. Dukes, a 47-year-old former marine who was sitting on a stoop along Lafayette Avenue in Fort Greene, added, "It's a personal thing." Some also said that they identified at least somewhat with poor Iraqis, whom they saw simply as people of color being attacked by a rich, and largely white, American government.
"You know who I see as a threat?" asked Bashir Sultan, 39, a former computer technician, finishing a slice of pizza in Harlem with a friend, Dolores Jackson. "I see North Korea. Or China. I don't see Saddam as a threat." Ms. Jackson, 39, a licensed practical nurse, said she believed that Iraqi civilians were unfortunate pawns in a deadly political game.
"It's like Muhammad Ali said," she explained. "He said: `Why should I fight? The Vietcong never did nothing to me.' Well, the Iraqis never did anything to me or mine. Why should we fight?"
But she added that unlike Mr. Sultan, she did not see her opposition to the war at all in terms of black and white. "It's about greed and oil, that's what it's about," she said. "This isn't a black thing. It's a people's thing."
And people being people, the opinions they expressed along the city sidewalks hardly fell neatly along any sort of lines. For example, Darryl Jones, 25, a video producer whose cousin is serving in the Army in Iraq, said that although he believed that Mr. Hussein posed a security threat, he was against the war because it made America seem like an international bully. Mr. Jones, who is black, said that he encountered difficulties as an American in Asia on a recent trip because of that reputation. "They forgot the fact that I am a black American, and thought that I definitely have those American traits, which is greed, a pigheaded mentality," he said, sitting in a friend's real estate office in Brooklyn.
Several New Yorkers of various ethnic backgrounds said they support the war because they believe it is necessary for the country's security. "I feel very bad that so many young men will lose their lives, but we have to fight to stay free," said Louise Barlow, 71, who is black. Ms. Barlow was sitting near the tennis courts in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, with a friend of 40 years, Helen Nass, 67.
"There are a lot of people against Bush doing it, but you know he's got a lot on his shoulders," Ms. Barlow continued. "You have to do something; you just can't sit back. People so quickly forget. They forget 9/11." Ms. Nass, 67, who is white, agreed. "With all the weapons he has, and won't give them up?" she said, adding, "He has intent to use them, you know." Asked why they thought opinion diverged so sharply along racial lines, the women, both Democrats, grew quiet for a moment.
"You know the only thing I could say is that they've been in wars before, but when they come out they're not treated any better or any different," Ms. Nass said, looking toward her friend. "They're not treated equal." Ms. Barlow, her eyes fixed on the tennis players, paused, and then attributed the difference to party politics. "Well, most blacks, the majority are Democratic, and a lot of them don't go for Bush," she said.
In the end, though, the views of blacks and whites may move closer together if American casualties mount. In Harlem, Mr. Sultan and Ms. Jackson said that they would expect more white Americans, even conservative ones, to oppose the war.
"You watch," Mr. Sultan said. "Black or white ain't going to matter."
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