VOICES

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Blacks Should Avoid the Conspiracy Theory Trap

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Date: 10-30-96

By exaggerating the findings of the recent San Jose Mercury News report linking CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras to black drug dealers, black activists are shooting themselves in both feet. They not only sidestep the issue of black culpability; they give the media and politicians an excuse to downplay the drug issue as a black problem or ridicule it as yet another case of "black paranoia." PNS commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a Los Angeles-based writer and scholar whose books include "The Mugging of Black America."

LOS ANGELES -- "Freeway" Ricky Ross -- the central character in the alleged CIA-Contra-black drug dealer connection story -- was the phone guest on a recent radio talk show here. Ross is currently being held at a Federal correctional facility in San Diego after being convicted earlier this year on drug charges.

Spewing apologies and mea culpas about his actions, Ross wailed that he was a pawn of the government and that the CIA "made me do it." This was predictable coming from someone who banked millions dealing deadly drugs in his own community, got caught, convicted and faces a mandatory life sentence.

While it was painful to listen to Ross' self-serving apologetics, it was even more painful to listen to black callers sidestep his guilt. With one or two exceptions, most callers charged that the crack scourge was part of a genocidal plot by the CIA and other unnamed government forces to wipe out African Americans. The issue of black culpability, personal responsibility, and punishment for black drug dealers was buried in the rush to pump the conspiracy line.

This doesn't surprise me. Since the 1960's, the conspiracy theorists believe that everything that happens in and to African Americans is part of a secret plan. Following the urban uprisings, the theory goes, the ghettos were flooded with drugs, alcohol, gangs and guns. During the 1980s AIDS was added to the imports. The "white establishment" wanted to stop blacks from developing unity, strong political organizations and programs to counter oppression. The plot was to get blacks to self-destruct.

While there is no proof that any of this is true, public documents do support the following:

*Army Intelligence, the Justice Department, and the FBI intensely surveilled black leaders and organizations between World War I and II.

*Federal health officials for decades knowingly withheld curative medical treatment to a group of black men in Alabama suffering from syphilis.

*The FBI conducted a massive surveillance campaign against Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Black Panther Party and other black groups in the 1960s.

*The Justice Department initiated dozens of corruption probes against black elected officials between 1983 and 1988. Many blacks charge that this was a punitive campaign to traumatize black leadership.

These revelations are just enough to make the alleged CIA-cocaine connection the jewel in the crown of the conspiracy theorists. The fact that reporter Gary Webb, who broke the story in the San Jose Mercury News, did not explicitly charge that CIA officials directly conspired to or approved any plan to push drugs in black neighborhoods is ignored. Webb made a compelling case that following a Congressional funding cut-off to the Contras in the early 1980s, key operatives within the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (a Contra faction organized and supplied by the CIA) for a brief time supplied cocaine to Ross to raise money for equipment and weapons to keep their illegal war against the Sandinista government going.

If Webb's allegations are confirmed, it means that at least some CIA operatives turned a blind eye to the dirty deals. While it hardly provides smoking gun proof of direct CIA official involvement -- let alone of a massive government conspiracy to dope black communities -- it more than justifies outrage from all Americans.

But many blacks shoot themselves in one foot by side-stepping the culpability of men like Ross and pounding on the conspiracy theory with only the scantiest of evidence. They shoot themselves in the other foot by making the erroneous claim that "everyone in the black community has been affected by the crack plague." This reinforces the stereotype that the drug problem is exclusively a black problem. On the contrary, a recent University of Michigan survey on drug use found that black high school seniors were the LEAST likely group of students to use cocaine.

By rushing to judgment and spreading myths, black activists and elected officials give the media an excuse to attack their credibility, downplay the drug issue as a black problem or ridicule it as yet another case of "black paranoia." This allows the Clinton administration to ignore the charges, the Justice Department to dodge them and CIA officials to deny them. It prevents blacks from gaining broad support from elected officials and non-blacks for the appointment of a special counsel to fully investigate the charges.

Government agencies occasionally play fast and loose with the law, and their reckless actions damage lives. But this doesn't prove that there are conspiracies or secret plots to commit genocide against blacks. Nor does it excuse or absolve blacks of criminal wrongdoing. Thinking otherwise is a trap that must be avoided.