WHILE CRUZING THROUGH OAKLAND

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante made a campaign stop in Oakland the other day to answer questions by members of the Black Elected Officials of the East Bay organization and the progressive Socially Responsible Network. The Bustamante appearance was marked by the question that wasn’t asked, and the question that wasn’t answered.

For starters, not a soul asked him about the N-word.

For the record, Bustamante’s original N-word slip came at the oddest of times and places—a speech at a 2001 Black History Month banquet held in Emeryville by the Coaliton of Black Trade Unionists, when he mispronounced the word "Negro" as "nigger." I’ve heard Southern white politicians embarrass themselves like that before a black crowd. But the white Southern-drawl pronunciation of "Negro" is "nigra," which sounds like an awfully close cousin to "nigger" to the untrained or sensitive ear, and is probably where the "nigger" term came from in the first place. Bustamante, an articulate man with the diction of an English professor, could not claim that his accent made him do it. To his credit, Bustamante did not profess that he was misunderstood by the trade unionists, several of whom walked out of the 2001 meeting, nor did he offer any excuses. He has apologized profusely, from that moment to this.

Apparently, it’s not enough. Log onto any California-based African-American Internet discussion group this month, and you can’t find a mention of Bustamante without a reference to his once and infamous use of the N-word. It will cost him some portion of black votes in the recall election, though no one can guess how many at the present.

One of the reasons this issue lingers among black Californians, I believe, is that while Bustamante’s apologies have been more than adequate, his explanations have not. "This word comes out my mouth, and I didn't know what to do," Bustamante said back in 2001. "I couldn't believe what came out of my mouth. I know it came out of my mouth, but it is not how I was taught, it is not how I teach my children."

Then how, many African-Americans wonder, did it come out of his mouth?

When I was in my late 40’s, I heard my father curse for the first time. What I mean to say is, it was the first time I heard him curse, which is not the same as saying this was the first time he cursed. He did it easily, and in perfect context, in a way people do it when they are used to cursing. Up until that moment I believed that my father did not curse, because I had never heard him curse. Afterwards, I realized that he did not curse in front of his children, which is quite a different thing.

This, I think, is how many African-American Californians view Bustamante’s use of the N-word at the Black History Month Speech. There is a lingering suspicion that this a word the Lieutenant Governor either regularly uses among trusted associates when he’s out of the public eye, or else a word he regularly used at some other time in his life. Neither of these, of course, may be true. This is a simmering issue that is never going to be entirely forgotten. But even at this late date, if Bustamante wants to mitigate it, he needs to provide a better explanation as to why this word popped out of his mouth, both for the sake of his own political future and, more importantly, for the sake of better relations with the state’s two largest minorities.

The question that didn’t get answered was that of Oakland school activist Kitty Epstein, who wanted to know if Bustamante would do something about the handful of school districts—including Oakland—that have been seized by the California Legislature and turned over to the state school superintendent because of various fiscal problems. It would seem that this is a violation of the electoral rights of close to half a million Oaklanders, who must continue to pay for our public schools, but have no control over them. That sounds like taxation without representation to me, a situation over which the American colonists once fought the British in a lively little war.

Bustamante, an intelligent man who hears as well as he talks, seemed to think the school takeover question was about equal funding for all California schools, or something like that. Anyway, that’s the question he decided to answer.

I can understand why Bustamante would want to duck the Oakland school takeover question. I just don’t understand why more Oaklanders haven’t used the gubernatorial recall as a way to get this issue back into the public eye. But we’ll save that for another day’s thoughts.

Anyway, Bustamante got mostly softball questions from a largely supportive, largely black Oakland audience and for him, I’m sure, that’s all that mattered. These other issues will just be allowed to linger...until somebody brings them up again. Or until they are resolved.