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The irony of Trump’s Jack Johnson pardon
He freed the memory of one black man while his attorney general revives policies that lead to mass incarceration
4:20 PMIt took a white president to pardon Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion, for having sex with white women.
Barack Obama wouldn’t touch it, to the dismay and puzzlement of many. Perhaps Johnson’s history was too messy. After winning the world title in 1908, Johnson flaunted his lust for money, clothes, cars, jewelry — and especially white women. In an America where black men could be lynched for a stray glance or remark, Johnson viciously beat at least one of his white girlfriends. Even though Johnson was wrongfully imprisoned under a Jim Crow law designed to police interracial sex, the first black president ignored pleas to exonerate the long-dead boxer. Instead, Obama focused his pardon power on living people unjustly imprisoned by the racially biased policies of mass incarceration.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump pardoned Johnson, who died in a car crash in 1946. “We righted a wrong,” Trump said in a ceremony attended by Johnson’s descendants, current heavyweight champ Deontay Wilder, former champ Lennox Lewis and Rocky actor Sylvester Stallone, who brought Johnson’s case to Trump’s attention.
There are many ironies in Trump’s decision, starting with the president being elected despite multiple accusations of sexual misconduct and assault. Add that Obama was handcuffed, to some extent, by a double standard that holds African-Americans accountable for all black sins while allowing whites to be judged as individuals. And Johnson’s gaudy lifestyle bears more similarities to Trump’s than to Obama’s.
But the saddest point is that while Obama used his pardons to free those victimized by mass incarceration, Trump’s Justice Department, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, is reviving policies on criminal charges that disastrously and disproportionately packed American prisons with blacks and Latinos.
Trump just freed the memory of one black man who died 72 years ago. How many living black men are now headed to the place where Jack Johnson never should have been?