Whose lives matter? The debate over race rages on at the national nominating conventions

At the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, first lady Michelle Obama reminded the audience how far the country has come from its roots in slavery. President Barack Obama spoke of overcoming the “racial divides” that persist in America and drew an analogy between “the worry black parents feel when their son leaves the house” and “what a brave cop’s family feels when he puts on the blue and goes to work.” Rep. John Lewis, a leader of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, applauded his party for following its selection of Obama as the first African-American presidential nominee eight years ago with another history-making choice in Hillary Clinton.

At the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, the party invoked the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. Gov. Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana who was introduced to the nation as the Republican Party’s vice presidential nominee, said during his acceptance speech that King was one of his childhood heroes. Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr. reminded the delegates of King’s writings about “the basic morality of the rule of law, provided that it is applied equally to both the wealthy and the impoverished, both men and women, and yes, the majority and the minority.” And Larry Kudlow, the commentator and CNBC contributor, recited several lines from King’s famous “I have a dream” speech in an address to New York’s GOP delegation.

But in a time of tense race relations across the country and anxieties over fatal shootings by police officers and retaliatory assassinations of law enforcement figures, both political parties used the spotlight of their national nominating conventions to rally their base. In Philadelphia, convention organizers were criticized for failing to include family members of police officers killed in the line of duty, and only belatedly announced a few law enforcement figures added to the lineup. In a prime-time appearance in the convention hall at the Wells Fargo Center, a group of mothers of men, women and children whose deaths have enraged the black community – Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland – took to the stage to call for reforms, bringing the crowd to its feet and spurring chants of “Black lives matter!”

In Cleveland, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has frequently pinned the blame on blacks for the violence in their own communities, stole the show on the opening night by highlighting the fear plaguing Americans and the threats to police officers “being targeted with a target on their back.” CNBC’s Kudlow rebuked Obama for saying that young blacks need to be told to be careful around police officers, arguing that what’s needed instead is for fathers to “tell these kids that the cops are their friend and they’re trying to help you and save your life.” And Clarke, the African-American sheriff from Milwaukee County, soberly reminded the delegates of the shooting deaths of two Baton Rouge police officers and a sheriff’s deputy a day earlier. But Clarke added there was “good news,” too: One of the Baltimore police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray, a black man killed in a police transport van, was acquitted earlier that day.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to make something very clear: Blue lives matter in America!” Clarke proclaimed. In contrast with King and his movement, Clarke said, today’s demonstrators are neither peaceful nor productive. “What we witnessed in Ferguson and Baltimore and Baton Rouge was a collapse of the social order,” he said. “So many actions of the Occupy movement and Black Lives Matter transcends peaceful protest and violates the code of conduct we rely on. I call it anarchy.”

A few miles outside of the RNC security zone in Cleveland, in a shabbier part of the city where homes have fallen into disrepair, the scholar and activist Cornel West stood before a largely African-American crowd at the Olivet Institutional Baptist Church. West, a Bernie Sanders supporter who has refused to endorse Clinton since she won the Democratic primary, saved his sharpest criticism for those he said were co-opting the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. He vehemently rejected what he described as a revisionist view of King and attempts to appropriate his words to political ends.

“We lie to young people when we tell them that everybody loved Martin, that’s a lie!” West thundered, reminding the audience that King was handcuffed and locked up for his actions. “They love him now that the worms got his body and the Lord got his soul, but when he was here, he was a challenge, not just to the white status quo but to the black political establishment, too, and the church establishment!”

A week later at the DNC in Philadelphia, Rep. Charles Rangel dismissed the GOP’s embrace of King and the unfavorable comparisons with the Black Lives Matter movement. “I marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, and believe me, he caught hell being out there,” Rangel said. “You don’t bust into somebody’s house just because you’ve got Jesus on your side and say that you’re a sissy man. He was just as bold and courageous in walking into the fire knowing that he was bringing out violence and got killed for it. They didn’t want Martin Luther King when he was here, they didn’t want Malcolm X when they were here, they didn’t want Adam Clayton Powell when they were here, but something happens when people die. ‘Why can’t you be like the others who are dead?’ Hell, no.”

Yet many Republicans and conservatives have continued to simultaneously praise King and blast Black Lives Matter, both the movement and the term itself, calling it racist. Some have responded with the phrase “All lives matter,” and in the wake of a string of recent shootings of police and law enforcement officers, Sheriff Clarke and others have latched onto the motto “Blue lives matter.”

But Rangel isn’t buying it. “If I was representing crippled children, and I was to say that crippled children matter, is there an inference at all that kids that don’t have physical impairments don’t count?” he asked. “If I was talking about blind people, and I would say people without sight should count for something and be included in society, the inference is so abundantly clear that human beings matter, Americans matter, men and women matter, children matter, and nobody should, because of their color, have their lives diminished in our great country – we’ve been saying this since slavery.”

On the surface, at least, the racial line between the two parties and the two nominees could not be clearer. Donald Trump, the Republican standard-bearer, has been widely accused of racism for suggesting that Mexican immigrants are rapists, for calling for a ban on Muslims entering the country, and for equivocating when asked about the endorsement of a former member of the KKK. Trump’s claim that a judge of Mexican heritage couldn’t be impartial in a court case involving his Trump University drew condemnation even from within his own party.

Clinton, meanwhile, is credited with winning the Democratic primary thanks in large part to the support of African Americans in the South. Obama won more than 90 percent of the black vote in 2008 and 2012, and Clinton could come close to those numbers too, even as many young black activists remain wary of her. While relatively few blacks were present at the convention proceedings in Cleveland, minorities were a strong presence in Philadelphia.

But in the New York GOP, some party members are trying to strike a more conciliatory tone. Michel Faulkner, an African-American pastor in Harlem and former member of the New York Jets who is now running for mayor of New York City as a Republican, said his party “should be known as the party of inclusion, but unfortunately we’ve lost our way, and that’s unfortunate.” Faulkner said the party needs to return to its roots. “We are a party that began around the idea of liberation,” he said, “the party of Lincoln, the party of Frederick Douglass.”

Yet Faulkner, like the most Republicans, is a loyal Trump supporter. “I think Donald Trump is a solution,” he said, downplaying the candidate’s controversial remarks as “gaffes” and insisting he had never heard Trump make a disparaging remark about African Americans. “I think he is a way forward, and it’s not just talking about party. I supported Barack Obama the first time around. I’m not a knee-jerk conservative that is only going to support somebody because they have an R after their name. I want to vote for the best person. I’ve been disappointed with what’s happened with our president. Clearly race is not the answer. We’ve had a black president, and the African-American community is further behind than they were eight years ago.”