It was just coincidence that Mark Ridley-Thomas was convicted of corruption l

first week on

the same day ex-President Trump was dictated about falsifying business records

mask

other crimes.

Still, both moments were historic.

Both were the result of aggressive efforts to hold elected officials accountable for alleged misconduct. And both figures have staunch supporters who say justice has not been served because these men mean too much to the public to be brought down by crimes that don’t look so serious on paper, even if they are felonies.

Let’s note the obvious:

MRI

isn’t Trump.

Trump practiced corruption in plain sight, from day 1, during his single term in office. He has actively broken the law, espoused racist views, encouraged largely white supporters to rebel on his behalf, deliberately undermined the principles of democracy.

Ridley-Thomas comes from a long history of black activism that strives to deliver on the true promise of multiracial democracy, something Trump and GOP America routinely mock. As an experienced public servant, Trump was never anything before being elected

MRI

has advanced policies and projects based on that activism and over the years became a touchstone, especially in his years as a Los Angeles County supervisor, for the possibility of large-scale institutional change.

And yet Ridley-Thomas shares with the former president an aura of untouchability, of being above the law. Before he was charged with corruption last year over a plan to reward USC with contracts in exchange for moving money and getting his son a teaching job, the FBI conducted years of an increasingly damning investigation. began to see. Still, Ridley-Thomas shrugged. Maybe he thought all his years on the city council, the legislature, the county supervisor, back to the city council gave him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he thought that doing good and doing something for himself on the public account were not incompatible.

The fact that he’s black and part of a dwindling cohort of influential black politicians in LA may have actually reinforced that sense of untouchability. After the indictment, there was much insinuation from Ridley-Thomas supporters that black wrists like him are much more scrutinized than non-black counterparts.

The Rev. Kenneth Walden, pastor of the Holman United Methodist Church and part of a Ridley-Thomas support group called the South LA Clergy for Political Accountability, said in a statement released earlier this year that the charge was part of the racial cleansing that is now underway in the infamous roundtable in which some of Ridley-Thomas’ fellow councilors traded racial slurs and plotted a power grab. This, Walden suggested, was the real crime.

It speaks to the pernicious effect of racially motivated hostility and a level of injustice that could easily affect any black leader, he stated.

What was Ridley-Thomas targeting? I do not believe it. But the reality of a double standard being imposed on black people is all the more reason to keep things clean and not expect the kind of isolation typical of non-black people (but not always: former councilor Mitch Englander, who white, and Jos Huizar, who is Latino, both went down for corruption).

More importantly, you must keep it clean precisely because it serves the interests of your black voters who rely on you to be honest and accountable to

them.

They need you at the office. Being turned down for a corruption conviction is a tragedy, not because of racism, but because Ridley-Thomas made choices.

For job security for his son and for funneling $100,000 to his son’s non-profit organization

, he jeopardized the representation of all of us. He sold us cheap. That should make us angry.

Too many Black Angelenos seem to miss that point on purpose. Instead, they are angry that someone like Ridley-Thomas, who cared so much about justice, was found guilty. Therefore justice was not served in their minds.

But it was. Evidence was presented and a jury made a decision. Nor was this a case of flimsy documentation or an example of a black man being rail-ridden or blinded. The process made it clear: good deeds cannot be a defense against bad ones. Besides, all the good Ridley-Thomas did was never in question. It was never on trial.

The most disturbing implication of all the grumbling about the Ridley-Thomas conviction is that he should have been cleared because he only took liberties that other politicians take all the time, that he did what white people do with impunity (e.g. Trump). For any advocate of racial justice, this is the most slippery slope: Criticize mainstream ethics and then argue, when it suits you, that you are also entitled to those ethics. Such doublethink does not serve black people at all, not least by fueling cynicism about the possibility of change, about politics in general. That’s exactly what we don’t need right now.

Selfish behavior ultimately did not serve Ridley-Thomas, who has tarnished, if not completely sunk, the legacy of his supporters. His defense argued that what he did may have been unethical, but not illegal. Even if that were true, how is it okay to just be unethical? Such claims are not only utterly inconclusive, they are damning.

Unconvincing and damning explanations for his prolific, unsavory misdeeds are to be expected from Trump, but for someone like Ridley-Thomas, it’s unacceptable that we had such high expectations of him is the silver lining in it all. Our great expectations ultimately remain perhaps the most important part of a legacy we thought we already knew.

Erin Aubry Kaplan is a contributing writer to Opinion.