Justin Phillips writes a weekly op-ed column on Black issues in the San Francisco Chronicle. He’s one of those types who sees racism everywhere. He doesn’t pretend to be objective, and he doesn’t have to. What he does isn’t journalism, it’s opinionating, and that’s okay with me. But that doesn’t stop me from challenging him.
His latest, from last Sunday, is a hit piece on Matt Dorsey, who was the San Francisco Police Department’s top communications officer until he was appointed by Mayor London Breed to be on the Board of Supervisors. Dorsey is a rock-solid liberal; gay and HIV-positive, a recovering drug addict, he worked closely with Dennis Herrera, then S.F.’s City Attorney, in defending Gavin Newsom’s gay marriages, back in the early 2000s. He held a top level job with the San Francisco Democratic Party, and is an ardent supporter on drug rehab programs. In short, Dorsey is no rightwinger.
But since Dorsey worked for the police, Phillips doesn’t trust him. Phillips seldom has anything good to say about cops. Time after time, in column after column, Phillips cherry picks the news to find fault with SFPD. It gets tiresome to read him.
Phillips implies Dorsey is going to be unable to do his job as a Supervisor fairly, without bias, because he worked for the police. His column ran in both the Chronicle’s print edition and online, and had different headlines on each, but both headlines raised unwarranted, and rather sleazy, questions about Dorsey. The newspaper header was “Ex-SFPD spokesperson takes strange career turn.” Mr. Phillips, what’s so “strange” about Dorsey going from SFPD to Supervisor? You went from being a food writer to a race-based columnist, which seems pretty strange to me.
The online header was “Will the real Matt Dorsey please stand up?” The implication is that Dorsey presents different faces in different situations, making him an untrustworthy hypocrite. Mr. Phillips, what part of Dorsey’s identity don’t you understand? By asking this rhetorical question, Phillips maliciously plants suspicions in the minds of his readers, as if someone who worked for SFPD cannot possibly do his new job responsibly.
I perceive the bias behind Justin Phillips’ thinking. It’s a form of racism in itself, the same bias that infects the mind of Cat Brooks (who also writes for the Chronicle) and all the other police bashers. They begin with the premise that all cops are bad, that the “carceral” system is hopelessly prejudiced against Black people, that “white privilege” keeps its knee on the necks of Black people all the time, that anything that has to do with police is dirty and tainted. By Justin Phillips’ standards, no one who ever worked for a police department should ever be allowed to hold public office—including ex-cops, which would have excluded the present New York City mayor and at least one former San Francisco mayor.
I can’t think of anything more ridiculous or offensive. Or dangerous. It’s the kind of stereotyping that Phillips complains about all the time being aimed at Black people, only this time, he’s the stereotyper. He needs to cut it out but, of course, he won’t, as long as the Chronicle pays him to be their resident Black pundit.
Steve Heimoff