ill Bradley likes to talk about race. He likes to talk about it a lot. He has made it a central theme of his presidential campaign. He describes how his career with the New York Knicks gave him keen insights into racism. He says he became a Democrat because ''it was Democrats that stepped forward ... in the Senate and cast their vote for the Civil Rights Act in 1964.'' (Actually, Republicans voted for the bill en masse while nearly one-third of the Democrats voted against it.) His campaign Web site (www.billbradley.com) offers the full text of not one, not two, but five separate speeches on race, plus an excerpt on the subject from his 1996 autobiography.
He brings up racial issues before almost every audience. At the University of Iowa, Bradley was asked why he was talking about race to a roomful of white Iowans. ''Why not to you?'' he answered. ''I talk about it everywhere I go.''
So what can a president can do about race relations? During a Q&A last week at The Boston Globe, Bradley had a ready answer.
''There's a tone that an administration takes,'' he said. ''When Ronald Reagan was president, if you wanted to please the boss, what you did was increase defense spending to fight communists. If I'm president and you want to please the boss, you're going to show how in your life, in your job, in your business, you promoted racial understanding.''
It would be no bad thing to have a president who everyone knew was deeply committed to promoting racial understanding. But if Bradley cares so deeply about improving race relations, why would he go out of his way to curry favor with a racial demagogue?
On Aug. 23, Bradley appeared before the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network in New York. With his most senior campaign aides on hand, he spoke about how much racial unity means to him. ''It is who I am,'' he told the audience. ''It's what I believe. It's what I care most about.'' He issued a string of promises, including more affirmative action, more money for inner cities, and lighter penalties for using crack cocaine. At one point, he led the hall in chanting Sharpton's battle cry, ''No justice, no peace.''
What Bradley didn't say, what he didn't even hint at, was that the man he was paying homage to is a race-baiting bigot, a notorious liar, and a Jew-hater.
In 1987, Sharpton helped peddle the incendiary Tawana Brawley hoax, insisting loudly that a 15-year-old black girl had been kidnapped and raped by white men. He told reporters that one of the rapists was a young prosecutor named Steve Pagones. When the shocked Pagones, who had never met Brawley, objected, Sharpton taunted him. ''If we're lying, sue us!'' Pagones did and was vindicated. But it took years to get his verdict, and Sharpton has never recanted the slander.
In 1991, anti-Semitic riots erupted in Brooklyn when a 7-year-old black child, Gavin Cato, was accidentally killed by a Hasidic driver. Sharpton gleefully poured gasoline on the fire. Three hours after the child was killed, a gang of 20 young black men shouting ''Kill the Jews!'' knifed to death an Orthodox Jew, a visiting scholar. At Cato's funeral, Sharpton blasted Jewish ''diamond merchants'' for the boy's death and egged on the rioters. ''We must not reprimand our children for outrage,'' he insisted. ''It ... was put in them by an oppressive system.'' As the violence raged, he mobilized hundreds of anti-Jewish demonstrators. They marched along Eastern Parkway, chanting, ''No justice, no peace.''
In 1995, Sharpton led protests against Freddy's Fashion Mart, a Harlem clothing store with a Jewish owner. On his radio show, he demanded that the ''white interloper'' be forced out of Harlem. The head of Sharpton's Buy Black committee vowed to ''make this cracker suffer.'' On Dec. 8, one of the protesters walked into the store, began shooting, and set Freddy's Fashion Mart on fire. Eight people died.
Sharpton is a vicious racist, the very antithesis of a racial healer. If Bradley cares as deeply about improving race relations as he says he does, why would he agree to appear with such a thug? And why would he say nothing - not a word - to dissociate himself from Sharpton's racial malice?
Asked the question, Bradley begins with a small boast. ''I think I was the first Democratic politician in a primary campaign to go to Harlem since 1968.'' (Not true; a five-minute search of 1992 news clips turns up coverage of Jerry Brown's appearances there that year.)
''The Sharpton event was a forum,'' Bradley went on. ''He introduced me, I spoke, I answered questions. I don't agree with Al Sharpton on all the issues, not at all. But that was an opportunity to speak to a community that doesn't have presidential candidates come and speak to them.'' Besides, he said, while ''Sharpton has made some big mistakes ... everyone has the possibility of evolving.''
Those are hollow rationalizations, thin and unworthy. No one who believes in racial harmony has any business sharing a stage with the likes of Sharpton. If Bradley felt obliged to go for the sake of the ''community,'' he had a moral obligation to speak up about the racial poison in which Sharpton trafficks. He kept silent. It is on the silence of good men like Bradley that evil men like Sharpton grow strong.
Jeff Jacoby is a Globe columnist.
