When he campaigned for Mayor, Rudolph W. Giuliani often told his supporters that he favored "one standard" of justice in the city, a message that resonated strongly with those who believed Mayor David N. Dinkins had been too slow to enforce the law against blacks picketing Korean-owned grocery stores in Flatbush or black youths rampaging in Crown Heights.
This week, in the aftermath of a confrontation at a Harlem mosque that left eight police officers injured and escalated into a political test of his administration, Mr. Giuliani began bringing the same message to black audiences.
"I'm coming from a very simple place," he said on a talk show on WWRL-AM, which has a largely black audience. "It's called the law. Everybody has to follow it. Everybody will be dealt with in precisely the same way if they don't, and I'm going to work hard for every single person in this city, irrespective of race, religion, ethnic background."
Mr. Giuliani's advisers say they consider this a defining moment in his young administration, a time to make clear that the Dinkins era of conciliating and mediating in racially charged law-enforcement situations has ended. And they say he has sent a message that he will not be manipulated by the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has been a prominent figure in a series of racial incidents in the city.
Even though Mr. Giuliani could take satisfaction in the arrest Wednesday of a suspect in the mosque melee -- fulfilling his call for a law-enforcement solution to a law-enforcement problem -- the longer-term political consequences of the last two weeks are less clear.
Whether the Giuliani administration warned off Mr. Sharpton or simply gave him a new celebrity status remains to be seen. And so does the appeal of Mr. Giuliani's call to erase racial distinctions. But some critics of the new Mayor say the very manner in which the mosque incident grew into a political confrontation illustrates the great gulf in sensibilities that must be crossed as Mr. Giuliani tries to make his case to black New Yorkers.
There is a long history of tensions between the largely white police force and black and Hispanic residents, and law-enforcement matters quickly can balloon into crises. But when officers, responding to what turned out to be a bogus 911 call of a robbery, rushed to a Harlem mosque on Jan. 9 and were beaten in the melee that ensued, the Mayor saw the event purely as a police issue.
Mr. Giuliani adamantly supported the police and made clear he wanted arrests.
"We saw it as a police issue," said Deputy Mayor Peter J. Powers. "You can't allow police to be hurt. You don't run government saying if police are hurt here we react one way, if they're hurt there we react another way."
A Second Incident
Two nights later the incident was amplified when an unarmed black 17-year-old, with a drug conviction, was shot dead in a scuffle with officers. A black officer, Kevin Sherman, was also wounded in the confrontation. Mr. Giuliani visited the officer in the hospital and praised him.
On Jan. 13, Mr. Sharpton turned up at Police Headquarters along with C. Vernon Mason, a lawyer who often joins him in his causes, and the leaders of the mosque, who were scheduled to meet with Police Commissioner William J. Bratton. Mr. Giuliani and his advisers quickly decided that Mr. Sharpton, as one aide put it, was an "outside agitator" who would not be dealt with.
Isolating Mr. Sharpton is a popular move among Mr. Giuliani's core supporters in the white communities of Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, but it is politically risky for a Mayor who needs to build better relations with the city's black residents.
"If he just wants to show how tough he is, that's a campaign issue, not a governing issue," said Representative Charles Rangel, Democrat of Harlem. "If he were a candidate and said he wouldn't meet with him, I could understand it. But I don't think you have that luxury to determine who you meet with and who you don't when community people are asking to come in."
Other black politicians say Mr. Giuliani might have been able to isolate Mr. Sharpton with less fallout if he had laid the groundwork by meeting publicly with other black leaders to show he was listening to black concerns. (Mr. Giuliani has complained that black officials, whom he would not name, would only meet with him confidentially.)
With the only consultations going on in secret Mr. Sharpton brought a black audience to its feet last week, saying, "We're not going back to being disrespected and disregarded."
Last weekend, Mr. Giuliani moved to the political offensive, using several predominantly black forums to explain his views that New Yorkers must learn to be more color blind.
"I must ask that we have the same standards," he told a mostly black audience in Brooklyn on Monday.
He explained on radio that he had not made a judgment about police conduct in the shooting of the Brooklyn youth, beyond praising Officer Sherman, who was wounded. "As to the other police officer who did the shooting, I did not come to a conclusion about that," he said.
Meetings With Officials
And Wednesday night he began a series of meetings with elected officials from minority communities, sitting with the full black and Hispanic caucus of the City Council.
The next test of Mr. Giuliani's relationship with black officials is likely to come fast. In their session with the Mayor, the lawmakers had already moved onto budget issues and programs they consider crucial to maintain. With the city facing a $2.3 billion gap, there is no question that Mr. Giuliani's fiscal plan is likely to bring a lot of pain. Now he will have to convince the lawmakers that the pain is being distributed fairly.
