The people's preacher: Al Sharpton would rather walk naked than wear your wretched dress.

The Reverend Al Sharpton knows that you do not take him seriously. Racism is like that. A man can win eighty per cent of the black vote, and still white people will question whether he really represents anyone. This is an outrage, and also a matter of no small personal satisfaction.

Nearly two decades have passed since Sharpton first made his appearance on the New York political scene and was dubbed by Ed Koch "Al Charlatan." In that time, there is hardly a form of contempt that he hasn't elicited; he has been variously condemned as a hustler, a demagogue, a symbol of all that is wrong with race relations in America, and a stupid joke. To the extent that the criticism has been damaging, it has not been to Sharpton -- a pattern whose implications his critics, even today, seem unable fully to grasp. Just this past fall, a series of cartoons ran in the Post showing Sharpton in an assortment of poses with then Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer. One of the cartoons pictured Ferrer, who was hoping, with Sharpton's support, to become the Democratic mayoral nominee, perched, Charlie McCarthy-like, on Sharpton's knee; another depicted the two at the altar, Ferrer in a wedding dress, Sharpton bursting out of a tuxedo. Ultimately, one of the cartoons found its way onto a campaign flyer for Ferrer's Democratic rival, Mark Green; it showed Sharpton presenting a blimp-sized rear end to Ferrer's puckered lips amid clouds of what can only be assumed to be flatulence. Chaos ensued. Democratic leaders lined up to mollify Sharpton, among them Bill Clinton, who spent the night before the general election driving around midtown Manhattan in a vain attempt at mediation. The whole mess probably cost Green the mayoralty, but, more important, as far as Sharpton was concerned, it provided new material.

"Blacks and Latinos made a statement this year that plantation politics is over," he announced to much applause in Harlem a few days after the election. "We may have a bad date with Michael Bloomberg, but I'm not going to be the battered wife for the Democratic Party. That's what battering husbands do: beat their wives, talk about 'Nobody wants you but me,' slap them around, say 'Who else is going to buy you a dress?' Well, I'd rather walk naked than wear your wretched dress."

Sharpton, who is forty-seven, has been successful enough at what he does that his staff now numbers twenty. This includes a scheduler, a field director, and a full-time driver, who ferries him around the city in a black, Eddie Bauer-edition Ford Expedition. His organization, the National Action Network, has twenty-three chapters in fifteen states. Though it is still dangerous for white politicians to deal with him, it can be equally dangerous for them not to. Over the years, Sharpton and the New York press corps have worked out a symbiosis much like that of the crocodile and the Egyptian plover, though whose teeth are being cleaned by whom isn't always obvious.

If Sharpton were interested in conventional political power, he clearly could have acquired it by now; there are at least half a dozen congressional districts that would gladly elect him. Instead, the races he has taken on -- two for the United States Senate and one for the mayoralty -- have all been manifestly unwinnable. When, for instance, in 1994 he mounted a primary campaign against Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Sharpton received eighty per cent of the black vote and twenty-five per cent of the total -- a stunning result, and yet still several hundred thousand votes shy of victory.

Sharpton's latest plan is to run for President of the United States. He is assembling an exploratory committee, which is headed by the Harvard professors Cornel West and Charles Ogletree. In the next few weeks, he plans to make his first visit to New Hampshire. Once again, it's easy to see where all this is headed. Sharpton will lose, and before that he will be reviled -- mocked and derided for even putting himself forward. Running is, for him, an absurd decision, and, given the scope of his ambition, an irresistible one.

The House of Justice occupies the second floor of a weary, low-slung brick building on Madison Avenue, just south of 125th Street. Above it is the Israelite Church of God and Jesus Christ, and down in the basement is a used-record store, open only sporadically, which specializes in "oldies but goodies." Next door is a West Indian restaurant, Flavored with One Love, and next to that a fish place with spiritual aspirations. "Servants of God" reads the awning, right above "A Taste of Seafood."