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If Obama does get elected, let’s hope that he does a better job running our nation than many black mayors who governed the ruin of their cities, engaged in corruption, raised taxes, run families to the safety of the suburbs, and made situations worse for poor blacks–aided by the media, which is afraid to hold them accountable, and by Washinton Democrats, acting as a co-dependent.
Here’s one take on this, from a rational voice on your side.
What Use Are Black Mayors (Selections. Emphasis mine.)
An Open Letter to the National Conference of Black Political Scientists - by Jerry G. Watts
White Americans have a long and rich history of recognizing black suffering but excluding it from their universe of moral concern. A less widespread but equally disgusting moral evasion (concerning the black poor) takes place daily among a growing number of blacks, particularly affluent ones.
As a political scientist who studies the political experiences of blacks in the United States, I think that the situation in New Orleans offers scholars of Afro-American politics a unique vessel for reflection. It is high time that we begin to question the analytical premises that have governed a great deal of the scholarship produced in the past few decades by black and white scholars of urban politics.
After all, black elites have been part of the governing coalition of New Orleans for almost twenty-five years. During that same period, the black poor of New Orleans have become increasingly entrenched in poverty.
Black euphoria had greeted the elections of Carl Stokes in Cleveland, Richard Hatcher in Gary and Kenneth Gibson in Newark. When I entered graduate school in 1975, the inability of these mayors to reverse the declining economic fortunes of their cities had not yet become well known. By the late 1970s, there was sufficient evidence to document the inability of these newly elected black mayors to substantively improve the plight of the poor in their cities.
The final and most dominant tendency among students of black urban politics was to sidestep any type of critical discussion of black elected officials. Instead, black mayors became objects of celebration. They were indicators of the progress of the race. “There were no black mayors in 1950, now there are….” These scholars of black urban politics spent far more energy explaining how a certain black candidate was elected mayor as opposed to explaining whether his election meant anything substantive to the residents of the city. (Interjection: Sounds like Gwen Ifill’s book.)
Many of us did not ask simple but crucial questions. For instance, did black mayors govern in ways that differed from their white predecessors? Were black mayors good for the urban poor? Did black mayors expand housing opportunities for the impoverished? Did they commit more resources to schools in poor and black neighborhoods? Such questions should have been routinely asked and investigated but too often, scholars of black urban politics were so enthralled by the emergence of winning black mayoral candidates that they celebrated their mere elections at the expense of analytically dissecting the impact of these politicians on the broader community.
When the elections of black big city mayors were coupled with the growing number of black elected officials in the South, some scholars of black politics became swept-up in a tide of optimism. But decades later, we can no longer continue to embrace a naive optimism. What has been the impact of these black elected officials on the living conditions of their poor constituents?
What could be a better case study of the failure of black mayors and black elected officials than the situation in New Orleans?
Why do we scholars of black politics spend so much time explaining how a black became mayor if becoming mayor has so little substantive political importance? Such analyses are utterly technocratic and ultimately establishmentarian. Too often, black political figures are not held accountable by the general public and scholars.(interjection: And by the major media.)
To the extent that students of black politics refuse to raise questions that go against the grain of the premises championed by elected black mayors, the substantive failures of these mayors become our scholarly failures as well.
I remember when Andy Young used to claim that black elected mayors were the vanguard of the continuing civil rights movement. Young’s utter BS should have been seen for the self-serving nonsense that it was. A black mayor of a city today is no more insurgent than I am as a bourgeois black academic in a predominantly white academic setting. Both of us may try to claim to that our personal advancement is a brick hurled against an entrenched racism. Both of us would be guilty of manipulating race to mask our self-interested actions.
I once tried to convince a black mayoral candidate of Hartford to relinquish campaign rhetoric about being a more efficient manager of resources than his opponent. I suggested that…Instead of managing the budget of Hartford, the mayor of Hartford should become a protest leader in behalf of increasing the size of Hartford’s economic pie. This Hartford mayoral candidate understood that I was asking him to engage in political activities that would alienate him from the state Democratic Party leaders who were quite content to treat Hartford residents as if they were extraneous citizens of Connecticut.
Yet, during this ascendancy of conservatism, little protest activity has emanated from impoverished urban areas. It is as if a black face in the mayor’s office conveyed to city residents a feeling of mayoral concern. If we are ever to begin a movement to attack poverty in America, it will necessitate confronting and challenging black elected officials, particularly black mayors. If we scholars of black politics are ever to contribute to the alleviation of urban poverty, we will have to jettison our long running romance with black elected officials.
Jerry Watts is a professor of Political Science ath the City University of New York Graduate Center.
The problems that we have seen, by not holding black mayors accountable, are exactly what we’re seeing with Obama and could expect if he is elected President. Marc and the commenters here are as guilty as the mainstram media in excusing Obama’s weaknesses and inexperience and aloof atittude. But, when one has questions about Obama, the race card is played. The wall of political correctness is raised.
Do we really need another inexperienced elitist in the White House if you want to solve urban ills?
Instead of attacking Republicans, you need to turn your sights inward as to why Democrats don’t make things better for the people whose votes they take for granted.
Here you go…AP, pretending to report news, is lying and playing the race card for Obama. You’re not allowed to criticize a black man.
WASHINGTON (AP) - By claiming that Democrat Barack Obama is “palling around with terrorists” and doesn’t see the U.S. like other Americans, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin targeted key goals for a faltering campaign.
And though she may have scored a political hit each time, her attack was unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.
“Our opponent … is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country,” Palin told a group of donors in Englewood, Colo. A deliberate attempt to smear Obama, McCain’s ticket-mate echoed the line at three separate events Saturday.
“This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America,” she said. “We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism.”
So, it’s racist when you say that a candidate doesn’t see America as good. Explain that one.
So, keep avoiding criticism of Obama and he’ll be just like the black mayors who get away with everything and accomplish nothing.
The black mayors who first came to power in the wake of the civil-rights movement found themselves inheriting disemboweled cities whose white middle classes had moved out to the suburbs.
I’m not excusing any individual acts of corruption, alright? I know Marion Barry made a personal choice to smoke crack. But let’s keep in mind the conditions under which all of America’s cities operated at the time when New York almost went bankrupt.
October 5th, 2008 at 9:03 am
If Obama does get elected, let’s hope that he does a better job running our nation than many black mayors who governed the ruin of their cities, engaged in corruption, raised taxes, run families to the safety of the suburbs, and made situations worse for poor blacks–aided by the media, which is afraid to hold them accountable, and by Washinton Democrats, acting as a co-dependent.
Here’s one take on this, from a rational voice on your side.
What Use Are Black Mayors (Selections. Emphasis mine.)
An Open Letter to the National Conference of Black Political Scientists - by Jerry G. Watts
The problems that we have seen, by not holding black mayors accountable, are exactly what we’re seeing with Obama and could expect if he is elected President. Marc and the commenters here are as guilty as the mainstram media in excusing Obama’s weaknesses and inexperience and aloof atittude. But, when one has questions about Obama, the race card is played. The wall of political correctness is raised.
Do we really need another inexperienced elitist in the White House if you want to solve urban ills?
Instead of attacking Republicans, you need to turn your sights inward as to why Democrats don’t make things better for the people whose votes they take for granted.
October 5th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Here you go…AP, pretending to report news, is lying and playing the race card for Obama. You’re not allowed to criticize a black man.
So, it’s racist when you say that a candidate doesn’t see America as good. Explain that one.
So, keep avoiding criticism of Obama and he’ll be just like the black mayors who get away with everything and accomplish nothing.
October 6th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Woody,
The black mayors who first came to power in the wake of the civil-rights movement found themselves inheriting disemboweled cities whose white middle classes had moved out to the suburbs.
I’m not excusing any individual acts of corruption, alright? I know Marion Barry made a personal choice to smoke crack. But let’s keep in mind the conditions under which all of America’s cities operated at the time when New York almost went bankrupt.