Letters to the Editor
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Good Negroes, Bad Negroes, Context
"A new generation of black politicians are striving to put racial patronage and civic corruption behind them, and unite an increasingly diverse nation."
Often, the problem with articles like this one is that they lack crucial context. While the complaints of "racism" as a defense against charges of cronyism and incompetence is overwrought, it's not all that misplaced as a perception.
In practically every city of any size in this country, blacks have historically watched generation after generation of white politicians and union leaders engage in rampant racial patronage, cronyism and civic corruption, and absent flagrantly obvious behavior, hardly a peep was said about it. It's amazing how everybody in those administrations "just happened" to be white and all the plum appointments and city contracts "just happened" to go whites who either contirbuted to their campaigns or did political favors for them. How all the union bosses and power brokers "just happened" to be white and how the majority of people who got union jobs not only "just happened" to be white but usually "just happened" to be part of a particular white ethnic group. Funny how that all "just happened" and, again absent a major blow up, was just "business as usual".
Lo and behold when blacks started to gain some of those positions and more importantly, started to wield some of the power that came with them, all of a sudden "good government" issues like "racial patronage and civic corruption" were oh so important. Gee, I wonder what the difference was? I mean, Daivd Dinkins got lambasted for how much he spent on a headboard for his bed while Rudy Guiliani, among other things, appointed shady folks like Ray Harding's son and Bernard Kerik to key positions and nobody really said squat until the later two blew up.
Anyway, this isn't really a black politician issue because such issues are not, nor have they ever been, unique to black politicians. So, why must they be especially called upon to "put racial patronage and civic corruption behind them and unite a diverse nation"?
I don't have a problem with Obama, but to use him a "Perfect Son" and as a rehtorical club to beat others (e.g. Maxine Waters) is silly and insulting.
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Two more cents...
A couple of other things I found particularly odd about the article. One was the continued strain of growing "middle class values" among the Black professional class. As if anti-croynism and corruption are uniquely "middle class values". I guess the theory is that poor blacks are more tolerant of cronyism and corruption than their betters. It's amazing how you can acquire "values" simply by being better educated, moving out of the 'hood and buying a house.
Also, the author talks about coalition politics as if it's something new. Where has he been for the past 40 yrs or so? Oh well...
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Could this article be any more offensive
There were so many ridiculous and offensive assertions in this article, like this below.
"Cronyism and political favors, he says, are the hallmarks of any machine that rises out of an impoverished community."
As if the poor have some monopoly on cronyism and political favors. Last thing I remember, the Bush White House didn't seem that impoverished and they wrote the book on corruption.
"As they build middle-class lives, African-Americans are adopting middle-class values: an intolerance of corruption and an expectation of accountability from their political leaders."
Does the author think that poor African-Americans just LOVE corruption? It's a matter of choosing the devil you know over the one you don't. Also, just because someone is poor, does not mean they can't have positive, "middle-class" values.
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I could not even read past the first paragraph . . .
. . . of this article. What is this business of the Black Panthers having been "spawned" and about "crude racial politics"? The Black Panthers were not, as they are often depicted, some rag tag group of irrational, violent criminals. The Panthers stood for the principle of self-defense based on first-hand experience of racial terrorists, whether civilian or outfitted in police uniform, that gave personal meaning to the right to bear arms enumerated in the Constitution's second Amendment. The Panthers were a vital source of health-care, education and even food for black, urban communities, which were and are neglected by the state unless they are the targets of the War on Crime or War on Drugs. Please do yourself a favor and read up on this important post-civil rights era group before calling them spawn.
As for "crude racial politics", these are not merely engaged in by blacks in particular or racial minorities in general. If you would take some time to consider this country's slavery and Jim Crow eras, you would see that there is nothing new or particular about "crude racial politics" - these are simply the politics of the U.S. Moreover, although no racial group is in actuality a monolithic or essentialized entity, individuals part of a minority racial group have nonetheless been put into the odd position - by a historically and systemically racist state - of having to politically act in tandem in order to crush dehumanizing and utterly unjust treatment. "Crude racial politics" established legalized racism and "crude racial politics" dismantled it.
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god, read the article
The hysterical response to this article is amazing. Did you actually read it? It's hardly innuendo and slander: it's filled with examples of the breakdown of black politics. Are you so immature that every criticism of the black poor needs to come with a foonote "but Bush is much worse"? Get a grip people. Here's news: criticizing successful black politicians for "acting white" is the new racism. Crying racism when someone calls out the failures of the African-American political machine is the new annoying.
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leaders...plural?
I don't take much issue with the article in general. And I've been largely (bankruptcy bill excepted)impressed with Senator Obama's record and character. Indeed during his Dem. convention speech I said to my wife that we were very possibly looking at the first black US president.
I do take issue with the nearly non-sequitur cover image and the subtitle. At least two thirds of the article was devoted to an analysis of California's racial politics, and produced not one example of a California politician primed to hit the national scene. Discussions of New York and Atlanta were equally void of examples of any sort of national "movement".
Of course all politics is local, and it has to start somewhere, but tidying up the piece with a few paragraphs about Barack Obama seemed cheap and, frankly, off point. Without the suggestion of the story's graphic image lead the summation doesn't follow.
Salon, and liberals in general, would do well to ditch any and all race baiting immediately--however well intentioned. It can only backfire from here on out. It is one of the pillars of the broken liberal movement, and trying to salvage this condemned structure can only lead to more trouble. Progressives from across the political spectrum would be well advised to erect an entirely new foundation that severs all ties to past strategies and builds on the foundation of the best that both (all) political parties have to offer. This is what Barack is doing, and perhaps we will see a movement grow out of it, but the work sited in Oakland and LA and New York and Atlanta is not yet an outpicturing of some transcendent uprising.