A Tale of Two Post-Racial Mayors

Professor Henry Louis Gates' "The Root" ^ | 14 Sep | Stewart/Mays

[flowerplough]

Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker and Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian M. Fenty are sometimes mistaken for each other: Both of them have similarly shaven bald heads and are grouped among the new breed of black political leadership. Unlike their predecessors, who rode a wave out of the civil rights movement and into mayoralties of major cities, Fenty and Booker have the potential to exceed the old paradigm of race-based politics in this country.

But first they'll have to win over their toughest critics: black voters.

In 2006 Fenty swept every precinct in the District in the Democratic primary -- an unprecedented victory in which both whites and blacks shared a favorable view of him. Four years later, Fenty is struggling to hold on to his seat in today's hotly contested primary election. (In heavily Democratic D.C., the primaries typically decide the mayoral race.) Fenty is trailing 67-year-old Vincent C. Gray, who has tapped into black discontent despite Fenty's spending a record $5 million on his campaign. A Washington Post poll showed 64 percent of white Democrats favored Fenty, while 64 percent of black Democrats said they would vote for Gray. Only 19 percent of black voters said that they would vote for Fenty.

Booker has also struggled with black voters. In May he was re-elected with 59 percent of the vote -- down from his 72 percent landslide in 2006 -- despite having spent $5.5 million, more than all the other candidates in the race.

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"As is often the case, politicians ... derive the wrong conclusion from the outcome," says Vincent Hutchings, a political science professor at the University of Michigan. "The appeal of the post-racial platform is mostly to non-blacks."

[flowerplough]

Post-Racial Bammy promised me some real good stuff: reduced price or free health care, the love and respect of other nations, "the rise of the oceans ... to slow and our planet ... to heal" and "care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless."

And alot of us, too many of us, believed him and liked what he purported to represent and looked forward to receiving that which he was a-promisin'.

But he didn't deliver, and can't ever deliver on his outlandish, garish, grandiose promises.