Posted on 06/12/2006 10:15:36 PM PDT by Coleus
This morning, City Councilman Al Vann (D-Brooklyn) and a sundry of the city's black elected officials are scheduled to meet to address what they deem a serious crisis. High AIDS infection rates? Gun violence? The war in Iraq?
Not quite. As Vann wrote in a June 8 e-mail, "we are in peril of losing a 'Voting Rights' district, the 11th Congressional District, as a result of the well-financed candidacy of Council Member David Yassky, a white individual."
You see, Yassky, a city councilman, is running in a predominantly black community, trying to succeed the retiring African-American Congressman Major Owens. And in the topsy-turvy world of race politics in today's Brooklyn, it is racist to measure a candidate's merit by his skin color - unless the candidate is white and is running to represent a mostly black district.
With three black candidates (including Owens' son) competing against Yassky, some fear - use of the word "fear" strikes me as funny here - that the black vote may be split and Yassky could wind up winning the election. Everything negative, right down to the word "colonizer," has been thrown at Yassky. The most vocal of his detractors are racialists who see everything - including the Voting Rights Act of 1965 - in black and white. Some have actually argued that the Act "requires" black representation from the 11th Congressional District.
But the Voting Rights Act requires no such thing. No law exists saying that a person may not run or qualify for a public office in America on the flimsy basis that his skin color does not match that of the district's majority population. On the other hand, congressional districts have been drawn in ways that assume racial preferences in voting on the part of racial minorities. This racial gerrymandering takes for granted that in communities where minorities are the majority, that they will indeed elect people who look like them.
"Their own kind" mentality is a powerfully seductive political and racial habit in America. Ed Koch, for one, doesn't see anything wrong with it. He told me at a luncheon recently that "it's nuts" to think a white person can get elected to Congress from Harlem. "People vote for their own kind," he said. "There's nothing wrong with it. It's natural." Not really. For many years, the estimable Peter Rodino, a white liberal on race, represented Newark in Congress. And, if the "first African-American President" Bill Clinton were to take up residence in Harlem and run for Congress, he'd win in a cakewalk against any black competition.
Moreover, Harlem is in transition. It will not be solidly black for much longer as whites return to the city and gentrify Harlem and other blighted urban areas. Brooklyn and its 11th Congressional District are in transition, too. Park Slope and Crown Heights, two of its neighborhoods, are growing increasingly diverse. That candidates should be judged on their résumés and on the basis of their ideas, and not their skin color, is the new American paradigm. Ironically, Koch and the many who think like him are stuck in a David Dinkins-type time warp, envisioning a "gorgeous mosaic" of racially identifiable, ethnic neighborhoods electing to office people who "look" like them. That is, to use an Ed Koch word, ridiculous. Our communities are soon going to be more, not less, multicultural and multiethnic - and, surely, racial integration is the way of the immediate future, in neighborhood patterns and in politics.
I have no dog in this hunt or personal favorites in the campaign - only the fervent hope that the electorate there will reject ghettoized thinking when it comes to weighing the qualifications of candidates who seek to represent it in Congress. Perhaps, eventually, we can come to see race as we regard eye color - that is, as nothing about which to be proud or discriminating.
Meyers is executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition.
Being white may not be his only problem in that district.
I see nothing wrong with being proud of your race, eye color or even gender.
it's a black thang
Well, everone needs SOMETHING to be proud of, and if it can't be achievement, success, intelligence or character, it might as well be race, eye color or gender.
Why not sock color?
Maybe "proud" is not quite the right word. I quite like my skin color, eye color and gender, but I don't see why I should be proud of something that came down to chance.
Just another example of the racist entitlement philosophy fostered by the left.
Do they do runoff elections if no candidate manages to win a majority?
I'd say "someday my children will be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin", but that would be plagiarism.
Re: "I see nothing wrong with being proud of your race, eye color or even gender."
That's fine, however, being a near 60-year old, blue-eyed, red-headed, white guy, I find myself being in the only minority where I haven't any rights at all if you listen to the Liberal Democrats...
(Denny Crane: "Every one should carry a gun strapped to their waist. We need more - not less guns.")
Not really...if the "first African-American President" Bill Clinton were to take up residence in Harlem and run for Congress, he'd win in a cakewalk against any black competition.
A textbook example of "if that's the exception, that proves the rule".
You may be of Viking descent. If so, you can be proud that your ancestors were great explorers and warriors. I love the Vikings, and the Huns. Both kicked butt every where they traveled. I'm sorry to say that the success of your ancestors now allows many to demand your mistreatment. I suggest you learn Spanish, go to Mexico and slip back into US illegally. This should help restore you to full human status.
LOL, Democrats....
Shameless racists. Utterly and completely shameless.
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