That is the title of this featured essay in tomorrow's NY Times Magazine. Written by Matt Bai (yeah, him). it is an examination of the generational divide among black politicians. Let me offer one early quote:
"Here we are, all of a sudden, in the 60th year after Strom Thurmond bolting the Democratic Party over a simple thing, something almost unheard of — because he did not want the armed forces to be integrated," Clyburn said slowly. "Here we are 45 years after the ‘I have a dream’ speech. Forty years after the assassinations of Kennedy and King. And this party that I have been a part of for so long, this party that has been accused of taking black people for granted, is about to deliver the nomination for the nation’s highest office to an African-American. How do you describe that? All those days in jail cells, wondering if anything you were doing was even going to have an impact." He shook his head silently.
I will explore below the fold why I think you should read the article.
Bai apparently got excellent access with a number of major politicians, as the quote above the fold from Clyburn illustrates. Here I should note that I have gotten to know Clyburn some in the past few months, and he is a very interesting character, going back to his own days a civil rights activist in South Carolina. He and John Lewis are the two Members of the House who are so thoroughly rooted in that tradition.
But many newer black politicians have a different perspective. And the article will offer some of that, from figure like Deval Patrick, Mayor Corey Booker of Newark, and Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama. Several of them ran against members of the earlier generation of black politicians, sometimes not successfully at first. Thus Cory Booker ran against Sharpe James, and Artur Davis had to run twice in primaries against Earl Hilliard. And we have all heard/seen the somewhat resentful remarks Jesse Jackson Sr. offered in the direction of Barack Obama.
But consider. Artur Davis was a Federal prosecutor who, like Obama, was a Harvard Law graduate. Note the following exchange he had with Hilliard after a debate the first time he challenged the sitting Congressman, as offered by Bai:
After a debate in which Davis pounded the incumbent for being out of touch with the district, Hilliard took him aside. "Young man, you have a good political future," Davis recalled Hilliard telling him. "But you’ve got to learn one basic lesson. You’re trying to start at the top, and you can’t start at the top in politics."
"With all due respect, Congressman," Davis replied, "I don’t think a group with 435 members can be the top of anything."
I want to focus a bit more on Davis, who may well run for Governor of Alabama. Here is a quote about the perspective he has about how the presidential race may affect the way black issues will be perceived:
Just talking about such disparities as systemic problems could be harder for an African-American president — for any African-American, really — than it was before. "If Obama is president, it will no longer be tenable to go to the white community and say you’ve been victimized," Artur Davis told me. "And I understand the poverty and the condition of black America and the 39 percent unemployment rate in some communities. I understand that. But if you go out to the country and say you’ve been victimized by the white community, while Barack Obama and Michelle and their kids are living in the White House, you will be shut off from having any influence."
And let me offer one more quote, which focuses on Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, which helps to illustrate how much things have changed:
For black Americans born in the 20th century, the chasms of experience that separate one generation from the next— those who came of age before the movement, those who lived it, those who came along after — have always been hard to traverse. Elijah Cummings, the former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus and an early Obama supporter, told me a story about watching his father, a South Carolina sharecropper with a fourth-grade education, weep uncontrollably when Cummings was sworn in as a representative in 1996. Afterward, Cummings asked his dad if he had been crying tears of joy. "Oh, you know, I’m happy," his father replied. "But now I realize, had I been given the opportunity, what I could have been. And I’m about to die." In any community shadowed by oppression, pride and bitterness can be hard to untangle.
Remember early this cycle that many of the older generation of Black leaders and politicians supported Hillary Clinton. For one thing, the Clintons did have a track record. And it was hard for people of the earlier generation to conceive that a black man could actually win in heavily white states. And for a while many in the African-American electorate had similar concerns, although after Iowa that began to change, a change that was cemented in part because of the perceptions IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY of the remarks made by Bill Clinton, among other things.
I am not black, nor have I played a black on tv or in the movies. I have some sense of the difference of the black experience over time: I am 62, and I was active in Civil Rights starting the year I graduated from high school (1963). I have seen remarkable changes in the 45 years since then. And some of the older paradigms may no longer be as applicable. I see the difference even over the 13 years I have been teaching, where with the exception of one year teaching in Virginia where I live, my classes have always had more black students total than white students (although the ratio is reversed in my AP classes). My first school was over 90% African-American, and our district serves the wealthiest majority black political jurisdiction in the United States. My students have gotten used to seeing black officials electedin their county, and have seen two successive Lt Govs in Maryland be African-American men, Republican Michael Steele and Democrat Anthony Brown. For some of my students the civil rights era is the time of their grandparents, not even that much of their parents.
There are things in Bai's article with which I might quibble, and I can see a few places where African-Americans might have some issues. On the whole I think it is an article that illuminates far more than it clouds the issues. And Bai is not afraid of admitting when he puts his foot in his mouth\, for which an exchange with Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter (who elsewhere points out there isn't a black way of filling potholes) will serve:
I asked Nutter if, during his private conversations with Obama early in the campaign, the subject of race and the historic nature of his candidacy came up. He stared at me for a moment. "Um, I knew he was black," he said finally. "I’d really kind of picked up on that."
I am going to recommend that people take the time to read the Bai piece. It is reasonably well-written, and as noted, he seems to have gotten remarkable access. And ikt provides enough information to provide a context, or if you prefer a lens, through which to understand why Obama in fact may be the End of Black Politics, at least as it had been understood by a previous generation of leaders. No one will deny that Obama is black, and by now we seem to be past the stage of whether he is black enough. But like many of his generation of leaders, he transcends categorization as a racial politician. And that may not only be necessary for his success, it will also greatly be to the benefit of this country, and thereby perhaps serve as a broader model for the wider world. He will not be either the first or the most unique head of state in that regard - after all, Peru did have a President of Japanese origin, and there are other illustrations which could also be offered. But given the history that race has played in our own history, the election of someone who is no doubt BLACK will serve as some kind of indicator of how far we have come, even as Obama is not going to be elected BECAUSE he is black, although that surely will be a positive, and not only among voters who also have dark skins.
Enough. Go read Bai. Then come back here and tell me why you think he is full of it, and I fell for it.
peace.