I blog over and over and over again how irrelevant and useless the mainstream media is. Not only are the stories reported partial, inaccurate, downright lies and perpetrated by uninformed pundits, the MSM has always taken a back-burner position when it comes to reporting on anything positive about the African American community. It's a fact that just cannot be disputed. It is so ingrained in the media psyche, that it has left the mainstream media without basic reporting skills since the election of President Obama.
Even the Wall Street Journal took notice of the historical signifance:
http://online.wsj.com/...
Forty years after race riots erupted on its streets, this city in the southeastern corner of Pennsylvania is about to elect its first African-American mayor.
While the media was sleeping on the job, two cities in Pennsylvania elected African-American women as their mayors for the first time yesterday. In York, Pennsylvania, Democrat Kim Bracey beat Republican Wendell Banks in the general election. The historical significance of these two wins comes forty years after race riots in a Central Pennsylvania town that led to the death of a White police officer and a Black woman.
The Historical Significance
In 1969, police warn volunteer firefighters not to head to a fire because of a sniper during riots in York. The city was slow to heal in the years that followed. It has taken a long time for this city to heal from the racial strife, in part because of lingering echoes of the riots. More than 30 years passed before any charges were brought -- after new evidence came to light and an investigation was revived -- in the 1969 killings of a white police officer and an African-American woman during weeks of violence between white and black youths.
In 2001, York's mayor, who had been a police officer during the unrest, was charged with murder for allegedly inciting white gangs involved in killing the African-American woman. The mayor resigned before being acquitted in 2002. Others were convicted of murder, in separate cases, of the woman and the police officer.
"It took a while to clean that slate," said John Brenner, York's current mayor, adding that the coming election "is something for us to celebrate."
Civil-rights historians say the election is an important symbolic shift for the city and credit decades of antidiscrimination initiatives and the more recent influx of minorities, particularly Hispanics, who have eroded the dominance of white voters. Those gradual changes received a boost from last year's election of President Barack Obama, which energized the African-American community here and led to increased voter registration.
Ms. Bracey, who won a contested primary against three other candidates, is "riding a wave left over from the Obama experience," said Jeffrey Lynn Woodyard, a York native and former African-American studies professor. Mr. Woodyard, who had been teaching in Florida, returned to York last fall and has offered campaign advice to Ms. Bracey.
Ms. Bracey acknowledged that she will have to deal with some continuing racial tensions. Recently, vandals painted "KKK" on signs leading to a community housing development. "Racial progress in the city is definitely improving," Ms. Bracey said. "Obviously there's work left to be done in York in terms of equality."
One of the things that I am taking away from this historic outcome is that while the media sleeps on the job, beware of the subtle election outcomes. What appears to be nothing in the fall of 2009, could be a game-changer in 10-20 years.