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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
When young African-American challengers face off against their trailblazing predecessors, they often get called pawns of whitey.
Jun 18, 2002 | Newark (N.J.) City Councilman Cory Booker got the message pretty quickly. Mayor Sharpe James wasn't pleased that the young go-getter was going to challenge him, and told him privately that he would beat him with one simple strategy.
"I'm going to out-nigger you in the community," James told Booker, according to a source close to Booker.
Booker wouldn't comment about that story, and James could not be reached for his version of events. But that tactic does appear to be a key way James secured his victory, and won his fifth term as mayor last month, by a 53 to 46 percent margin.
With apparent sincerity, Booker still forces himself to remain respectful of his opponent. "I'm the beneficiary of a legacy of struggle," says Booker, "of the people who bled the beaches of Normandy red for me, of the people who bled the Southern soil. Martin Luther King and that generation --- including Sharpe James, that generation -- I am the product of that generation."
Like Booker, young African-American candidates have benefited from the trailblazing of older black leaders in very tangible ways: They're better educated, live in a more integrated society and attract myriad white supporters. They've grown up in a more colorblind society. But when they challenge their graying predecessors -- most glaringly, James and Rep. Earl Hilliard, D-Ala., who is fending off a serious primary challenge from Artur Davis, 34 -- these very opportunities are held against them. And suddenly, their loyalty to their own race comes under fire.
Even if the tactics aren't quite Sheriff Bull Connor-level, one can't help but contemplate the outcry had James and his army of patronage hacks been a lighter shade of pale. On election day in Newark, for instance, federal election monitors responded to reports that Newark police officers had been trying "to influence people to vote a certain way," according to U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie. The Web site PoliticsNJ.com reported that the police officers told voters to "do the right thing" by supporting James. When it comes to relinquishing power and fiefdoms, entrenched black incumbents are no more interested in surrendering than the bigoted white bullies whose corrupted kingdoms they helped topple decades ago.
These new candidates are not simply different politicians, they represent a larger zeitgeist shift among politically active African-Americans. According to a study published last year by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank focused on American minorities, there are substantial philosophical differences between the new and old generations of black leaders. Younger black elected officials "more strongly support school vouchers, are less positive toward the federal government and more in favor of devolution, are more supportive of the partial privatization of Social Security, are more pro-business," and are also three times less likely to consider "racism" the most important national problem.
Those qualities certainly seem to apply to Booker, who has praised school vouchers and found support across the river with the free-marketeers at the conservative Manhattan Institute. And while Davis says that he opposes school vouchers and some of the other more center-right positions Booker has flirted with, he does say that "I think certainly that I am of the New Democrat mold and Earl Hilliard is of a more conventional mold."
Younger black candidates are more likely to be politically independent (11 percent, compared to 7 percent of older officials), and less likely to be Democrats (69 percent, compared to 77 percent). "This is the same pattern found in the black population," Bositis writes, "where younger people (18-35 years) were more independent (28 percent) and less Democratic (62 percent) than black seniors (13 percent independent, 79 percent Democratic)."
Obviously these differences stem from different life experiences. Most older black elected officials attended segregated high schools and were twice as likely to have attended a historically black college than their younger counterparts. "The Sharpe James-Cory Booker race was almost an ideal representation of what's going on in the generational change that I studied and wrote about," says David Bositis, senior policy analyst at the Joint Center.
Equally instructive is the current face-off between the entrenched and ethically challenged Hilliard and Davis, a graduate of Harvard Law School who worked for the United States attorney's office -- credentials that would seem unimpeachable. A smart guy on the side of the law. But not to Hilliard.
"The only thing he's done for black people is put them in jail," Hilliard has said of Davis.
