ABC News has this interesting tidbit from the recent Mayoral race in Newark, NJ:
Both Booker and James are black. But during the last election, James’ supporters criticized the light-skinned Booker as not sufficiently black. Some of that bitterness remained on Tuesday, as reflected by anti-Booker signs urging people to “vote black.”
“Don’t waste your vote on folks who will not and cannot represent you!” said the signs, which were posted on utility poles.
Writes Terry Hastings, who emailed me the link:
I tried to figure out just what drives the “not sufficiently black” label, but the legacy media is woefully short on critical analysis.
There is the usual class warfare:
His chief opponent, state Sen. Ronald L. Rice, criticized him as being arrogant and out of touch with average people.
A hint of what may be driving this:
“It will be a new direction for the city,†said Joseph Marbach, a political scientist and the associate dean of Arts and Sciences at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J. “I think the administration is going to take a more conservative, business-friendly approach.â€Â
It will be interesting to see if Booker brings real substantive change or just the same old stuff in new gloss. In a quick search of the internet I was not able to find position papers that clearly stake out the differences between Booker and his opponent. Both are Democrats, so perhaps the differences are slight and its all about style over substance.
A couple of heartening things (for a change) to take from a story about a hotly contested election between Democrats—both of which involve the voting public’s response:
To wit: that the appeal of a business-friendly political plan was met by blue state Newark voters with approval— suggesting support for Democratic centrism among the electorate—bodes well for a country that is being torn apart by the vitriol of the far left (and, to a far lesser extent, the far right); and that voters rejected the kind of ludicrous identity politics argument that attempted to use a paradigm within identity politics (black authenticity) as a battle ground for further narrowing the grounds for said authenticity: shades of “black.”
Ironically, I mentioned something like this yesterday as an analogue to the fight within the deaf pride movement:
An analogue here might be to the fight over African-American authenticity within certain radical segments of the Black identity movement, where light skinned (or high yellow) Blacks are considered by some to be “less black†than those with darker skin
—though at the time, I was unaware of the Newark story.
Which, I’d like to say this marks me as perspicacious. But sadly, all it really shows is that this kind of identity politicking is far too common these days—particularly among those who dress to the left—and that one can generally find an example of it at play wherever local elections are held.
That the voters rejected it, however, provides a glimmer of hope that we haven’t sunk into grievance politics and group identity to the point where we are unable to find our way back. Culturally speaking.
That “significantly black enough” test must be murder! How do you prepare for it – going to college?
er…that should be “by going to college?”
Damn college edumakation.
Jeff,
Did he have a plan? Seriously, did he have a coherent idea of what his administration would do if elected? The answer is yes. That’s the point that needs to be driven home here. The Dims in DC would be wise to look towards this election and understand that here is an individual who ran with an agenda in mind. Not hate. No BDS. Just what he believed was best for his city. Hell, I’m a hard right conservative and I probably would have voted for this guy.
Can we finally begin to discuss the elephant in the room? OK, here goes:
Black people with Hispanic names like “Juan” and “Alphonso” aren’t authentically black. How can they expect to represent, or even understand, black interests with names like that?
This is a hoot – Willis writes on his site that, unlike Repub Michael Steele in Maryland, Booker is “Authentic” – but these sites…
http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/2006/04/cory-booker.html calls him “The White Right’s Man in Newark”
http://www.blackcommentator.com/145/145_cover_pbs_booker.html says about him “PBS Shills for a Black Trojan Horse: The Cory Booker Propaganda Show”
and
http://www.blackcommentator.com/poisoned_tree.html
tells us “The Hard Rights Plan to Capture Newark NJ”
Wonder what King Donut has to say…
Jeff—Botox injects might help control your excessive perspication.
It certainly has had an effect on Nancy Pelosi.
I thought “Progressives” were not supposed to be racists. Guess I was wrong.
Racism is all about POWER, man. Blacks can’t be racist because they are girly men next to the Man, man.
Wait…Oliver’s black? He looks a bit too cafe au lait to be spouting off about authentic blackness.
This identity politics thing would explain why so many albinos hold office in North Dakota. No, wait – sorry. Disregard.
That’s just their complexion.
As a non-albino American, I demand an apology for your melanin-terrorism!
Studying for that test must be hard. The Drug Store probably can help, what with all the cosmetics needed to bring out that shiny, blue-black sheen to the skin. I wonder if the Dems allow you to bring make-up from home, or is it provided at the test site?
It’s too usual a silliness to even raise eyebrows anymore. We know that Blacks can be as bigoted as Whites, Browns, Reds, and every other color of human. It’s only Libs, Dems, and the MSM that seems to be out of touch with reality.
I would never vote for anyone who tries to use race as a reason to vote for or against. That’s why I would never vote for Howard “I Have A Scream” Dean, or Ted “Drink To Me Only With Thine Thighs” Kennedy.
The “far Right”(Zionists,armageddonists,neo-cons), and bush’s war in Iraq, is what awakened the “far Left”. Now that the Left is awake it will require some policies to change before it goes back to sleep. Peace
Almost the same exact stuff happened here in Detroit, but it didn’t last long. Detroit, demographically, is similar to Newark in that it is about 75% black.
Dennis Archer, a moderate to liberal candidate, had defeated Sharon McPhail to become the first new mayor of Detroit since 1973 (when Coleman Young was first elected). Archer tried the same, pro-business approach, and was stopped at every turn by the entrenched city council. He decided not to run a second term.
In the last election, Freman Hendricks did the same thing, and lost. And something even crazier happened – the council moved even FARTHER to the left than it was before (I hadn’t thought that was possible outside of Cuba or Vietnam).
Anyway, I think the identity politics mentality is too entrenched within the more blighted large American cities. I would like to be wrong, but I see no evidence of this yet. Every now and then, someone comes in with new ideas, and the city council shoots them down.
We’ll see, I guess.
TV (Harry)
tw: left. Eerie…
So do we need to run a spectrographic analysis on someone to determine the proper point in the color spectrum they belong. And from that determine whether someone has a right to speak on an issue?
Oops, should have keep my mouth shut, next Jane the Hamster will be demanding it.
TW the: as a bunch of the The Others
Iraq – 2003.
Far left freakin’ out like a calico cat set down next to a gingham dog – 1999-2000.
Imhotep getting a calendar and using it – ?
word: tried “I tried to warn ‘em, but they didn’t listen!” – Old Dutch Clock
Jeff, as I pointed out elsewhere, I have a source inside NJ Democratic politics that says there were a lot of Democrats that wanted Booker to replace Torricelli in 2002 when he was stepping down. Booker was subsequently pushed aside in favor one-foot-in-the-grave Frank Lautenberg. Why?
The feeling was, Mr. Booker wouldn’t be in knee-jerk opposition to anything proposed by President Bush and therefore was a risk. The last thing the Democratic Party would want is a black Democrat showing to be in support of anything having to do with Chimpy McHitlerburton. So they threw him under the bus in favor of a frigging fossil.
In Newark Booker’s authenticity has less to do with his pro-business campaign as his “end the corruption in Newark government” platform.
He could be branded an outsider because he didn’t grow up in the urban environment that he seeks to represent and he is a Stanford/Yale Law/Rhodes graduate. He spent years running against the kleptocratic – but local – Sharpe James machine. James surprisingly bowed out of the race at the last minute and Booker ended up running against James’s right hand (a relative nobody).
I assume you’ve all seen this story:
http://www.slate.com/id/2141421/
Definitely right up Jeff’s identity alley. Combined with this
it reminded me of an argument I had years ago with one of the principals of the Slate story. (I actually know two of them; one is a beloved friend-to-all, while the other is a total asshole no one can stand to be aroundâ€â€and you’ll never guess which is whom (except the first time you try to guess).)
The “If you don’t have x% popular black music in your collection, you’re a racist/rockist [interchangeable then and now {also with “sexist”}] cracker” idea was having its first burst of press popularity, annoying everybody but idiots. One of them (who at the time was contemptuous of rap, for all the usual ‘90s homophobia/sexism reasons) and I (a rap fan since I was about five years old) were having it out in the way you’d imagine, when eventually the conversation swung around to “authenticity.”
I’d mentioned that I know a lot of “rockists,” some racists even, who are fans of black-led bands like Suffocation, Oxbow, Trenchmouth, etc. (my friends are mostly musicians, so they listen to weird shit you’ve never heard of) and they’re fans of these bands and not of black pop because of the sounds these bands make, which they enjoy as sound; some of them don’t even know there are black guys in the bands, because they don’t even think to give a crap. These same people don’t like Blackstreet and R. Kelly because they sound ridiculous and unserious to them (not to me; making a point). Pure aesthetics.
So here’s where it got cute. My excess of lightness and lack of enlightenment, you see, had blinded me to the indisputable fact that (and this is white people talking, remember) because almost all of those first-mentioned bands’ fans are white, not only is their music not black music, but the black men who make it aren’t meaningfully black either. Head shaking, end of conversation.
Because it’s mostly white people who’ll vote for Booker, you see, so he’s not “you.” He’s representin’ those “folks.” This also would be true of James, of course, but he’s an establishment Democrat, so there was no one to make that argument against him.
Not to go too OT, but…
BoZ – love the Slate story, though I mean the word “love” here in terms of “shaking my freakin’ head throughout the entire thing.”
Reminds me of the time that the Chicago Tribune’s music reviewer claimed that the mid-90s resurgence of swing music was due primarily to – yep – a racist counteraction to hip-hop.
(Incidentally, being an old honky fogey, I’m still wondering: when exactly did “rap” turn into “hip-hop”? Was there a memo?)
trenchmouth?
TW: keep. Keep it, us old folk won’t get past Living Color.
What the hell is a “rockist”? I suspect I may be one, but all these fucking Mods around here just laugh and point at me whenever I ask them.
Word on the street is Mayor Nagin is pushing to have Detroit declared NO’s sister city. He thinks “The Detroit of the South” will be an even bigger draw than “The Chocolate City.”
This caste system among races of color is really rather common. And has been for a couple centuries. Jamaica is a hot bed of interracial racism. Only there it is still the lighter the skin the higher up the scale you are. This is also rather prevalent in Polynesia. And this was the case in the US also until the Black pride movement began slowly turning this prejudice over until now the lighter skinned Blacks are not “Black enoughâ€Â. Of course the lighter the skin the greater the number of white or light skinned ancestors and the further removed from the original Negro of Africa. So Blacker Blacks feel that the lighter Blacks blood is “tainted.” (Sound familiar?? Typical racist cry no matter where it is coming from!) I couldn’t believe this attitude when a Black woman explained it to me. My comment was, How could a people who lived with racism from Caucasians because of their color impose this same meaningless color racism on each other? As I said it has always been, but is just now becoming a public (non-Black) revelation. Probably will see more of it.
NewarKKK??
imhotep sez:
Free weed. Game over.
Nighty night.
One of the never mentioned undercurrents of the illegal immigration mess is the caste system in Mexico. If you will notice, the typical illegal here bears little racial resemblance to Sr. Fox and the Mexican ruling class, by sending their “underclass” here to funnel money back to them, they are killing two birds with one stone, albeit a very dirty one. Which also makes it doubly important to me we keep as much of that money over here as we can, although I favor easing immigration laws so we keep the workers too. I realize the problems in the southwest are different than here, but in the Atlanta area we are desperately short of entry level labor. And that is not hyperbole.
Well then, that would explain why even white Progressives can’t be racists, since, y’know, that whole constantly-losing-elections thing…
I’ve worked in Newark for about 9 years, though I commute in from a northern ‘burb. This race was everything you’d stereotypically expect out of New Jersey 4 years ago, when Booker ran against serial encumbant Sharpe James. James had a well oiled machine here, but still nearly lost to Booker. There is a great PBS documentary floating around about the 2002 race … absolutely fascinating stuff, detailing some of the strongarm tactics and systemic disinformation campaigns James used to stay in office (one of which involved “tarring” Booker as a Republican). When the good townsfolk re-elected James again in ‘02, all I could think was “amazing! … this place just f++ks itself!” Shockingly, as someone else stated, James ducked out of this latest race, clearing the way for Booker. James’s right hand, State Senator Ron Rice, didn’t have the gravitas to pull the election off in James’s wake.
TW: The extent to which Newark is a revenue drain on the state makes me ill.
As a pasty white honkey, one of the things that is most disturbing and confusing to me is the tribal “blacker than thou” arguments among blacks in America. That makes no sense to me, white people tend to ignore race unless someone points it out to them (find kids who hang out with blacks and see how much they care what color their little buddy is), and certainly no white person is arguing about how white someone else is, what hue or shade of whiteness.
It seems like this “high yellow” and such is just a gross extension of racism or ancient tribalism from a barbaric past.
Much to the relief of George Hamilton.