Black Political Power: Mayors, Municipalities, and Money

From Race, Poverty & The Environment
20th Anniversary Issue
Spring, 2010

 

By J. Douglas Allen-Taylor

Earlier this winter, Ron Dellums, mayor of Oakland, California did something that spoke volumes about the nature and effect of political power in that Bay Area city. In his annual State of the City address before a packed City Hall, he pointedly avoided using the “b” word—“b” as in black or black people. Instead, Dellums used a word more common in the modern progressive lexicon—the "d" word—diversity. It's a telling difference.

Although many cities have tried to solve their social problems simply by moving some of their residents out of the city, Dellums said that this was not going to happen on his watch. In Oakland, the mayor said, we celebrate and welcome diversity.

Dellums, once described by Van Jones as “the legendary congressman who personally helped speed Apartheid’s demise” in South Africa, wanted to go on record as reversing the gentrification policies of his predecessor, Jerry Brown, under whose watch the exodus of African Americans from the city escalated at a rapid pace. But he did not appear to want to spell out that it was African American residents he was looking to retain.

The action was no aberration. Four years ago, a multiracial coalition of Oakland citizens began a petition campaign to convince Dellums to come out of retirement as a public official and run for mayor. But it was the African American leaders within that coalition who had begun the original “Run, Ron, Run” chant at a meeting of Oakland black activists, which sparked the petition campaign that was subsequently taken up by other ethnic and racial groups.
“Because Ron was a black politician, if blacks had been prominent in the forefront of the petition drive it would have been identified as a ‘black campaign,’ the press would have jumped on it, his opponents would have attacked it, and it would have hurt Ron’s chances,” explained one activist who had drafted Dellums.

In the city that was once the unofficial capital of black radical political action when it was the national headquarters of the Black Panther Party four decades ago, in an area (San Francisco Bay Area) still considered one of the most progressive in the nation, too close an identification with “black” by black politicians and political activists can sometimes become something of a liability.

In reality, the history of political power in American cities is flush with examples of ethnic solidarity. Communities elect politicians from their own ethnic group who, in turn, dole out jobs, programs, projects, and favors to their community members, thus enhancing the community‘s political clout. The Irish in New York, Boston, and Chicago and the Italians in New York and San Francisco are examples. Even in Oakland, Latinos and Asian Americans are continuing that trend with little contention. In fact, the city only recently ended the practice of treating the At-Large City Council seat as the unofficial Asian seat after Asian Americans showed that they could win seats without such a set-aside. But for African Americans in Oakland, the process appears to have reached a dead-end.

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