Can black politicians transcend race?
Barack Obama was an unlikely standard-bearer for black politicians. He did not work his way up through the ranks of the black establishment and his ties to the old guard of black politics like Jesse Jackson or John Lewis are tenuous and recent. His political presentation is not traditionally “black,” but as the broader appeal necessary for national politics; he packages himself not as a black politician, but a politician who happens to be black. Ifill believes this break from the identity-centered black politics of the past is as much of a “breakthrough” as Obama’s election, and devotes her attention to this new style of racial politics.
A generational divide
Ifill separates black politicians into older and younger generations, and her groupings draw heavily on how soon and earnestly a politician supported Obama. The elder generation was slow to embrace Obama. Prominent figures such as Jackson, a former presidential candidate, and Georgia Congressman John Lewis campaigned against him at first. There was a sense that Obama hadn’t paid his dues yet, as expressed by Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, who said in 2007, “I’d like Barack Obama to be president … in 2016.” While touting the accomplishments of these elders in the first crucial decades of black political involvement, Ifill turns a more critical eye on their opposition and cautious suspicion of the newcomer. She dismisses their professed loyalty to the Clintons, finding it an insufficient reason, quoting the similarly-minded, visceral Spike Lee, “These old black politicians say, ‘ooh, massuh Clinton was good to us, massuh hired a lot of us, massuh was good!’”
Instead Ifill suspects that the elder generation’s reluctance to support Obama stemmed from their suspicion of politicians who didn’t genuflect to the black establishment, with its established power structures and patronage. These men had advocated for black causes for so long from the inside they could not recognize an outsider who was, in fact, a product of their efforts.
The new black establishment
Younger black politicians, on the other hand, embraced Obama from the outset. Leaders like NAACP head Benjamin Jealous and Alabama Congressman Arthur Davis supported Obama consistently and backed his strategy of not focusing on “black issues.” Davis, in particular, hitched his fortunes to Obama, and is betting the Governor’s race in 2010 on overwhelmingly white Alabama joining the postracial wave. The author sets up these politicians as a new black establishment, who, in their own way, won the 2008 election as much as Obama did.
Ifill captures this “next wave” of black politicians in short profiles of mayors, state attorneys general, a state assembly speaker and even a district attorney. Ifill dwells on the electoral mechanics of their victories, on their pre-election polls, the strength of their opponents, and the intricacies of their racial strategies and successes. How does an African-American get elected in Georgia? In Louisiana? In San Francisco?
Race out of context
A notable gap in Ifill’s analysis is her avoidance of the substantive successes and failures of this new generation. The most favorablly portrayed case study is Newark mayor Cory Booker. After his first hundred days in office, Newark showed impressive economic growth and increased security due to widely applauded policies. Unlike Ifill’s other interviewees, he’s not subjected to an Obama comparison, or a generational litmus test of whether he supported the Obama campaign early and often. Perhaps this is because he is the one case study subject without a white voter-outreach story to tell; the city of Newark is heavily black.
In the end, the author falls into the same trap as the old generation she harangues. She fails to contextualize race as one factor among many in the success of black politicians. Her excessive focus on the interaction between new black politicians misses the larger pictures — these men and women’s success will depend on their political record apart from questions of race. While race, including cross-racial policy and appeals, remain important, they can no more dominate black politicians’ strategy than did old establishment racial politics. Obama’s strategy recognized that, and he did not get mired in establishment personality politics. By indulging in yesterday’s battle, Ifill betrays what side of the generational divide she is on.