The pivotal episode came in 1992 with the
release of a national survey conducted by the Detroit News. The study found that
the majority of African Americans felt that traditional black organizations like the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Christian
Leadership Council (SCLC) and leaders like the Rev. Jesse Jackson were out of touch with
the times. While these leaders and groups boasted that racism was the primary concern,
African Americans in urban communities pointed to crime, unemployment, economic
deprivation, and poor educational opportunities as the prosper-preventing culprits.
But,
even before the survey, shifts in the expectations of urban blacks became evident. They
had grown more intolerant of leaders who offered symbolism, fancy talk, empty promises.
Their affections and attentions had turned to those who provided solid strategies for
pulling thousands of blacks from the clutches of poverty. They had begun searching for a
new style of leadership. In 1993, they tapped Dennis Archer to become mayor of Detroit.
Michael White had become mayor of Cleveland. Bill Campbell became mayor of Atlanta. Wayne
Curry became executive of Prince Georges County in
Maryland — one of the wealthiest, predominantly African-American suburbs in the
United States.
Within recent years Jackson, Mississippi and Dallas, Texas also have opted for this new
style of black leader who has moved beyond rallies and protest marches. This new group has
ushered in an era of competent, professional stewardship of cities long wracked by poverty
and crime. They have combined corporate savvy and management acumen with street smarts and
political sophistication. They have embraced African-American culture but are not
imprisoned by it. They understand the nuances of racism, but do not wear it as their
albatross.
They are not simply blacks in fancy suits with Harvard vocabularies. As a group, they
walk toward a universal humanity, and they fully embrace democratic principles and the
existing political systems. They know that if African-Americans are to do justice to their
past, the future must be met with excellence and content — not merely color.
In 1994, District residents, displaying a certain sympathy and loyalty to Marion Barry,
chose not to join the national trend sweeping through urban centers. But four years later,
citizens in the nation’s capital, particularly African Americans, have decided they
can no longer confuse eloquence with experience and charisma with competence. They are
poised to select a man as their next mayor who could serve as the poster child of the new
black leadership.
While there are three whites vying for the Office of Mayor, it is unlikely any will
ultimately take the seat. One is a Republican woman who has high appeal among black voters
and who, in the past, when matched against Barry, received 42 percent of the vote; two are
Democrats — one is a member of the city council and the other a restaurateur. But the
action is focused on the remaining three Democratic hopefuls — two council members
and the former Chief Financial Officer of the District, whose position was created when
Congress established a control board to oversee the city’s fiscal and management
recovery. Of the three blacks running for the seat, Council member Kevin Chavous and
finance officer Anthony Williams are in a dead heat.
The fight between Chavous and Williams is symbolic of the larger battle taking place
throughout urban centers in America, but more specifically in black communities. Chavous
represents a sort of transitional leader, who has not quite divested himself of the
symbols, jargon, and racial imaging of the Civil Rights Movement. Although bright and
articulate, he and many of his black handlers still speak the coded language of race. His
platform demonstrates a sort of philosophical schizophrenia: He talks of independence
— a new version of the bootstrap concept — but hints throughout his platform of
a reliance on government. And while he advocates revival of deteriorating commercial
corridors, the vehicles he offer to stimulate economic growth in communities punctuated
with boarded buildings and a bustling drug trade are old fashioned and lack sufficient
fuel. They are destined not to go anywhere.
Sporting a bow tie, speaking in iridescent analogies, witty but with a political
precision that causes even the pundits to marvel, Williams is the epitome of the class in
which Archer, White, and Campbell sit. He is the new black leader.
The fight in the District in 1998 is like the fight in Detroit in 1993. It is a battle
both for the soul of the city and for the future of the race. A fight that will determine
if the nation’s capital — a Southern town with a Northern patina — will arrive
at the 21st Century ready for the revolution, as we used to say in the 1960s; if it will
assume its position along other urban centers that are beginning to witness remarkable
progress; or if the revolution will pass it by.
If Williams is elected (a recent Washington Post poll shows him with 38
percent of the vote), new life will be breathed into a city that for too long had been
shaped by crippling racial issues and stagnated by antiquated social and economic policies
while bleeding middle class residents. The District still will face problems associated
with its tenuous relationship with Congress, a flat economy that cannot be boosted by the
usual instruments of a reciprocal income tax or a heightened commercial expansion, and the
normal array of urban social ills.
But, like Detroit, the District will have an opportunity to break cleanly from its
past. It will have at its helm a new black leader who understands the possibility of
solving the age old problems are endless, including rebuilding the multi-racial,
multi-class coalition that first advocated and helped win political empowerment for
African Americans. The potential for success, including achieving economic parity and
wealth, will be unlimited.
Jonetta Rose Barras is the author of The Last of the Black Emperors: The Hollow
Comeback of Marion Barry in the New Age of Black Leaders, released earlier this year
by Bancroft Press.