The Non-Story of the Racial Shift In City Council
Much as been said about the shift in City Council. To hear Adam Nossiter tell it, this most recent election was a defeat to the black community. He went so far as to title his article Whites Take a Majority on New Orleans’s Council. I still wonder Is Adam Nossiter a Tool?
I might be the only one to dismiss the conventional wisdom that the victory of Jackie Clarkson over Cynthia Willard-Lewis is a defeat for the African-American community as a whole in New Orleans. The Council At-Large election was a dreadful election, with dreadful choices. There were few new faces in mix. The run-off selection was between two of the ancients.
“Either blacks have really decided not to come back, in numbers, or they just voted by not voting,” said Cheron Brylski, a veteran political consultant here. “I’m really amazed at the number who just didn’t show up, knowing what was at stake.”
“I think this is the new normal,” she added. “We have to accept the fact that this is who is here, and this is who is back.”
If they just voted by not voting, who’s to blame someone for not voting in this dreadful election? Besides Ray Nagin, of course. It was a short ballot with dismal choices. What was at stake here? The political career of a term limited District E Council Woman, for one. The Nagin administration’s free reign of gross incompetence unchecked by a deadlocked City Council, for another. But, there was not so much at stake for those of us suffocating in the current vacuum of leadership.
The New York Times article says that the vote was along racial lines. What are we to make of this? When African-Americans do not turn out to vote, the implication is that they are apathetic about their voting rights. This was the accusation of our Mayor C. Ray Nagin. It is never the case that they are apathetic to the choice of candidates.
If you listen to Greg Rigamer, the logic is that if African-Americans did not vote for Cynthia Willard-Lewis, then African-Americans must not exist in New Orleans.
As always, Nossiter’s article discounts the flooding. The turn out was tiny. It was a mobilization of each candidates base that determined the election. Jackie Clarkson comes from District A in Algiers and along the River in the Quarter and out along Esplanade Ridge. These areas did not flood. Willard-Lewis is from District E where everyone flooded and where so many people have yet to return home.
Voting by not voting is going to be the rule until we get candidates that truly represent our interests. Consider this election not a statement on race nor repopulation, but a referendum on the political ruling class before the flood.
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Yes, the racial insinuations of the newspapers have been both incomplete and insulting.
We’re talking about 20% turnout city-wide and all that.
That’s the story. “The political ruling class” is rotten fruit we’re all ignoring.
Has anyone considered that some New Orleanians might no longer vote strictly on the basis of race?
If we’re finally coming around to the point where candidiates are chosen on the basis of their qualifications and their opinions on critical issues, and not the color of their skin, we migth finally be making some REAL progress.
The recent city council runoff pitted two overly-familiar old-school pols against each other. That may explain the low turnout better than any racial interpretation.
Anyway: Is Cynthia’s skin really any darker than Jackie’s?
I’m open to hearing about how the issue of race effected the last election. I am afraid that African-Americans have been excluded from the recovery.
I’m just surprised that it is such a surprise that turn out was low. Did anyone enjoy the choices. I’m glad that Cheryl Gray won. That is the one contest in which I voted for a candidate. In the other two contests I voted against a candidate. (Of course, I’m now telling you how I voted, which is a pretty stupid thing to do. Please, note that I don’t endorse candidates on this blog.)
African-American is a cultural identity. It’s not about color. (I can’t believe I’m voicing opinions on this. I do hope I don’t sound like a complete idiot.)
When the city was 75%-80% African American, there was always a white person holding one of the two at large seats.
I always thought that meant that a majority of New Orleans folk were voting on some basis other than race.
Good point, Skeeter. However, I still have the sense that *many* citizens, in *many* elections, still tend to make “ethnic solidarity” one of their primary considerations when selecting a candidate.
Recent elections have been problematic thanks to so many of us having been displaced. Of course, it is absoutely appropriate and correct that residents temporarily residing elsewhere have been kept on the rolls, and many have been participating.
However, as time goes on, we need to gradually get back to the more normal situation where voting rights are reserved for those of us who live here. So far, I am absolutely glad to be part of an electorate that includes everyone who intends to return home, along with those us who have already come home. As time goes on, however, I am feeling gradually worse about including voters who won’t be back, especially those who have no intention of ever returning but who choose to exert their influence on our civic affairs.
As an Orleans Parish poll commissioner since Katrina, I have a pretty good perspective on the current post-K election situation. An effort to purge to rolls of non-participating voters is just now getting underway, and I agree that this is the appropriate time to do it. To have done it earlier would have been unjust to the many evacuees with intentions to return, but by now, it is definitely time to get this process underway.
However, I’m sure there will be many errors in determining which names to erase from the rolls and which to keep. At my address, for example, four extra individuals are on the rolls (our three grown-up-and-gone kids, plus my brother who has lived outside the US for over ten years). When I checked the long list of voter name about to be removed, published in the T-P a day or two ago, only one of those four names appeared, our daughter’s. (She might be the one most likely to return here, too…)
I’m pretty sure that Dr. King’s dream included voting for a candidate because you agreed that their ideas and qualifications were better than those of all of the other candidates. Continuing to assume that people are voting strictly along racial lines only serves to delay the full realization of this dream. It’s about time that those who publish opinions consider the fact that maybe, just maybe, the candidate who won did so because voters cast their votes based on the issues at hand and not a candidate’s ancestry.