A dream deferred; a black mayor betrays the faith - Philadelphia mayor - W. Wilson Goode

Washington Monthly, July-August, 1986 by Chuck Stone

A DREAM DEFERRED

Whenever, I think of some of America's black mayors I am reminded of my trip to Nairobi, Kenya in 1971. In the clutter of shacks and rubble in a run-down tract on the edge of the city an old man told me that soon after the British relinquished control of the government to Kenya's black majority in the 1960s, the government appointed Nairobi's first black policemen. Nairobi's poor blacks were elated. The venal white police with their truncheons, British accents, and racist arrogance were leaving. They had treated Kenya's blacks like dirt, beaten them and stolen their money and dignity. The arrival of black policement, their ebony skin in the pressed beauty of caps and uniforms previously reserved only for whites, brought home to poor ghetto blacks the reality of their nation's independence. The old man said he had cried with joy and the young people danced in the streets.

Unfortunately, the old man said, pointing to thick raised scars across his arms and chest, the black policemen proved far more vicious than the whites. More whips and sticks than ever flew against blacks in the hands of black policemen. The black policemen viewed their new power as a license to threaten black men, rape black women, and take bribes from criminals and rich whites who controlled the black ghetto more brazenly than ever before. All restraint was gone with these new police, the old man explained, because poor blacks could find no audience for complaints about the black policemen. Poor blacks had been demanding black policemen for years. Black policemen were a symbol of national pride--no one in power, white or black, wanted to hear that the black policemen were mean, crooked bastards.

Black mayors of American cities are not, of course, inflicting the kind of physical abuse on the public those Kenyan policeman did. But I cannot help but think that some blacks in the United States have been similarly betrayed. Several black mayors have used their new positions to make deals for their friends and keep themselves comfortable, but have failed to improve the lives of black people--or any other needy group--in their cities. And no one, black or white, really wants to admit this abuse of trust exists.

Just as blacks became policemen when Kenya won its independence, black American mayors came to power in the aftermath of another revolution: the big city riots. Black Americans had set fire to the cities where they lived in poverty and segregated isolation. They were invisible in the downtown office buildings where the cities were run by white businessmen and politicians. (Prior to 1967, no major city had a black mayor). Following the example of the civil rights protests in the blatantly segregated South, urban blacks in the North aimed their fire at the all white mayors and police chiefs. They asked, "Why can't blacks run cities where blacks live?'

White businessmen saw the cities burning and their business markets shaken by social disorder. At the same time, white flight was changing the mathematics of urban electoral politics. Detroit's population in 1980 was 63 percent black; it was 29 percent black in 1960. Washington's black population jumped from 54 percent to 70 percent during the same period, and Newark's from 34 percent to 58 percent. The ground was fertile for the current crop of big city black mayors. They could finally get financial support for campaigns from white businessmen anxious to placate blacks, and higher black voter registration provided an electoral base.

From 1965 to 1985, Washington, Detroit, Philadelphia, Gary, Chicago, Los Angeles, Newark, New Orleans, Birmingham, Atlanta, and more than 200 smaller cities all elected black mayors for the first time. On television, the black mayors were popular figures, seen in the three-piece suits that had long been the uniform of white political dominance. They were the pride of black America, replacing the often arrogant whites who had paid little attention to the black areas of town.

But like the blacks in Nairobi, too many American blacks have found their dream betrayed as some black mayors have proved to be as corrupt, uncaring and abusive as the old white mayors. White mayors may have allowed racist police to violate black citizens' rights, but none ever bombed a black neighborhood as did Philadelphia's Wilson Goode. The first black mayor elected in a major northeastern city, Kenneth Gibson of Newark, ruled for 15 years, gaining reelection--one year while under indictment--even though he did little to try to lower Newark's poverty, infant mortality, unemployment and crime rates, all among the highest in the nation.

Most tragic of all is that blacks in this country have rallied around the worst of the black mayors. Wilson Goode is still supported by close to 70 percent of blacks in his city. [See "Goode: Bad and Indifferent,' p. 27.] There seems to be too much pride in having placed a man with a black face in city hall to kick him out, no matter how poorly he is serving the interests of blacks and the city as a whole.