Black Racial Jingoism In Washington DC Nullifies Fenty's Improvements Of Schools & Social Centers

Adrian Fenty, Vincent Gray and the politics of race and class in D.C

Notwithstanding the progress Fenty has made in improving the District's schools and lowering its murder rate, his biggest shortcoming in the minds of many black voters is that he has mishandled the most important long-term issue facing the city: gentrification, and the racial politics that go with it.

I get accused of being "anti-Black" in my postings on this board by some of my ideological critics.  The truth is that the antics that are so frequently on display by certain operatives in our community are ANTI-BLACK!!!!

We only need to look at the fight against the improvement in the public education system of DC by those who wanted to protect their jobs more than they wanted to account for the failure of the product produced by the school as our evidence.  This same mindset can be seen in the hostility shown against charter schools by those who seek to retain the failed status quo.  Interestingly enough these people are not referred to as "conservatives" despite the functional parallel in behavior to those who stood against the best interests of Black people throughout the decades.

This post is not about Adrian Fenty.  I do not know enough about him and DC based politics to speak authoritatively about his worthiness of reelection.  Instead this is about a pattern of behavior that is apparent within the Black community by certain operative groups.  Though they are always on the watch for racism against them they appear to do their own fair share of the same thing but slip away from being labeled as such.

Gentrification, in which decayed urban neighborhoods are renovated and then draw in more affluent (often white) residents to replace poorer (often black) ones, has been the key force shaping the city since the 1990s. The process arouses powerful feelings for many African Americans, in part because it threatens the District's identity as a predominantly black town. Sometime in the next few years, the black share of the D.C. population will probably slip below 50 percent for the first time since the late 1950s.

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Fenty would continue to push forcefully to improve education and nuts-and-bolts city services, without going out of his way to address racial or economic divisions. Although he's had a recent campaign conversion, saying the right things about becoming humble and inclusive in a second term, it doesn't seem realistic that he'd suddenly start paying much attention to what anybody else thinks. A restless loner with what one business supporter called "the attention span of a strobe light," Fenty doesn't dig into the substance of the issues but leaves lieutenants such as Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Attorney General Peter Nickles to do the heavy lifting of governance.

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That kind of neutral, results-oriented approach is great in theory, and it appeals especially to affluent voters and the younger generation. But it hasn't gone down well with less wealthy, older, mostly black voters in the eastern half of the city. Nearly six in 10 African Americans see Fenty as caring more about upper-income people, according to the Post poll.

Today, Fenty is visibly frustrated that he doesn't get credit from blacks overall for the progress he's made -- especially for the schools and rec centers he's built and the new supermarkets and other businesses he's attracted.

As with the city of Oakland one is brought to wonder if some Black people actually prefer to have a "bombed out shell of a city that is crime ridden" in order to keep out White folks because of their fear of the place. Urban development is not "Anti-Black". It is ONLY a threat to those who consciousness and conditioning is UNPRODUCTIVE to compete in an open world.

It seems to me that the term "Black Redneck" is an accurate observation and just like their White counterpart their antics need to be checked so that Black people can prosper.