Thanks to our man Kwame up in Detroit, the old stereotype about black politicians being more corrupt than their white counterparts is making yet another appearance (that shit comes back like Herpes). Before I get into this, let me say right out that I know zip about Detroit politics, or about Kwame in particular. I can't say he's guilty, because I don't know, but I'm sure as hell not saying he's innocent. This isn't really about him individually, though.
Being from New Orleans, I feel like I have just a little experience with corrupt politics. Kind of like a catfish is a little bit familiar with water. New Orleans didn't elect its first black mayor until Dutch Morial won the office in 1978. Now, it's pretty well accepted that Dutch was, well, crooked like two motherfuckers stuck in a pretzel machine. But he didn't invent corruption in New Orleans politics, not by a loooooooong shot. This...is...New Orleans we're talking about. Shit's so crooked around here, our politicians eat soup with corkscrews instead of spoons. And that goes back to...well, the beginning of Louisiana itself.
French Louisiana was founded by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville ("Iberville), with significant assistance from his younger brother Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville ("Bienville"). When Iberville left Louisiana for France, he did so under a cloud of accusations that he had misappropriated the colony's supplies in order to increase his personal wealth. For those of you playing at home, Iberville was...wait for it...white. First governor, first corrupt governor, white guy. Louisiana in a nutshell.
I don't have time to walk through the entire sordid history of crooked shit in Louisiana and/or New Orleans that didn't involve black politicians. Hell, the Internet itself may not have the storage capacity for that much information. But suffice it to say that Louisiana started out corrupt under the French, stayed corrupt under the Spanish, and kept right on with the corruption gig under the Americans (as a colonial possession, we've been passed around more than a whore at a biker rally, with about the same results). And let's not even pretend that corruption is somehow a Louisiana thing, while politics in the rest of the USA is pure as the driven snow. Just to name a few really, really easy examples, you have New York's Tammany Hall, the Teapot Dome scandal, the Chicago Machine, the Abramhoff Scandal, and, well, the Bush Administration (I know, I know, fish + barrel, couldn't resist the shot).
So where does this myth of black political corruption come in? Note, I'm not saying that there aren't black politicians who are corrupt (yes, "Dollar Bill" Jefferson, I'm talking about your crooked ass). Hell, no, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that the notion that black politicians are somehow corrupt in ways that exceed the dirty tricks of their white colleagues is, historically, bullshit. And it's bullshit that largely starts with the Reconstruction Era in the South.
During Reconstruction, the Republicans took control of every state government in the South, and this process included the election or appointment of numerous black people to state and national offices or other positions of power. For the South, it was bad enough to live under the domination of the Yankees (a good deal of the Republicans who took power during Reconstruction originally hailed from the North), but suddenly having black people not only free from slavery, not only allowed to vote, but actually wielding power? That's some serious culture shock.
The white "Redemption" of the South was the political response to the ascension of the blacks and the Republicans. It was a combination of traditional political campaigning, dirty tricks, and outright terrorism between 1868 and 1877 that eventually led to the Union army being withdrawn from the South (as part of the Tilden-Hayes Compromise of 1877), Republicans being driven from office throughout the South, and blacks being completely disenfranchised. It also lead directly to Jim Crow.
In the aftermath of Reconstruction and Redemption, Southern whites set out almost immediately to create a new conventional wisdom, a mythology, really, that held that black voters and black office holders were merely dupes for the Carpetbaggers(Yankees who moved South to take advantage of Reconstruction opportunities) and the Scalawags (native-born Southerners who supported the Republicans). They story was that qualified white office-holders had been removed in favor of unqualified blacks, at the behest of the real power-brokers, the Yankee elites. Sound familiar yet?
The sad thing is, this racist narrative wasn't purely a creation of the Southerners. It was widely advocated, and accepted, in the elite circles of Northern academia. Indeed, that entire historical school of analysis, the Dunning School, is named for Columbia University professor William Archibald Dunning. It comes out of the Ivy League itself (I got yer "Liberal Elite" right here). Dunning's theory of Reconstruction contended that the Freedmen proved incapable of self-government and had themselves made segregation necessary, and he believed that allowing blacks to vote and hold office had been "a serious error". That view of Reconstruction was dominant in historical circles until the 1960s
When you started to see black politicians taking control of major urban centers like Detroit and New Orleans in the 1970s and 1980s, the complaints about black political corruption followed almost immediately. And they were virtually identical to the claims made by the Southern Redeemers and by the Dunning School. You can't let blacks have power, because look at what they do. They're replacing qualified white leaders with incompetent black ones. On and on, ad infinitum.
Again, I'm not taking issue with the idea that some black politicians can be, have been, or are corrupt. Politics in and of itself generates corruption, and a great many politicians seek office exactly because of the opportunities for personal gain. That's not a racial thing, it's a political thing. The Minions of Wingnuttery would love for you to believe that somehow Detroit's black mayor being corrupt is connected to his blackness, and is an indictment of black leaders as a whole, but the corruption of Randy Cunningham is an isolated thing, in no way connected to or poorly reflective of his race.
Not to get all uber-geeky around here, but a quote from the modern "Battlestar Galactica" keeps popping into my head when I think about this situation:
Being from New Orleans, I feel like I have just a little experience with corrupt politics. Kind of like a catfish is a little bit familiar with water. New Orleans didn't elect its first black mayor until Dutch Morial won the office in 1978. Now, it's pretty well accepted that Dutch was, well, crooked like two motherfuckers stuck in a pretzel machine. But he didn't invent corruption in New Orleans politics, not by a loooooooong shot. This...is...New Orleans we're talking about. Shit's so crooked around here, our politicians eat soup with corkscrews instead of spoons. And that goes back to...well, the beginning of Louisiana itself.
French Louisiana was founded by Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville ("Iberville), with significant assistance from his younger brother Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville ("Bienville"). When Iberville left Louisiana for France, he did so under a cloud of accusations that he had misappropriated the colony's supplies in order to increase his personal wealth. For those of you playing at home, Iberville was...wait for it...white. First governor, first corrupt governor, white guy. Louisiana in a nutshell.
I don't have time to walk through the entire sordid history of crooked shit in Louisiana and/or New Orleans that didn't involve black politicians. Hell, the Internet itself may not have the storage capacity for that much information. But suffice it to say that Louisiana started out corrupt under the French, stayed corrupt under the Spanish, and kept right on with the corruption gig under the Americans (as a colonial possession, we've been passed around more than a whore at a biker rally, with about the same results). And let's not even pretend that corruption is somehow a Louisiana thing, while politics in the rest of the USA is pure as the driven snow. Just to name a few really, really easy examples, you have New York's Tammany Hall, the Teapot Dome scandal, the Chicago Machine, the Abramhoff Scandal, and, well, the Bush Administration (I know, I know, fish + barrel, couldn't resist the shot).
So where does this myth of black political corruption come in? Note, I'm not saying that there aren't black politicians who are corrupt (yes, "Dollar Bill" Jefferson, I'm talking about your crooked ass). Hell, no, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that the notion that black politicians are somehow corrupt in ways that exceed the dirty tricks of their white colleagues is, historically, bullshit. And it's bullshit that largely starts with the Reconstruction Era in the South.
During Reconstruction, the Republicans took control of every state government in the South, and this process included the election or appointment of numerous black people to state and national offices or other positions of power. For the South, it was bad enough to live under the domination of the Yankees (a good deal of the Republicans who took power during Reconstruction originally hailed from the North), but suddenly having black people not only free from slavery, not only allowed to vote, but actually wielding power? That's some serious culture shock.
The white "Redemption" of the South was the political response to the ascension of the blacks and the Republicans. It was a combination of traditional political campaigning, dirty tricks, and outright terrorism between 1868 and 1877 that eventually led to the Union army being withdrawn from the South (as part of the Tilden-Hayes Compromise of 1877), Republicans being driven from office throughout the South, and blacks being completely disenfranchised. It also lead directly to Jim Crow.
In the aftermath of Reconstruction and Redemption, Southern whites set out almost immediately to create a new conventional wisdom, a mythology, really, that held that black voters and black office holders were merely dupes for the Carpetbaggers(Yankees who moved South to take advantage of Reconstruction opportunities) and the Scalawags (native-born Southerners who supported the Republicans). They story was that qualified white office-holders had been removed in favor of unqualified blacks, at the behest of the real power-brokers, the Yankee elites. Sound familiar yet?
The sad thing is, this racist narrative wasn't purely a creation of the Southerners. It was widely advocated, and accepted, in the elite circles of Northern academia. Indeed, that entire historical school of analysis, the Dunning School, is named for Columbia University professor William Archibald Dunning. It comes out of the Ivy League itself (I got yer "Liberal Elite" right here). Dunning's theory of Reconstruction contended that the Freedmen proved incapable of self-government and had themselves made segregation necessary, and he believed that allowing blacks to vote and hold office had been "a serious error". That view of Reconstruction was dominant in historical circles until the 1960s
When you started to see black politicians taking control of major urban centers like Detroit and New Orleans in the 1970s and 1980s, the complaints about black political corruption followed almost immediately. And they were virtually identical to the claims made by the Southern Redeemers and by the Dunning School. You can't let blacks have power, because look at what they do. They're replacing qualified white leaders with incompetent black ones. On and on, ad infinitum.
Again, I'm not taking issue with the idea that some black politicians can be, have been, or are corrupt. Politics in and of itself generates corruption, and a great many politicians seek office exactly because of the opportunities for personal gain. That's not a racial thing, it's a political thing. The Minions of Wingnuttery would love for you to believe that somehow Detroit's black mayor being corrupt is connected to his blackness, and is an indictment of black leaders as a whole, but the corruption of Randy Cunningham is an isolated thing, in no way connected to or poorly reflective of his race.
Not to get all uber-geeky around here, but a quote from the modern "Battlestar Galactica" keeps popping into my head when I think about this situation:
"All this has happened before. All this will happen again."
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