The black
community of St. Louis – i.e. the predominant and the predominantly poor
populace of this city – should suffer no illusion that whites see racial
harmony as a priority in this politically polarized town. They seek first and foremost to be in
power.
To be more specific, come this spring, the
very last thing those in power – who we must acknowledge are almost exclusively
white – want to see is a black person leading this city as its mayor. For them, the stakes are too high to trust
power in the hands of someone who might think that serving the city’s
underserved blacks has a higher calling than bending to and bankrolling the
re-gentrification agenda of white developers.
They are unyielding in their aim to
preserve a lock on the mayor’s office.
This grip can be traced back to when the white community coalesced in
1997 to oust the city’s first black mayor.
Adding then to their discomfort in being for the first time under the rule
of a black mayor was their disdain for the city’s finances being under the control
of an outspoken black comptroller, who neither genuflected to them nor
continued the practice of awarding city contracts solely to whites.
The peculiarity of St. Louis’ racism is
that it operates under a veil, disguising itself with token blacks in visible positions,
gestures of altruism to black organizations, whispers of maintaining white
power, and denial that race is ever a factor.
To illustrate, when two decades ago the city’s white power structure decided
the black incumbent mayor had to go, it was careful to not make it appear a
racial issue. Cleverly, they recruited,
funded, and created a white following for a black who had never held elective
office. He decisively toppled the black
mayor by getting virtually all the white vote and a tiny fraction of the black
vote.
Yes, he
could rightfully then claim to be the city’s second black mayor, though in
reality he was, to put it in the black vernacular, “the white folks’
mayor.” And whites showed him such four
years later when they turned completely against him to support a white
candidate – the current mayor. The
manner in which they turned against him left no doubt that he was just a tool
they used to remove the first black mayor, as his re-election effort has to be
in the Guinness Book of Records for the lowest percentage of votes ever
received by an incumbent American mayor – 5%.
Fast forward to the 2017 mayoral election
and we see the same elements to perpetuate white power at play. First, the prominent whites who had announced
their intent to seek the open seat mysteriously dropped out, leaving now only
one white candidate with political stature in the race. Second, as the white candidates dropped out,
strangely, more blacks hopped in.
The effect of this veiled political
orchestration is that it has created cynicism among blacks about the chances of
electing a black mayor because seemingly the black vote will be split and the
white vote a monolith. This scenario, I
would suggest, is deliberately designed to thwart the main weapon that blacks possess
to elect a black mayor: Numbers.
The little discussed numerical fact is
that in the city there are more blacks registered to vote who are Democrats
than whites. And with the primary election
being the decisive election for mayor, if blacks turn out to vote in the March
primary in high numbers – like, for instance, the 58% black turnout this past
November – then a black person can once again occupy Room 200 at City Hall.
What will convert this “if” from the
hypothetical to the material is the black community uniting behind one black
candidate. And what will cause that
unity is a subject for future discussion.
Eric E.
Vickers.
