Observe:
1) After lamenting about the "race poisoned" atmosphere in local New Orleans politics, I sent out a call to 2010 Mayoral candidate James Perry saying "your leadership is needed". (Why Perry? Because he's a candidate who can comfortably discuss "race" among white and black audiences, and is a candidate with significant "crossover" potential.)
2) Three days after I published my blog entry, James Perry wrote an excellent post about race and trust, and pointed a way out of the current political morass. E at We Could be Famous could hardly believe his eyes:
Am I really seeing a New Orleans political figure synthesizing viewpoints to take a stand in the midst of a fiery controversy? Huh?
Go read what James Perry says in Race and Trust in NOLA:To build trust we need to have information from disinterested sources. We need information that provides clear unbiased data that we can rely on.
In New Orleans there is strong racial mistrust and general mistrust of our elected officials. We can use honesty and transparency to overcome that distrust and create a new basis for working together. Information and data, are key components in building this new trust. When objective data is unavailable, regardless of what the truth is, people revert to historic racial dividing lines. In today’s information age, there is a new opportunity. We can share all data and information and build relationships in much the way that friends do.
In working towards a post-racial New Orleans, sharing data is key. If we all have the common goal of a better City then there is no harm in making information available to everyone. Decisions about contracts should be open, inclusive, and transparent. Transparency and openness provide a base allowing trust to endure even through disagreement and bad reasoning. We need transparency in New Orleans government now. The progress of New Orleans’ racial dialogue depends on it.
This is an interesting way to construct the argument in favor of transparency since a lot of folks have been saying that the whole reason we can't have common sense public meetings and records laws is because of racial mistrust.
Did #1 cause #2? Whooo knows?
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Political analyst Clancy Dubos writes:
The next round of citywide elections will be the most racially polarized in memory. That’s a damn shame, and there’s plenty of blame to go around.
But rather than just assign blame, maybe we should talk about responsibility.
...
City Council members, particularly Arnie Fielkow, you have a responsibility not to be naïve. It’s not good enough to have your “heart in the right place,” as Fielkow put it last week; you also have to have your head in the game. You can’t take the politics out of politics. Even if your intentions are pure, your actions will speak louder than anything. If you don’t recognize that, you don’t belong in public office.
The more the 2010 mayoral contest is racially polarized, the less likely it is that Fielgood can win. This polarized racial dynamic could be a political opportunity for someone like James Perry who, despite his youthfulness, isn't "naïve" on matters like race.
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Update: My apologies to Clancy Dubos, whom I initially misquoted. I've corrected the error, and appreciate him notifying me about it in the comments. I was hastily cutting and pasting quotes for this post, and chopped the "City Council members, particularly" phrase from one of the sentences I highlighted. I was indeed thinking more about my point than Clancy's, so I again apologize for that mistake. I sort of pride myself on how I quote other people's work, so this is an embarrassment for my blogging ego.
Also in the comments, BNolaD says that "Perry plans to implement a blind review of contracts". That reminded me of David Marcello's recent T-P op-ed, and one of Mayor Nagin's broken promises:
In his Dec. 11, 2001, announcement speech, candidate Nagin promised to present a ballot proposition within the first 100 days of his administration, eliminating separate mayor-council selection procedures in favor of a single process fixed by ordinance. He also wanted evaluation committees to include diverse groups of citizens, not just City Hall insiders.
...
Six-and-a-half years later, we've yet to see a ballot proposition.
Labels: "Race", Elections and Campaigns, Perry
