The first truly competitive New Haven mayoral race in almost 20 years is over. I have not written much about it deliberately. A couple of post-election observations:
1. I've always considered New Haven a very conservative town. Not just in comparison to NYC, but also I suspect from its cultural DNA -- Yankees, African-American agrarians, relatively new South American immigrants, the traditional white ethnic Catholic settlers. There's an aspect of "wait your turn" in so much of what happens here and we've just elected a 65 year old mayor (which to me is a more significant factor than her gender or her race -- which I'll get to in a minute). I will say about her what I say about myself: at this age much of one's energy is spent overriding resistance to change. We can learn new things and we can do new things, but our willingness to do so is much less than before. (An enduring difficulty studying math at my age is an asinine conviction that there's no more room in my brain for new material and enough skill at rationalization to convince myself that it's true. Some people call that the Devil; I call it self-defeating.) We have elected someone who will probably be a caretaker Mayor, an incrementalist or gradualist. I hope there is room in her dynasty for younger, innovation-focused risk takers.
2. My second point is the oft-repeated remark I hear from other African Americans: I want someone who looks like me. That has never set well with me. Perhaps because before it was fashionable I was raised in what's now called a multicultural environment, a university town with students from all over the world. But that was in the context of growing up in Iowa that even in the 1970's was 98% white and 2% colored. Even if I wanted to be with S.W.L.L.M. my mother would have to drive me to Cedar Rapids (where we got our hair done) or Des Moines. All of that to say, it usually wasn't possible. Instead, through good experiences and bad, I learned that race or ethnicity has little to do with character.
Now, I'm not so obtuse that I don't understand what my friends and colleagues are saying. In the pecking order of these United States, African Americans have been brutally short-changed in occupying the higher rungs of the social and occupational ladder. So much so that symbolic achievements such as a gorgeous brown girl becoming Miss America contain as much value as a brilliant and gifted brown-skinned once-in-a-lifetime politician becoming president of the country. They get conflated. And it makes us feel good, salves the wounded collective ego, holds at bay the doubt and shame until the next Young Black Male performs some egregious crime that shocks the nation or a Young Black Woman (who should know better ) comports herself in a way that makes her indistinguishable from a street prostitute. It is as if we are connected via our umbilical cords and their guilt is our shame; their triumph is our success.
Given that, while Toni Harp being Mayor-Elect of New Haven is laudable, the symbolic significance of her election and of her subsequent tenure can too easily overshadow any clear-eyed assessment of her strengths and weaknesses as a legislator, and soon-to-be chief executive.
When we so readily set the bar at S.W.L.L.M. then we allow ourselves to valorize and excuse all manner of bad behavior including criminality, (cf. Marion Barry, Kwame Kilpatrick, William Jefferson, O.J. Simpson, R. Kelly to name a few). More commonly we excuse mediocrity as if race or gender sufficiently makes up for it, (cf. Jesse Jackson -- father and son). All I'm saying is that race triumphalism often trumps actual accomplishment and character. Just because there have been (and will always be) white hacks doesn't mean that I want to be unjustifiably proud of and an uncritical defender of African-American hacks. Because that says to me that deep down we don't believe we can do or have better than that.
One of the many reasons I've eager to teach is that I know role models are valuable. (Someone wrote that you can't be what you can't see, which is pithy and memorable, but, eh, not really true.) I used to do Career Day at my oldest daughter's school. I would have the children guess my occupation. Teacher. Social Worker. Token booth clerk. Nurse. That's what we -- African-American women -- do, right? It would surprise them when I said artist, writer because I was probably the first professional of that type they'd met and certainly the first African-American one. So, I get it. The shock of the new can open up worlds for kids who are isolated by poverty and a homogenous culture. But this world that these children are entitled to is not made up of people who look like them. It is made up of people good, bad and everything in between, some of whom look like them, many of whom do not. And the sooner they learn to learn from, to know, to work with and to negotiate and interact with all the everyones, the better off they'll be.
I fully intend to be a very good math teacher. But, if someone who doesn't look like me comes along who can do better by my students than I can, that's the teacher those students deserve. Nothing less.
