The Scandal of Reform: The Grand Failures of New York's Political Crusaders and the Death of Nonpartisanship

13. Race Concerns and Race Cards

200 13 Race Concerns and Race Cards “This is a stealth effort on the part of the Republican elite to disenfranchise thousands and thousands and thousands of minorities. We feel that this effort is in the same family as the literacy act and the grandfather clause. It is a Republican advantage gimmick.” Assembly member Adrianno Espaillat, at an October 2003 press conference of the Black, Puerto Rican, and Hispanic Caucus denouncing nonpartisan elections In Beyond the Melting Pot, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote that, when Tammany Hall collapsed, “the central issue of politics in the city turned from ‘Bossism’ to ‘Racism’ . . . [and] the struggle over racial issues became in many ways a surrogate struggle for control of city government and the Democratic party.” Although race relations in New York are better today than at any other time in the city’s modern history, the struggle for control of city government remains wrapped in issues of race and ethnicity—and charges of racism. Unfortunately, there remain occasions when such charges are justified, though in many other cases they are entirely without merit. Injecting race into a nonracial issue to gain advantage has come to be known as “playing the race card,” and politicians from both the left and the right do it. Typically, the right uses coded language that plays to white voters’ fears, while the left uses blunter accusations of racism. For instance, when New York City Council Speaker Gifford Miller dragged his feet on passing a lead-paint bill strongly opposed by the Bloomberg administration ’s health and housing commissioners as well as some nonprofit groups that construct low-income housing, several council members accused him of “environmental racism,” owing to the fact that most victims of lead-paint poisoning are minorities. Advocacy groups, including NYPIRG, organized protests in which participants—absurdly and inaccurately—called Miller a racist. This kind of irresponsible rhetoric, which seeks to denigrate opponents as bigots or more subtly intimate that they are motivated by racial bias, remains all too common in city politics. When the Bloomberg administration announced, amid a fiscal crisis and a reorganization of the Department of Education, that eight hundred teachers’ aides would be laid off, many of them black and Hispanic, teachers ’ union president Randi Weingarten filed suit, charging “a discriminatory lay-off policy that targets positions with high concentrations of minority workers.” At Weingarten’s press conference, Bertha Lewis, president of Association of Communities for Reform Now (ACORN), charged the administration with “educational racism.” Eric Adams, cofounder of  Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, said that the layoffs had “a hidden undertone of racism.” Similarly, when there was a foul-up in the instant lottery game run by the Daily News, which mistakenly printed thousands of winning tickets, City Council member Charles Barron organized protests and denounced the News’s refusal to pay each winner: “They’re preying on people of color, to disrespect us.” In both cases, the race card was part of a cynical bluff, an attempt to intimidate the opposition into folding. And during the  referendum debate on nonpartisan elections, this same bluff was played masterfully. About a week before the  referendum, the New York State Legislature’s Black, Puerto Rican, and Hispanic Caucus and the New York City Council’s Black, Hispanic, and Asian Caucus held a press conference opposing nonpartisan elections. After Manhattan assembly member Adrianno Espaillat equated nonpartisan elections with “the literacy act and the grandfather clause,” council member Hiram Monserrate of Queens launched what would become a common refrain: nonpartisan elections were a response to, and an attempt to counteract, black and Hispanic minority success. “Why is it when communities of color are finally making progress winning office,” he asked, “they want to change the rules of the game? I think it calls into question a truly sinister plan that tries to change what we’ve accomplished since the Civil Rights days.” At a public forum in Brooklyn on the referendum, Velmanette Montgomery, a member of the State Assembly since , explained her opposition: “Since Jesse Jackson, the black vote has been out-voting the RACE CONCERNS AND RACE CARDS 201 white vote, which is why this proposal comes before us at this time. . . . They want to bust this up so we will have no control over elections. They’re pushing this just at a time when we’re getting into power.” The theme was echoed...