To Move the City Forward, Philly's Next Mayor Must Address the Issue of Race

Only three of the five candidates in Philadelphia's May 15 Democratic Mayoral Primary Election have ever been "front runners" in the political polls taken in this year's campaign. At the outset, it was Fattah; in the middle of the campaign, it was Knox and, at the end, it was Nutter.

If the polls are right (and there's still great debate raging about that), Michael Nutter will be the next mayor of Philadelphia. On the other hand, if white voters don't really vote "Nutter" at the "racially historic" levels they promised to the pollsters, then, chances are, Tom Knox will be the City's mayor. And, if the great, "undecided" black mass of voters(23% of all registered African-American Democrats) finally, miraculously, see what they've been looking for since "day one" in the formerly front-running black congressman and, if they actually show up on Tuesday, then Chaka Fattah has a better-than-even chance of winning the Primary.

Let's keep going with this...

Common wisdom, now, is that a Nutter win or a Fattah win, on Tuesday, will lead to a one-on-one General Election battle with Republican Al Taubenberger and what would almost certainly be a General Election Day victory for the Democrats, just as has been the case in every Philadelphia mayor's race, going back to 1952.

But if Knox wins, the Democratic Party regulars may very well be more displeased and nervous about his victory than they will be about Taubenberger's, and there's a strong possibility that they'll get behind some more-loyal, more-trusted, more predictable Democrat, or former Republican, who will enter the "General" as an "Independent" to save the Party's honor and/or the Party leaders' jobs.

Already the self-serving rumors are flying: Brady, it was reported, has said to certain ward leaders that if they can't deliver votes for him, then they should turn those votes to Nutter. The implication, of course, is that the Party, and the chairman's job, would be safe with Nutter on City Hall's second
floor.

Seems a strange kind of arrangement for the "reform candidate" to make.

Say it ain't so, Mike.

Immediately after that story began to make the rounds, just like clockwork, the very much expected companion rumor was leaked, i.e., if Knox gets the mayor's job, he's already promised to do all that he can to have John Dougherty elected as Democratic Party chair.

This, likewise, seems a strange deal for Tom, "the Outsider," Knox to make, but the tit-for-tat rumor was actually kind of fun to hear. Silly, but fun.

Is this kind of "inside baseball" the reason why we've all endured the last seven months of campaigning, candidate forums, t.v. commercials, posters, lawn signs and law suits? Have we put ourselves through all of this aggravation and expense simply to make sure that nothing really changes at Democratic City Committee?

God, I hope not.

Even though the Committee of 70, the ADL, the Urban League, etal., have imposed a strange, self-defeating "gag order" on discussions related to race during the campaign, we still can't escape the fact that our City's progress over the next mayor's term may be largely defined by his success in leading us to address, forthrightly, that very issue. When the most onerous economic and societal problems of the City are concentrated in a single, numerically dominant segment of the population, then the City has little choice other than to identify and eliminate those issues.

Unless you've been asleep for the past 30 years, you are probably aware that, despite the fact that our civic leaders continue to tell us that race shouldn't be discussed in polite company, African Americans in our City continue to be, somehow, substantially overrepresented in our prisons, overrepresented in our unemployment statistics(at a functional 50% rate for black males), overrepresented in violent gun deaths, underrepresented in high school graduation rates, underrepresented on our local college campuses, underrepresented as participants in City contracts and dramatically underrepresented as members of Philadelphia's skilled trades unions.

Of course, none of this would be such a big deal for the City if those same African Americans didn't represent the largest, single population segment in Philadelphia, at 45% of all total residents.

The fact is that Philadelphia's overall economy, educational achievement levels, home ownership rates, workforce readiness levels and tax base cannot really improve until we recognize and address the specific and curious reasons for African-American marginalization in our City.

Guess what? We can't do any of that if we continue to close our collective eyes, stamp our collective feet and hope that black folks and their problems simply go away.

We can no longer be so naive that we continue to promote, as a city, the outrageous premise that it is impolite or distasteful to talk about the real, tangible issues of racially oriented economic and societal imbalance.

There are hundreds of thousands of real people in our city--many, many blacks, some Hispanics, some Asians and some whites-- who are suffering and who are growing increasingly frustrated by the lack of attention being paid to their core issues.

That frustration has already led our city to national infamy, topping most countrywide rankings in the areas of violent crimes and hand gun-related murders. If we keep telling ourselves that it's impolite to address these issues directly, I guarantee, these problems will be sure to escalate.

We can't hire enough police. We can't build prisons fast enough, nor can we afford to do so, at any pace.

The true test of mayoral leadership, whoever wins the election, will be to watch how long it will take Mr. Nutter/Mr. Knox/Mr. Fattah,or in a real "long shot," Mr. Brady/Mr. Evans, to stand up and announce a comprehensive plan for getting at the root, at long last, of the race-based impediments to Philadelphia's ability to truly become "The Next Great City."

Given the well-publicized unwillingness on the part of so many of our civic and business leaders and media outlets, such a move won't instantly contribute to the new mayor's popularity, but it will begin the process of healing, inclusion and rebuilding that is so long overdue,here.

This, by no means, implies that the concerns of the rest of the population will be displaced or ignored. It will send a signal, however, that the issues that have disproportionately plagued our City's African-American community will finally be added to the overall agenda.

Rev. Martin Luther King, who made so many brilliant observations prior to his assassination, said, very pertinently to our issue:"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that
matter."

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