Handling or not Handling disproportionate levels of representation
Irwin Williams
Been reading this long, 9-page document about the changing face of African-American politics and representation. Yes, it’s another Obama article, but my focus is on one of the learnings that the author is trying to establish. Essentially, African-American politics in pre-O days (you know, O could equally be Oprah…lol) was about representing African-American issues at the various levels, as I understand it, there’s been very few US Senate African-American representatives, most actually live “lower” levels of representation, like being mayors and such. And it’s not that when they are elected to their posts that they only espouse issues on the African-American agenda, but if they were to sink into one of those issues and really try to get things done, they won’t actually be taken to task for it. Likewise, lobbyists for African-American issues in the pre-O days, could pointedly say, i support this because i feel it directly enables African-Americans to do better.
In the article, one of the points being made is that Obama as President, won’t have the luxury of pigeon-holing himself into being the Black President. Apart from being labelled as parochial and myopic, that stance would seriously impinge on his ability to garner support for other issues that he could and should be focussing on.
These things came to mind because a few years ago, i believe during the PNM administration, 2002-2007, the government tabled legislation targetting, Afro-Trinidadians, aged 17-25, from the east-west corridor, citing stats on crime figures and unemployment, which were high for this cachement. I vividly remember Wade Mark (Afro-Trinidadian member of the opposition, UNC) in the Senate, taking the government to task and tearing into their Afro-Trinidadian agenda and unfair allocations of the countries resources, etc I found myself thinking, “Wade, how could you?!”. It felt like such a betrayal, I mean, here was this legislation, intent on dealing with an issue my experience pointed to strongly and here was a guy painting it red in the parliament. I don’t know what happened, but the ensuing media coverage pointed to a stymied process.
So, reading about this journalists perspectives on how Obama will handle his presidency, reminded me about that. My question remains though, Shouldn’t “disproportionate levels” of being affected require disproportionate levels of aid?
________________________ Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will serve before kings; he will not serve before obscure men. Proverbs 22:29