I have a piece up in the Washington City Paper wondering whether the last mayoral election was an indication that we're going to see the emergence of white identity politics in D.C. as the black majority in the city dwindles:
Things can get a lot uglier than they were last year. A severe economic downturn that punished D.C.'s overwhelmingly black poor and working class, the influx of whites, and the outward exodus of more affluent blacks were factors largely beyond Fenty’s control as mayor that nonetheless gave the insurmountable impression that, like George W. Bush, he just didn’t care about black people. That’s not to understate Fenty’s political weaknesses—his abrasiveness, arrogance, or uncanny ability to project indifference to those suffering from violence or the city’s economic downturn—in his loss, or in Gray’s late decision to run in the first place. But despite the level of support he received from the city’s white residents, Fenty never ran as “the white people’s candidate,” and Gray never indulged in the kind of explicit racial politics Barry once mastered. The idea of Gray as the second coming of Barry is absurd—15 years ago the city’s white and middle class black residents might have been aligning with the Dunbar-educated Gray against whatever candidate Barry endorsed, much the way they did when Rev. Willie F. Wilson ran against Williams in 2002. It was remarkable that both candidates studiously avoided explicit racial politics, even as their supporters and detractors spent months tossing labels at each other.
Yet the city polarized along racial lines in numbers not seen since the last time Barry was on the ballot, with 80 percent of the black vote going to Gray while Fenty drew the same numbers among white voters. The post-Barry truce between the black middle class and the city's white residents dissolved, increasing the probability that the city's class divide will morph into a racial one. White voters' initial impression of Gray has stuck despite his efforts to alleviate anxieties west of Rock Creek Park through a series of pre-general election town halls. A survey released by the Clarus Research Group last week showed Gray with a 17 percent approval rating among white residents. Yes, the mayor managed to short-circuit his honeymoon with a series of disastrous appointments that have driven down his approval ratings even among the black residents who voted for him. But it's hard to say his low approval among whites is so easily explained. After all, that 17 percent resembles his share of the white vote in the primary anyway. If anything, he's just confirmed what they already thought about him in the first place. What makes this baffling is that Gray ran largely as an alternative to Fenty in style rather than substance, and the policy differences between them were virtually nonexistent. Gray went as far as appointing Kaya Henderson as Rhee’s replacement, signaling continuity with Fenty on education—the one issue in this city over which there’s something approaching genuine ideological conflict, and the one most white voters flagged as the most important.
A reminder from a 1985 Washington Post article about just how idiotic the whispers about Gray as a return to the Barry era really were. I almost forgot about "The Plan," the conspiracy theory that white people were plotting a takeover of D.C.:
And though he may not refer to it directly, Mayor Marion Barry routinely invokes the specter of The Plan. Three weeks ago, for example, he accused The Washington Post of investigating his minority contracting program in order to destroy the program and his administration. Referring to The Plan is still a good applause line before many black audiences.
In a nutshell, The Plan is an awkward attempt to explain events that benefited whites at black expense. Belief in the The Plan is rooted in a conviction among blacks that whites are cold-blooded pragmatists who calculate their every move and who, in their heart of hearts, do not like black people.
The story was a double byline. Guess who one of the reporters was?
