Blacksmythe

Ed Bradley died two days ago of leukemia. In writing about him, Wil Haygood used the quote I cite above. There’s a certain type of gaze that comes with living life as a black man. Unless you’re in a city like Detroit, there’s never a time you aren’t noticed. How do you handle yourself under that gaze? How do you do work under that gaze?

Ed’s way?   Take the best of what it means to be a man in modern life, stylize it…and improvise around the edges. I wasn’t much of a 60 Minutes man. So I usually caught Bradley out of the corner of my eye, in between moments.

But he will be sorely missed. I can’t think of anyone in television journalism who has either the style or the chops to replace him.

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In no particular order:

• Blacks will support black Republican candidates under certain conditions

Blacks gave Steele in Maryland 30% of their vote.   Three times more than the black average.  The reason support for black republican candidates hasn’t been higher in the modern past is because the modern black republican veers so far to the right on economic issues that it is difficult for blacks to support them without buying into racism.  Steele stands out from his previous counterparts by his willingness to deal with black communities on their own terms.  Now inevitably his lack of policy prescriptions hurt him, but this is still a good day.

• Whites will support black candidates even in the South under certain conditions.

Ford lost to Coker in Tennessee (both were running for the seat vacated by Senator Frist), but only by 2%.  We’ve progressed enough where someone like Ford, who to be fair is both very conservative for a Democrat and also exceedingly fair-skinned, can garner votes not only from white liberals, but also from white racial conservatives.  Now this could be a function of the context–the throw the bums out rhetoric may have resounded so much with white voters that it didn’t matter.

And we now have a black governor of Massachusetts…though to be far Massachusetts has a decent history there.

• Racialized campaign ads still do damage

I believe that the ad that did Ford in was racist, though some of my colleagues disagree.  But see it for yourself.  Tali Mendelberg’s work indicates that the best way to respond to this type of ad is to condemn it directly.  Ford ends up losing undecideds at a rate of 3-1.  I think the ad was crucial here.

• Affirmative Action still riles white voters

Proposal 2 which bans Affirmative Action in college admissions, hiring, and contracts in Michigan passed by a significant margin.   This shouldn’t come as any surprise.  Michigan will likely find a work around–a number of straightforward options come to mind.   But expect a lot of short term hand wringing.  When I was there in undergrad there were about 700 of us.   Now there are around 4 times as much.   I expect the numbers to fall back to 700, probably less.

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There’s a meme that’s been going around black communities at least as long as black people have been organizing against white supremacy, blaming black failure on self-hatred. If we were to just “unify.” If we were able to somehow figure out how to get over “willie lynchism.” And inevitably, someone gets around to talking about people who do it right.

Around this point in the conversation, if you live in and around Detroit, Chaldeans come up. If you live around L.A., Koreans might come up. If you live around NYC Jews probably come up.

David Mamet has just written a provacative new book that was recently reviewed in the New York Times. (I’d link to it, but by the time you check it out, it’ll probably be gone.)

The grass is ALWAYS greener on the other side.

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