The Economist talks about a racial divide in the Democrats.

Civics 101: Yours or Theirs?

In Chicago, businessmen/businesswomen, educators, and politicians with their rank and file members are all too aware of the politics of 'race,' or of how 'race' is brokered and broke into component white and brown parts and pitted against each other. So, the national "debate" about race currently taking place is well worn in Chicago streets and well understood by Chicagoans who work with the city.
In one of the most diverse, segregated, and Democratic Party affiliated cities in the country, brokering in the politics of 'race' is nothing new (the first marriage ever in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable, the first settler of Chicago and an African American via descent of Haiti, to his Indian wife. Love non-with-standing, Du Sable was a smart cat. He was settling Indian land after all) and it is deeply embedded in the balance of city culture and city politic. Throughout Chicago's history, when an immigrant group or when African-American's have been shut out of power (read: most of the time), they have fashioned a way to broker what they have against what they want, and more often, what they simply need. The historical examples, ranging from Housing Acts to Affirmative Action are numerous, but I will give one that is personal:

As an educator in a second chance Alternative School in Humboldt Park, I have noticed over the years how Black and Puerto Rican leaders from the South Side and Humboldt Park pit their own rank and file against each other in order to gain funding advantage for their own neighborhood schools, especially second chance high schools, which seek to assist those students who are high-risk, and highly profiled by local enforcement. When the funding bucket is low or the stakes are high, the obvious happens - the tribal politics get ugly and weird, some leaders turn into obvious racists themselves, and worse, they try to undermine other schools. And teachers there to teach and students there to learn and be teens get thrown in the mix; some schools even expect the teachers and students to march for any cause an administrator backs, which is a sort of a civics lesson gone wrong. (Civics 101: Yours or Theirs: The Struggle To Prove that We are the Best of the Browns and Need More Than The Rest -- Here's Your Protest Sign) Now, considering straight up #'s, this all makes sense. Those with Less are often forced to compete for Less at the gain of those with More. In fact, anybody who has lost at Monopoly to a very Monopolizing player knows that there comes a point in the game where the winning player just gets to collect money and watch the losers duke it out. Pretty sweet deal for the Top Hat right? But I'm not going to blame the Top Hat here. The Top Hat may be a nice guy from Lincoln Square or Barrington with a pretty wife and two kids to feed. He may just be doing his job; however debilitating his job may be to others. Anyway, the point is this: For the rest of us, let's say those minorities who don't completely mistrust other minorities and understand that we both need nearly the same things (read: most of us), the prospect of a continuous loser-duke-other-loser (read: underfunded neighborhood duke other underfunded neighborhood) minority war does not make much sense. This is what the greatest civil rights leaders understood: In order to broker power for minority groups, you need most minority groups involved.(Can't help myself side-note: Read: Mrs. Clinton, Lyndon B. Johnson didn't 'get it done.' He just didn't have the capital to keep it from getting done. Remember, he actually didn't like minorities that much...) This does not mean everybody needs to inter-racially marry (although it didn't work too badly for my parents) or hold hands. This means working together to find political and economic leverages, which should be used to strike a working balance with the Top Hats. We have forgotten how to do this as a party. We have forgotten Civic Education and Labor Movements. The greatest Civil Rights leaders understood that in order to force the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 they had to leverage millions of once disparate minority voices, through education and labor, against the Old School We Hate Black and Women Top Hats.

So, the question is: How do we get minority leaders to stop pitting their rank and file against each other today and, finally, leverage some turn-of-the-century power against the turn-of-the-century Top Hat(s). (Again, probably some nice guys, but does their Top Hat really need to be that shiny or cost that much?) This is a serious Civil Rights cause, especially as underfunded schools and increased jailing rates continue to be at the forefront of Hispanic and Black communities (fueled by not so nice Top Hats), and should be at the center of Democratic policy but.....

All National Politics are Local: Our Macrocosm of the Race Politic or Seriously, Do We Really Have to Have Black, Latino, and Women-Rights Leaders at the Behest of Obama and Clinton Duking it Out This Stupidly In Front of the Whole Country -

The Democratic Presidential front runners, both heavily connected to Chicago, and the non-public financed Media, have done a wonderful job so far demonstrating that Democrats are not as prepared as they thought they were in talking about race and gender, and, more importantly, in actually representing and leveraging the voices of millions of minority and female Democratic voters with a minority or female at the helm. (Ironically, Edwards, a Southern White guy, is the only one saying we need to fight to leverage power, drawing on the positive historical aspects of the Democratic party more thoroughly than the front runners) Instead, Obama and Clinton, both well versed in New York City and Chicago politics (The North East Prize and The Super Bowl of politics respectively), have brought what is most divisive in local Democratic politics to the national spotlight. Of course, this is obvious game for those involved any sort of local Democratic politics, but what's new is that the local duking and brokering of 'race' and (to a lesser extent) 'gender' politics is now national fodder - A serious sore-spot for the Democrats that reminds me of watching a family that lives down the street from you get into it at the Cineplex. After NH, the examples have been unfolding and mostly aggravated by confused pundits who do not know how to talk about race and gender for 24 hours; indeed, who the hell does? Thus, The Crying Game. The MLK Game The Awkward 'Aren't Republicans Supposed to Be Saying the Things We're Saying' Apology Game. Turning west in the Nevada caucus, Hispanics voted 2:1 for Clinton this past Saturday. This is crucial for Clinton who understands deeply that Hispanics are a hugely growing Democratic bloc. Hispanics go to Clinton, maybe... So, naturally, the duking it out continues to NC, where we will soon know who is more black -The Clintons or Obama? And Blacks go to....It all gets very ugly and weird. Sound familiar?

So, naturally, I can't help but wonder how much of all of this is based on rank-and-file minorities inherent mistrust of each other -those who have been pitted against each other for 60+ years on the streets and in the schools of Chicago, NYC, Atlanta, Detroit, LA...etc...(Civics 102: Yours or Theirs: How To Not Elect Them even though Their Message is the Same as Yours and The Other ones.) I can't help but wonder how Local (how Chitown and windy) are we going to get?

Of course, once a nominee is picked the Democrats will fall behind him or her and the Democratic family will bring their new-and-confused identities back in the house. I just want to be convinced by either one of the front runners that they will actually leverage voices and votes for "change," (the oldest political slogan in the world, which, incidentally was first heard by the first guy who lost an eye to Hammurabi), which, right now, has more to do with Hilary just being a woman and O'bama just being black and how Democratic voters feel about it than anything else.