Is Buffalo's Proposition #1 racist?

by Bruce Jackson

Who said what?

Two readers wrote to argue my characterization of Buffalo's Proposition #1 as racist (in "Why you should vote NO on Buffalo's Proposition #1," BR 1 November 2002). The proposition, which is on Tuesday's ballot, would abolish all three ordinary at-large seats on the Common Council and the position of Common Council President.

Both of them argued, correctly, that the fact that three of those seats are occupied by African Americans now does not mean they are owned by African Americans, any more than any other elected office is owned by anyone of any race, gender, ethnic group, or whatever.

"Have you noticed the logical inconsistency in the racism argument?," one wrote. "Anyone who believes that the African-American population has a lock on those seats should also believe that it has the voting power to defeat the proposition, making the court fights unnecessary—except possibly as part of a get-out-the-vote consciousness-raising effort. Of course, if Pitts is the sole object, then this is personal animosity, which should not be confounded with racism."

The proponents of Proposition #1 may indeed have honest (reduce the cost of government!), political (get a Council the mayor can control totally!), or personal (get rid of Pitts!) reasons for their advocacy of it, and none of those reasons is, in and of themselves, racist.

And the letter-writer is absolutely right: Proposition #1, in and of itself, is voter-neutral. It isn't the least bit racist.

Neither I nor anyone else writing in Buffalo Report said it was.

But the way it was put on the ballot was, and so is the way it is being hyped.

Pure hearts—but mobs don't have hearts

Proposition #1 displaced a resolution produced by the commission appointed by the Council itself and the mayor to offer a plan for reducing the Council's size, a commission that over a year held numerous public hearings. That commission's plan would have removed one at-large seat and the city's smallest and most gerrymandered district for a Council of 11 members.

Was that a good plan? I don't know because it never got to the point of public discussion. The seven white members of the Common Council, voting as a block, refused to let it come before the whole Council or the public. Instead, over the arguments and pleas of all the nonwhite members of the Council, they rammed through a plan they had worked out on their own, meeting in all-white caucus. The result was that the public never got to see or discuss the commission's plan.

The public has been told by those seven white members of the Common Council, "You get to vote on our plan only. If you want to discuss any other plan you must first defeat our plan."

When they were accused of bullying tactics, they said, "Well, those other people should have moved on it when they had the chance," as if the issue were punishing the African Americans on the Council for tardiness rather than serving the interests of the city.

Is a vote with seven whites on one side and six blacks on the other in and of itself racist?

Of course not. Sometimes honest opinions might simply fall out that way.

Is restructuring the city's government in a way that dumps without discussion a plan achieved by a biracial commission in favor of a plan conceived by the seven whites meeting alone and over the strong objection of the African Americans racial?

Of course it is.

The hearts of every one of those seven whites can be pure and every one of them may be free of racist bones. But when you bunch up with the other white guys and say "Fuck you" to all the African Americans solely on the basis of you having one more in your gang than they do, that is racism. Good intentions aren't enough to free you of responsibility for your actions. Actions count. Look at what those seven whites did, not what they say they were thinking at the time they did it. You and I don't have to live with the consequences of their thoughts (thank God); we live with the consequences of their actions—and that's bad enough.

Laxative journalism

The Buffalo News has said that anyone who says Proposition #1 is racist is himself or herself a racist for playing the racist card.

They've also said that Proposition #1 is a lousy proposition but since it's the only proposition before us and the Council should be reduced, we should vote for it and move on.

What's so important about moving on? Why didn't they say, "It's a lousy proposition, the Council should go back to work and give us something else to vote on, and then we'll move on?" Because they never do that. They take the side of reason in the assertion part of their editorials and the side of the rich guys trying to get their way in the "but" part.

Remember the Peace Bridge, where they editorialized that the twin span was a lousy idea in all regards but we should go along with it because it had already been decided and it was time to move on? And Children's Hospital, where they editorialized that moving it to a few floors of Buffalo General Hospital was a lousy idea but we should go along with it because it had already been decided by the Kaleida Board and it was time to move on?

All this "it's time to move on" suggests that the News's editorial page is being driven primarily by The Ex-Lax/Metamucil Theory of Public Works and should, therefore, not be taken seriously either way.

A racist campaign

Moreover, this isn't just about Proposition #1 itself. It's also about the campaign to get you to vote for it. The big money in this campaign probably isn't trying to reduce the presence of African Americans in city government. I don't think that Carl Paladino and the Buffalo Niagara Partnership put all that money into this campaign or into David Franczyk's unsuccessful attempt to unseat James Pitts two years ago because either Paladino or the Partnership is racist. They spent that money to make the Common Council more malleable and to get rid of James Pitts. That's political and personal, not racial.

What is racist is the way their money has been spent. The five mass-mailing postcards they have mailed contain images of 62 individuals. The single non-white depicted is at work—a black cop in uniform on the front of the first card. The cards have been mailed only to white neighborhoods. There are no other cards.

I said earlier that we shouldn't assume that the All-White Ruling Junta of Seven in the Common Council was acting out of racist motives, and we shouldn't. But neither should we forget that the author of Proposition #1 is David Franczyk, has become infamous for running the city's most racially divisive campaigns since Jimmy Griffin ran against Arthur Eve in 1977. "During his 17 years in city hall," wrote Michael Niman, "Franczyk has never hired an African American for a full-time position on his legislative staff, despite the fact that he represented a majority black district for most of those years." (For Niman's excellent discussion of Franczyk's career of racial antagonism and manipulation,see "Doomsday in Buffalo part III: David Franczyk, Racism and a Divided Council," Artvoice 1 August 2002.)

What spirit do you think Francyk's Proposition and Paladino's and the Partnership's mailings are really appealing to?

Who owns what seat?

So no group or individual owns any seat, right?

Well, yes and no. Buffalo is a city with very strong ethnic neighborhoods. Whether you think that is good or bad, it is a fact. And ethnicity is one of the factors that influences how people pull levers in elections. If you think it doesn't, ponder for a few moments the 2004 presidential chances of anyone, however qualified, who is obviously Arab-, Chinese- or Native American. They could run, but they'd surely be lonely out there.

The first African American on Buffalo's Common Council was Delmar Mitchell in 1965. Mitchell became the first African American Common Council President in 1975. Since 1975 the Common Council presidency has been held by an African American male.

The political bosses of Buffalo seem to have decided somewhere in the 1970s to split the city's two most powerful political positions. They have followed a consistent pattern of backing a strong white candidate for mayor and a strong black candidate for Common Council President. The establishment has never, to my knowledge, fielded and funded a strong white candidate for Common Council President. David Franczyk's candidacy for Council President was the product of a very small group and not of the Democratic Party leadership.

It's not just party bosses who have split the vote. So have Buffalo's voters. Jim Pitts didn't get elected and reelected Common Council President on African American votes alone. Every time he's run for Council President he's gotten strong support in the white community too. But the few times African Americans made a run for mayor—Arthur Eve in 1977, George Arthur in 1985 and Wilbur Trammel in 1989—they've done poorly in white neighborhoods.

Why the discrepancy? Is it just that people thought George Arthur would be a fine Council President but not a good mayor or that Arthur Eve could be effective in the Albany leadership but not in Buffalo? I doubt it. Jimmy Griffin's 1977 campaign (Eve had the Democratic nomination that year, Griffin ran on the Conservative line) was based almost entirely on stirring up racial fear and antagonism. I talked to a lot of people in both those elections and my sense was that white people in Buffalo just weren't ready for a black mayor. They couldn't vote for a black mayor, but they could vote for a black Common Council President and leave the voting booth feeling good about themselves.

What happens now?

Should Proposition #1 pass, that feelgood move is going to be more difficult in the next election, when there would be no citywide positions other than mayor and comptroller. Right now, the three Democrats most likely to go for the 2004 Democratic nomination for Buffalo's mayor are Common Council President James Pitts (who will be out of a job by then if Proposition #1 passes), State Senator Byron Brown and Assemblyman Sam Hoyt (both of whom are energetic and ambitious and surely find Albany, where all major decisions are handed down from above, terminally boring).

If Pitts and Brown split the African American vote, Hoyt walks into the big office on the second floor of City Hall without raising a sweat. If Proposition #1 passes and Pitts decides not to run in the primary, then the Buffalo mayor's race is going to be interesting. Brown has already proven himself a good vote-getter in very white districts, and Buffalo may finally be ready to go into the voting booths colorblind. How will Rudnick and Paladino spend their money in that election?

That's idle speculation. For now, I think it would be best for the city if we defeat Proposition #1, which may not itself be racist but which guts the possibility of the Common Council ever putting up any strong opposition to the mayor and which decreases the likelihood of any non-white holding a city-wide political office. It got on the ballot as the result of dirty politics in the Council and it's being hyped in a dirty way by people who haven't once come out and told you what they're really doing and why they're doing it. None of us should endorse all that smarminess and villainy by endorsing this crippling proposition. Vote no.