Main Street Journal: On the River: The End of Racial Politics

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The following article is taken from the August 2010 issue of the Main Street Journal. Click “Subscribe Online” above to start your subscription.

On the River: The End of Racial Politics
By: Jonathan Lindberg

Over a long, hot summer, as the White House still stumbles over messaging on race, something altogether different is happening in Memphis. A chorus of candidates, voters and the media that covers them has rejected racial politics, outright.

It is a change we have all been waiting on, one that is long overdue.

The resounding defeat of Willie Herenton for U.S. Congress serves as the final note for racial campaigns. The one-dimensional slogan “Just One” seemed almost insulting. As Herenton asserted, a vote for him was simply a vote for an African-American, nothing more. Never mind where he stood on the issues or his desire to articulate them in Washington. Herenton made the campaign about race and it failed. That sort of campaign, in wide-reaching areas of Memphis, simply does not work anymore.

It did not work in 2006 or 2008, though few people noticed. Jake Ford and Nikki Tinker, both causalities to Steve Cohen in the Ninth Congressional primaries, hinted that race mattered. They were both promptly shown the door.

Voters were tired of being manipulated, stereotyped and taken for granted. Show me the content of your character, not the color of your skin.

In 2009, the tide finally turned. The campaign by AC Wharton for Memphis Mayor served as a leading indicator for how wide-reaching campaigns in Shelby County would be run in the future. Candidates, take note. As Wharton told this magazine during the campaign, “We really must get past black and white.”

Wharton refused to make the campaign about race. He also happened to win in a landslide. The old formula was gone. It was more than turning the page – Wharton started a whole new book. (let it be said, other candidates in that race such as Myron Lowery and Carol Chumney ran on the harmony message, a united front against racial politics).

The message has carried over into 2010. During the County Mayor debate on Channel 5, I sat on the panel with other journalists and listened as Joe Ford and Mark Luttrell together decried racial politics. It was a good moment for this city. In fact, in a host of county-wide races between Democrats and Republicans, many featuring an African-American candidate and a white candidate, never once did race serve as an overriding issue.

Only Herenton seemed stuck on the same tune, off key and somewhat dated.

Which is why his defeat, so thorough and so definite, means so much. It is one more opportunity for us all to bury racial politics, hopefully once and for all.

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