Trouble on the Horizon: De Blasio and the Democratic Future

In what can only be regarded as an exceptionally foreboding moment, one of the first ideological “line in the sand” arguments with my parents – my mom, in particular – was attributable to their use of the word “rich.”  Or, more specifically, the fact that whenever that word left one of their mouths, it was almost invariably additionally modified by the adjective “white.”  To wit:

“…the rich white people who live in those big houses by the hospital…”

“…we can’t afford that type of car, Adam, we’re not rich white people…”

At some point, recognizing that this wasn’t a standard grammatical construct in the English language, I started to wonder why this was the case in their usage.  And so I asked, “Wait – can’t people other than white people be rich, too?”  I was then summarily schooled on historical discrimination, probabilities, and all that jazz; I’ll spare you the details.

(To be honest, there really weren’t any rich blacks in the community where I grew up, at least that I can recall.  Though, of course, even the so-called “rich white folks” of that region would largely be considered middle class – and for the most part, barely that – by Manhattan and urban Northeastern standards.)

Philosophically, my early childhood viewpoint on that particular item of discussion was quite revelatory in relation to my teenage and adult stance on how to successfully operate as a member of several historically oppressed groups in this society.  From African American history, the opposing approaches of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois have long been a convenient (if overly simplified and not entirely accurate) framework through which I viewed the dilemma – and my tactics have always solidly aligned with the side of the Booker T. Washington school of thought.  While I have always acknowledged that our system has problems and boatloads of historical inequities, and while I can assure you that you don’t want to be the crusty old white man who gives me a dirty look as I’m taking my seat in First Class, there has also never been a doubt in my mind that our system fundamentally works, and that it is best ameliorated through gradual reforms, not fiery overthrow or tempestuous revolution.  My own life story – a small drop of water in the ocean of the countless far more impressive narratives of successful members of historically oppressed minority groups – irrefutably proves that case.

Given these views and the contemporary electoral reality, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party has been home turf for me from a political point of view since I first formulated my juvenile political thought.  With an increasingly repugnant social, religious, and nativist ideology driving the Republican Party post-1980, the choice between the two viewpoints was remarkably clear.  In the Democrats I have always seen a party committed to reforming the current system in such a way as to eliminate the remaining vestiges of institutionalized discrimination and in the process maximize societal outcomes for all – for children attending crumbling schools in inner-city Detroit, as well as children attending Philips Exeter.  Voting a straight Democratic ticket was, and still is, my typical imprint on elections.

Recently, though, certain stirrings in one isolated wing of the Democratic Party have evoked a great deal of disquietude on my part.  In a party where the predominant message sent to folks like me once seemed to be that “we have worked hard to reform America to such an extent that you can be a gay black boy, from a trailer park in the rural Deep South, and one day attend an elite university and have a splendid office in Midtown Manhattan”, I have increasingly heard from this bloc that tired, old, recycled refrain of “you are a gay black boy, from a trailer park in the rural Deep South, and you should envy and be angry at the folks who attended elite universities and have splendid offices in Midtown Manhattan, as they are your oppressors.  They are the rich white people; you are the other.  You will never have what they have, for they are the holders of institutional privilege.”

The first narrative is my life, and an approximation of the lives of so many others.  The second is the narrative of the Bill de Blasio, Occupy Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party, and it has many folks like myself scratching our heads and wondering for how long our own party will continue to represent us.
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Some people would like to characterize this dichotomy as being the simple choice of conservative/moderate versus progressive Democrats.  It is not.  I – and people similar to me ideologically – do not identify in the least with conservative or moderate Democrats in the mold of Nebraska’s Ben Nelson or Arkansas’s Blanche Lincoln, let alone with today’s Republicans.  From social issues such as abortion and gay rights; to economic issues such as monetary policy and the proper size of the social welfare state; to foreign policy matters of diplomacy versus armed conflict – I vehemently and unequivocally disagree, across the board, with the panoply of Republican and conservative Democratic policy prescriptions.  And my views on these issues have largely been constant since I was a teenager.

Instead, the difference in question revolves around method of political change, and the overall view ascribed to American society.  Namely: do we gradually and in a targeted manner reform the existing American system from within to improve opportunity for folks across the board; or, do we attempt to blow the goddamned thing up and replace it with something radically different?

In the worldview of the Bill de Blasio-leaning segment of the Democrats – which is, fortunately, still a small slice of the overall party today – issues of injustice and the inequality of material possession have little to do with creating a fertile environment in which social mobility and opportunity can thrive; rather, they translate to issues of “oppressors” and “victims”; “us” versus “them.”  This is the sina qua non of the 30-year-old liberal arts graduate student, tormented by white guilt and delusional in his belief that his thesis on The Communist Manifesto offers something original in the ongoing debate on how to best allocate limited resources in society.  The focus of these folks is much less (if at all) on reforming the current system to provide enhanced opportunities for those at the bottom of the pile to climb up and improve themselves; rather, the core message becomes one of disgust and hatred directed at the “haves”:  folks with addresses on Park Avenue or at 15 Central Park West; investment bankers with Ivy League degrees; chief executive officers drawing down five million dollar annual performance bonuses.

While people like me may certainly question whether folks in those groups pay the correct amount of tax (and may, as I do, strongly believe that some, such as hedge fund and private equity moguls, should be paying one hell of a lot more in tax), the line that we never cross is the line of envy.  As a kid growing up in a family that was often in the bottom income quartile, I never once felt any anger at those who had much more than I did.   Indeed, I modeled my academic goals and personal behavior to attempt to ensure that I would one day have what they had.  Likewise, today as an individual in the top five percent of Americans in terms of personal income, I feel not a single iota of envy at those – including some of my peers age-wise – who make and possess significantly more than I do.  Instead, I am constantly striving to improve myself in such a way as to elevate myself to their rank.

It is also particularly important to comment on the manner in which successful minorities such as myself are generally treated by the leftist ideological demagogues who thrive on the false narrative of oppression and class envy – which is, namely, no better than our treatment at the hands of the right-wing conservatives who often don’t want minorities in the country to begin with.  We are routinely chastised and excoriated for being “sell-outs”, for, in my case, “forgetting our black roots” or “trying to act white” or “being a model Oreo.”  For a case in point, observe the constant criticism lobbed at President Obama by racial arsonists like Al Sharpton and Tavis Smiley – which is quite amusing considering that Mr. Obama has accomplished far more for underprivileged blacks than those two men combined and multiplied by twenty.

And folks like me are supposed to blindly believe that these ideologues who represent the oppression narrative are working in our best interest?

Mayor de Blasio is still extremely early into his term, and I retain hope that things will change and the trials of time will ultimately reveal him to be far more measured and effective than his narrow, divisive, quasi-cartoonish campaign message.  Unfortunately, his Sandinista-sympathizing past and actions to-date as Mayor do not exactly offer a multitude of encouraging signs.

What Democrats must always remember is that the vast overwhelming majority of those in underrepresented minority groups in this nation – barring a tiny sliver of far left inefficacious intellectual malcontents who value abstract ideas far more than they value than actual results, and the predictable bomb throwers like Al Sharpton who have immensely enriched themselves through incendiary race-baiting  – want nothing other than the same level of opportunity that has always been available to the white majority.  As a kid growing up in impoverished Northwest Florida 20 years ago, all that I ever desired was the ability to compete on the same playing field as the kids in elite New England prep schools - not to burn down those prep schools or to tar and feather the predominantly white and upper-class children inside them.

To the extent that the Democrats continue – as they generally do today – to advocate for societal reforms that advance this goal, they will always have the support of people like me.  So long as the message sent by the Democrats to the Hispanic youth of migrant farmers in California’s Central Valley or the African American youth of broken families in Central Brooklyn is a message of progressive reform, inclusiveness, and opportunity, people like me will continue to support Democrats across the board.

It is only if the Democrats begin to reject the narrative of opportunity to embrace the demagoguery of oppression and class envy – the disdainful refrain about those elite rich white people on Park Avenue that you can never hope to be, you silly oppressed minority! – that things will change.  And for many voters like me, the first change will be checking off the “Independent” box for party affiliation the next time that we update our voter registration.