The tragedy of race and neglected urbanization is stated boldly in Newark, New Jersey. It has one of the highest homicide rates in the nation, with gang violence spreading a net of razor-wire over hapless and helpless average folk trying to escape the often indiscriminate needs of drug trafficking and misguided machismo. This is the most notable feature for me, a criminal attorney who often practices in the courts of that city. But underneath this headline outrage, there is failure in just about every direction: an abominable, though now tended, public school system; exceedingly high dropout rates; unemployment exceeding twice the state average; and, in general terms, a malaise that had long ago set in that led far too many to give up on any dream whatsoever and to settle for a stasis of public aid and municipal corruption. The largest employer in Newark was until very recently the city itself.
Then the election came. Out went 20-year incumbent Sharpe James, whose tenure as mayor was preceded by 16 years on the city council. Reportedly, there was endemic corruption under his watch and the high municipal employment just mentioned, patronage that hurt the city and bled the city, serving only a stasis of people contentonly to get theirs.
The winner of last year's election was a man named Cory Booker, a young man in his mid-30's, a wunderkind some said, a race-traitor others said, based not only on his policies (such as cutting the employment rolls paid by city hall) but also his very attributes themselves. He was raised in a predominantly white ward of the city after his parents sued a realtor who would have excluded them. He has brought in a cadre of professional managers, a number of whom are white. And although his home and his vocation and his roots tie him to Newark in very profound ways right now, occasionally he hears himself called carpetbagger, for many believe he is headed for the statehouse and maybe Washington. And his sensibilities extend beyond "urban schtick" but legitimately so based on his degrees frrom Stanford, Yale and Oxford (as a Rhodes Scholar).
One of the first things Mayor Booker did was to declare war on gangs, an initiative with only spotty results so far. Then he cut the job rolls. Whereupon a recall campaign was launched, apparently by disgruntled workers who lost their sinecures. Apparently the battle is on.
For my sensibilities and values, Booker gets all the prayers from me he may need. To some extent at least, though most of us adapt at a level considerably lower than his mark of achievement, this is a struggle between a free-reining, "new" black man who can live comfortably in both worlds, having met the challenge our culture has presented him, and the those -- often through no fault of their own -- who take the refuge of the familiar, and try to perpetuate it, drawing a protective cocoon around so much dysfunctional behavior.
