Peak Radicalization

I hesitated to get involved with this story but I finally caved in. This morning I stumbled across this story about the newly elected mayor of Kinloch being barred by the city’s police from taking office on the grounds of vote fraud.

Kinloch is a small, poor, almost exclusively black suburb of St. Louis, north of the city not far from Ferguson which has become infamous lately. Kinloch once had a population of about 10,000 but in the 1980s St. Louis began purchasing plots of land for noise abatement reasons (Kinloch isn’t far from the airport) and by the 2010 census its population had fallen below 300.

The article describes Kinloch as once having been “thriving”. I suppose that depends on your operative definition. It was once more populous but it has been poor for as long as I can recall.

What really caught my attention was the comments to the article which included complaints that the newly elected mayor was being prevented from taking office due to racism. That is nonsense. Yes, the new mayor was black but the old mayor was black, too. I don’t know for sure but I seriously doubt that Kinloch has had anything but black mayors for the last half century and the same is true of police chiefs. Kinloch’s population has been 95% or more black for as long as I can recall.

My point here is that not every bad thing that happens to a black person is caused by racism. Assertions of racism in this particular case points to a level of radicalization with respect to race that assumes the level of farce.

2 comments… add one
  • PD Shaw Link

    Somewhat OT: a local village w/ population 230 held a referendum to dissolve. It sounds like the village was run by a small board of retired people dedicated to public service, and shoveling rock salt on the dilapidated streets. As people aged, they had trouble having a quorum at board meetings, and younger people were not getting involved. Shrinking population and tax base, with increasing costs, the village projected to run perpetual deficits in a couple of years and the trustees thought it best to wind-up affairs with money in the bank. The County would take over public services and tax collection at that point.

    The referendum failed by a vote of 19-17. It sounds like a few souls stepped up to participate in government more, but it sounds like most people didn’t bother to vote. Such dissolution votes are supposedly rare, but I predict they will become more frequent.

  • Maybe I should drum up interest in such a vote here… I’m sure Cook County would be thrilled.

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