I’ve long thought that there’s a perfectly good reason that a smart African American politician would have very great advantages as mayor for a city like Chicago over a politician who’s only been exposed to the majority community. I don’t mean dumb reasons like a racial spoils system or karma. I mean a practical reason.
African Americans are completely immersed in the majority culture. It’s broadcast to them through the television, shouts at them from billboards, and is printed in forty point type on every newspaper. White folks only get the merest glimpse of the culture of the African American community if they see it at all.
Is there an analog to bi-lingualism? Bi-culturalism? Any African American who’s made his or her way outside of the narrow African American community is necessarily bi-cultural in a way that’s hard to duplicate for Americans of strictly European descent. They really understand the African American community and they can at least make their ways around in the majority community.
In his Bleat today James Lileks articulates a variant of this notion that I hadn’t considered:
Sir, speaking as a heartlander who makes it to New York whenever he can, may I kindly suggest you get out of town more often. There’s only one New York, which is why it is so important. But there are a hundred thousand Fargos, which is why they matter too.
As for a “Shoot from the hip mentality and a very concrete interpretation of religion” – well, if you hang around the right corners in New York long enough you’ll probably see a gun battle AND some Lubavitchers handing out literature; this would not make me assume all New Yorkers are gang-bangers or Torah-thumpers. It’s a big country. Please take this in the spirit it’s offered: we watch the news that comes from New York, read the magazines that come from New York, see the shows that come from New York. It’s entirely possible we know you better than you know us. Nu?
