Why is Bloomberg's Parting Shot of "Racism" Such a Surprise?

 

photo: wikimedia

Last week , outgoing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called Bill de Blasio’s campaign for mayor of New York racist, because de Blasio appeared in public with his Black wife.  The interview, by Chris Smith  in New York Magazine is worth a read, if only to understand the world view of someone who thinks it is his wealth that makes the world a better place.  Bloomberg claims to be a uniter, and claims further that it is the rich who support the poor in this world.  What is clear, though, is that Bloomberg understands that many readers would interpret de Blasio showing he has a connection with the black community as divisive simply because de Blasio is showing that interracial marriage- and thus partnerships of other kinds- are possible and good.  Bloomberg knows that anti racists are a threat to white privilege, and that people who want that privilege still vote.  In the kind of coup that only people with his kind of clout can get away with, Bloomberg even got New York Magazine to add to his comments after the interview.  In the “explanation” Bloomberg says he does understand that it’s OK for people to talk about their ethnicity.  So what is really wrong with what de Blasio is doing in Bloomberg’s eyes?  I think it must be that de Blasio is showing that he has a genuine connection to the Black community.  The fact that he has a Black wife is not something to do with de Blasio being Italian, for instance.  Bloomberg rightly thinks that he can get away with claiming that anyone who mentions race is racist—or at least does racist things, since in his added paragraph he claims to deny thinking that de Blasio is personally racist. The whole debacle highlights how essential it is to emphasize that racism is a system of cultural, economic and institutional oppression.

 I always wondered why so many New Yorkers liked Bloomberg.  I’m not surprised that Democrats and Republicans can like the same things any more, but I can’t understand why people who live in a hugely diverse city could have put up with a mayor who has no idea what the word racist means,  let alone allowed him to change the law so he could be mayor for three terms.  I wonder if any of the candidates are offering to reverse this in their platform?  The League of Women Voters guide for the upcoming election has statements by all the primary candidates, and none of them mention this. (A few people running for city council mention that they like term limits for the mayor, though.)

So how did New York—as a voters, at any rate—fail to recognize how reactionary Bloomberg is?  I’m reminded of seeing Jails, Hospitals and Hip Hop,  a one-man show by Danny Hoch at the Painted Bride in Philadelphia some years back.  Check out Hoch YouTube or elsewhere (though, please, never , ever watch Blackhawk Down).  At the Bride he recited a number of anecdotes some of which were true, and some of which were none the worse for being  more so.  (this can be seen here, the segment I’m talking about starts at 36:00)  One of them was his tale about being hired to play the role of a Hispanic on the show Seinfeld.  When Hoch arrived on the set in LA he was dismayed to learn that he was expected to play what he interpreted—correctly, no doubt—to be a racial stereotype.  When he objected he was fired before he had the chance to quit, according to his account.  In his performance Hoch expressed dismay that Seinfeld had let him down so much.  He recounted that all kinds of people liked Seinfeld and thought it was great.  Personally, I never liked the show.  It didn’t surprise me a bit that Hoch had that experience, working for a show that is all about the fact that it’s funny that people are mean to each other—and that must be funny because the show was undoubtedly very popular.  So why was this a surprise to Hoch, who has made his living cutting through layers of bullshit?  Hoch recounts—without explaining why—that all his leftist friends, even Black Panthers, etc, like Seinfeld.  Discussing this after the show it was my wife – who also has leftist friends who like Seinfeld who came up with the answer.  Seinfeld is about New York and people from New York love everything about the place.  Therefore Hoch would be less likely to have a problem with Seinfeld than he otherwise might.  Hey, even Steven Jay Gould thought that Central Park might be the best park in the world.  It may be a park in the best city in the world, but unless that makes it the best park it certainly isn’t, even if it’s the front yard of the American Museum of Natural History.  

Obviously, Hoch isn’t taken in by Bloomberg’s nonsense about the rich making everything possible, but given his debacle with Seinfeld it’s easy to see why so many otherwise savvy people could fall for it.  Once Bloomberg was making things better for certain voters in New York, he became part of New York to the extent that he just couldn’t be as bad as it seemed he should be.  It’s not so much that the rich make things possible as that they control things.  To that extent, what is possible is what they want, and that’s not the same thing as making things possible. Here in the USA we’re all New Yorkers compared to the rest of the world, so it’s worth taking off the blinkers and looking at the institutions that constitute our Bloombergs and Seinfelds from a different angle.