Vince Gray keeps playing the race card

[Anonymous]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/sep/7/dc-mayor-race-defined-by-race/

[Anonymous]

It was Fenty who managed the statistical feat of finding no qualified blacks to fill any of the high visibility positions in a majority black city. Noting that fact is not playing the race card, playing the race card is calling such recognition of reality "playing the race card".

[Anonymous]

I actually think that Fenty is playing the race card by trying to frighten whites with the idea that Vincent Gray can't possibly respect the needs of non-black DC residents.

[jsteele]

I think the media is mostly responsible for playing the race card. When they poll, they ask respondents their race. As the saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So, since the pollsters know the race, they emphasis differences based on race. They would also likely find differences based on sex, income level, education level, zip code, sexual orientation, length of residence in the city, and several other factors. I would bet money that some of these factors would show even more polarization than race. But, the pollsters (who are generally hired by media outlets) don't bother to gather this information and therefore it can't be boiled down to a newspaper headline.

I would bet that white people who have lived in DC for over 20 years are more likely to vote for Gray than black people who have lived in DC for less that 20 years. If this is true, it would flip the racial paradigm on it's head. But, it would be way too nuanced a question for the Washington Post, not to mention the Washington Times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I actually think that Fenty is playing the race card by trying to frighten whites with the idea that Vincent Gray can't possibly respect the needs of non-black DC residents.

Agreed. My neighborhood listserv had someone pointing out that Barry is supporting Gray. Umm, so what? Barry supported Fenty in 2006, AIR. Oh right, but the mention of Barry is code to us white people for "Gray wants to take DC back to the era of dysfunctional government and patronage jobs. You'd better vote for Fenty if you want to still be welcome in this city."

Blech.

[Anonymous]

Totally agree. Fenty's "Marion Barry" race-baiting code is completely intended to scare whites away from Gray. But the real Barry heir is Fenty with his frat brother cronyism and graft---which resulted in the city vastly overspending in order for a significant "cut" to go to the Fenty middlemen. That type of financial mismanagement of city funds in order to benefit a few privileged (and incompetent) insiders, is straight out of the Marion Barry 1980s playbook. And his hatchetman Peter Nickles uses every corporate lawyer obfuscation and smoke & mirrors trick he honed in decades of litigation practice at DC biglaw in order to keep the true extent of the graft and corruption from being exposed prior to the election.

They need to go. Gray's not great, but he's better than them.

[Anonymous]

I agree with Jeff - this isn't about race, it's about the length of time that people have lived in the District. this article by Gary Imhoff may have been posted before on another thread but it offers a different take on things:

http://www.dcwatch.com/themail/2010/10-08-29.htm

[Anonymous]

I think that the makeup of city government is a reasonable question in a city that is half black, especially where political, economic, and geographic interests split along racial lines.

Whether one sympathizes with Gray's position on the current makeup of DC government or with Fenty's response, the subject does not deserve to be trivialized as one side or another "playing the race card".