Anyone been here since the 80s / early 90s? How did smart locals react to Marion Barry

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m black, moved to DC recently, and also wonder about this. I recall him being seen as a joke in national news growing up. Also don’t understand his appeal among DC natives, and their willingness to excuse his major indiscretions.

I'm a native DC'er black and grew up in upper NW. It's actually very simple. Marion Barry simply believed that it was his purpose to uplift Black people. You see on these threads all the time, "why don't middle class Black people help poor Blacks" - well he believed this and acted upon it. I don't think you'll ever have a Black leader come to power again and do that so openly. Even Obama couldn't do it.

He also has great ideas and vision but his big failure wasn't so much the personal stuff - it was that he was a terrible manager. And his desire to help, overrode any ability to judge the character of others or say no to people. He really was a people pleaser in every way possible.

He had a lot of support from whites and Jews in upper NW for his first run. I just hate it when people paint him with a black and white brush - hehehehee. He is a much more nuanced character and very fascinating, IMO. I was embarrassed by him as well. But looking back, no matter what people say, he did help a lot of Black people for the better.

He didn't come from a black family and wasn't raised in black culture. He had to marry into it, which isn't really the same.

What does that have to do with anything? The point is that if Obama's true desire was to explicitly help black people, he couldn't because of the backlash he would've faced. This has nothing to do with who he married or his background.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:white upper middle class families did not live in DC or want to so the "smart locals" where happily cocooned in the burbs and what happened in DC made little to no difference. [/quote

This is kind of hilarious b/c of the number of upper middle class white people I know who grew up in DC. You would be shocked. Don't be fooled by Marion Barry. White people liked him. He made a lot of them rich. I know for a fact that when he was down on his luck, people made sure his bills got paid - and they were not black people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m black, moved to DC recently, and also wonder about this. I recall him being seen as a joke in national news growing up. Also don’t understand his appeal among DC natives, and their willingness to excuse his major indiscretions.

When he was first elected, black people had no power. He finally gave black people a voice here. He had his demons, but was a really smart guy. As time went on, the power got to him. This is not unlike many other cities. If the feds had not gone after him, I don't think he would have been re-elected. I think it was a protest vote.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m black, moved to DC recently, and also wonder about this. I recall him being seen as a joke in national news growing up. Also don’t understand his appeal among DC natives, and their willingness to excuse his major indiscretions.

I'm a native DC'er black and grew up in upper NW. It's actually very simple. Marion Barry simply believed that it was his purpose to uplift Black people. You see on these threads all the time, "why don't middle class Black people help poor Blacks" - well he believed this and acted upon it. I don't think you'll ever have a Black leader come to power again and do that so openly. Even Obama couldn't do it.

He also has great ideas and vision but his big failure wasn't so much the personal stuff - it was that he was a terrible manager. And his desire to help, overrode any ability to judge the character of others or say no to people. He really was a people pleaser in every way possible.

He had a lot of support from whites and Jews in upper NW for his first run. I just hate it when people paint him with a black and white brush - hehehehee. He is a much more nuanced character and very fascinating, IMO. I was embarrassed by him as well. But looking back, no matter what people say, he did help a lot of Black people for the better.

He didn't come from a black family and wasn't raised in black culture. He had to marry into it, which isn't really the same.

What does that have to do with anything? The point is that if Obama's true desire was to explicitly help black people, he couldn't because of the backlash he would've faced. This has nothing to do with who he married or his background.

A lot, actually, but getting into that is going to derail this thread. Start another one if you want.

[Anonymous]

Been here since late 70s. Not too many whites in DC back then and people generally considered DC as a ghetto. I don't think whites really cared much about DC/Barry.

[Anonymous]

Been here since the 70's too. Whut?

Barry was a smart, charismatic man who rose to office on the wave of African-American empowerment. He understood politics and was able to appeal to the penniless SE resident as easily as the multi-millionaire developer.

His demons got the best of him, but I never doubted his love for the city or his genuine care factor for its residents.

[Anonymous]

Moved here in 1989. It was kind of like Trump now is for me - some people loved him, few understood him (kind of a cypher) and I just waited and waited and voted against him until he was gone. Thought he became all about himself, though he did have the right feelings in the beginning.

[Anonymous]

Lots of good stuff in this thread.

Barry went through a lot of phases. In the early days he was the liberal darling, civil rights hero, the bastard son of a sharecropper who went on to graduate school in chemistry. He was the fresh progressive who beat the "bumbling, stumbling, mumbling" Walter Washington with the help of the Washington Post editorial board and Ward 3.

Then he became a machine politician in the model of Curley in Boston, La Guardia in New York or Daley in Chicago. The whole city government was his machine. He was a "rascal king," his exploits were the thing of legend, infuriating to his critics and endearing to his supporters. The size of the city workforce tripled during his reign, and he had his fingers on all the levers.

Then he slipped. He lost control of his personal life, he went to jail. Sharon Pratt Kelly Dickson became mayor, and inherited a machine that only the inventor could operate. After four years Barry was back, but by that time the machine had metastasized, and even its inventor couldn't operate it any more. He went into a long decline where he became increasingly irrelevant and erratic.

Most people remember late-era Barry, the laughingstock and corrupt clown. Had his life taken a different path he could easily have been viewed as a significant figure in 20th century municipal politics, like La Guardia, Curley or Daley.

Finally, to echo what another poster said, he never benefited financially from his office. Many around him got rich, but he died broke.

[Anonymous]

Having lived in DC for over 25 years, I'll say that the more I see of the Bowser administration the more it reminds me of the bad old days of Barry.

[Anonymous]

Yes, I thought the people who elected him were idiots, escapologist since he did nothing for them and the city was a hell hole then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Been here since late 70s. Not too many whites in DC back then and people generally considered DC as a ghetto. I don't think whites really cared much about DC/Barry.

Might? Everyone west of 16th street was white.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's a "smart local"?

Someone who sells you the house you bought in Logan for $1,730,000 that they paid $190,000 for in 1988.

That's me. A smart local.

Care to guess what we call you?

Idk what? I bought my house in Logan Circle in 2000 for 400k when the neighborhood was the shithole you left. Now it's a 2 mil house in one of the best neighborhoods in the city.

Good for you.

I had my fill of DC and split. I took the money, bought a house on the Severn, a farm in Fort Valley, VA, a 48' Grand Banks trawler and Super Decathlon airplane.

But you go ahead and enjoy Logan Circle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Local here. Opinions of him varied dramatically depending on the group. First off, when Barry rose to power, the middle class whites had fled the District, so the demographics were middle and low class blacks in the formerly-white areas and wealthy white liberals in upper NW. At first, all groups seemed to love him; he represented black empowerment and engagement in government, and he was extremely charismatic. He represented liberal ideals, and while the the summer jobs program and handing out turkeys had a minor impact in the grand scheme of things, they instilled the belief in the poor that Marion had their backs.

As the years went on, his support wavered. First, middle class blacks fled to PG County because of the schools and crime, much like their white counterparts had done 15-20 years earlier. That left the District with a constituency of poor blacks who were increasingly dependent on DC's bloated and inefficient bureaucracy and social programs, and wealthy white liberals who were loathe to admit that this man, a supposed model of black leadership just after the civil rights movement, could possibly be a failure. As Barry's indiscretions became national news, poor blacks were generally the most forgiving, as his flaws made him very relatable to many people.

Eventually the mismanagement and national embarrassment he brought to the District made enough people fed up that a Republican, Carol Schwartz, came shockingly close to unseating him as mayor in a city where Republican is a four letter word. I know many people whose vote for Schwartz was their single Republican vote in their life.

This, PLUS what the lifetime Barry admirer said upthread. Both are correct and the full picture requires acknowledgement of both.

--30 year white District resident here. Moved to D.C. when it had the highest murder-per-capita rate in the United States

I agree with the PPs above. 50+ UMC white woman, DC native. My parents moved to DC as liberal grad students in the mid 60s and stayed on. My Dad respected Barry as a civil-rights hero - it was hard for him to see Barry flounder, and he would say that such is the corruption of power and the scourge of addiction; no one is immune.

[Anonymous]

There's something that has gone right over the heads of all of you here clucking about how much Barry sucked: the people who put him in office don't give the slightest damn what you think. You're white people. Most of you moved here within the last decade or so. Barry was never your Mayor. Your experience and your opinion, when it comes to Marion Barry, is invalid and completely without merit. What you say....it just doesn't matter. Not to us. We were here. We remember Barry. And we were never embarrassed of him. Newly arrived white people don't get to rewrite history, and don't get to give us our own opinions. So call him all the names you want. It just helps us identify you as a racist. Not that we needed any more help, but still.

[Anonymous]

Right under your Watch everyone decent left dc. Crime schools sucked and cronyisim.. white people have turned dc around.