I disgree with your characterizing the 11th CD as "mostly poor and black" As the article points out, incomes and property values have been going way up. This district is gentrifying rapidly by the day, and changing drastically in a lot of other ways.

Chris Owens is right in his quote that the race is about class, not race. It doesn't matter that Yassky is white, it doesn't even matter that he just moved to the district. His council district overlaps CD11 and he was living three blocks away. He is not a carpetbagger. Hillary Clinton was a carpetbagger, she moved here from Arkansas. Yassky moved three blocks! He could see the 11th CD from his front door!

So The issue isn't whether Yassky is too white to represent the majority of this district, or him being a carpetbagger, but whether his wealth skews his perspectives too much. I think maybe it does. The truth is that Brooklyn Heights and Crown Heights shouldn't be in the same district, but given that in part they are, it would be wrong to say that one neighborhood's constituents should have more of a voice than the other neighborhood's constituents.

another pertinent quote from this Washington Post story was:

[b]A combination of gentrification, immigration, intermarriage and a migrating black middle class "means that race just doesn't have the power that it once did"[/b]

In truth, things in Brooklyn are a lot more divided on economic lines now than racial lines. With interracial marriages and immigration from countries with mixed-race populations, in neighborhoods like where I live you often can't tell who is what race anymore, because many people are more than one race. When this happens, the racial distinctions cease to matter so much as class distinctions.

You could just as easily see Chris Owens as a white candidate as you can a black candidate. He's just as much white as he is black. But his race(s) do not matter. What matters is who Chris is, and what his views are. Chris is a fine person who has an excellent grasp of the issues facing this district. I would say that even if he had technically just moved to this district. I would say that even if Chris was all-white or all-black. I would say that even if Chris was chinese!

I think Chris's dad, and other civil rights veterans from the sixties, see the world-- and politics-- in a specific way, and are not as accepting that the world has changed. Most voters simply do not care about the race issue. How often are they ever going to see the face of their congressman once he gets in office? Very rarely. What they care about are pocketbook issues and who best understands their needs. That article pointed out that half, or nearly half, of all the elected black congressmen do not come from majority black districts.

The day is passing when you need a majority black district for a black congressman to get elected. The day is here when most constituents in every district will simply look for the best person to do the job.

This is what you do whenever I post about CD-11.

However, as usual, you are wrong on the facts. CD-11 is, as the census data make clear, poorer and blacker than the rest of the country. This is not rocket science, one would think. The district is 61.2% black, so that's that; and as to mostly poor, the median family income is at $36,637 (1999) versus $50,046 for the US average. The poverty rate is 23.2% versus 12.4% nationally. So maybe 'mostly' poor should be clarified to 'often'. However, clearly, poverty is more of an issue in this district than, say, in the Upper East Side.

As to carpetbagging, you're making the usual critical mistake of stating your opinions as facts. You say To-may-to, I say To-mah-to, and your characterizations of what Yassky's status is or should be seen as are what they are: your opinions. I say he just moved into the district. Which he did. So that's that as well.

Really very uncomfortable for you to be talking about all this icky poor-black-people-and-why-they-don't-matter stuff so often, isn't it?

bouldin said:

"what your characterization of the race issue as an issue of pigment implies about you, your acumen and your political acuity is concerned, I'll leave that one to posterity. I'm not too impressed."

I'd say the same thing about you. You seem to think that african american constituents in this district should be voting their race first and foremost, and not their issues. All I've said, again and again, is that all the voters of CD 11 deserve the widest possible choice, and that there is nothing wrong at all if a white person wants to be one of those choices. Why you think there is something wrong with a white person running in a majority black district I have no idea, since if you thought there was something wrong with a black person running in a white district you know full well what you'd be called.

A racist.

And I never said the race issue was an "issue of pigment" Those were your words. I said the race issue ought not be as important as all the other issues in this race, because the real divisions in this district are economic not racial. If you can't see that then I think you really don't spend too much time getting to know the people around this area. Your obsession with villifying Yassky makes no sense, let the man make his case, and hopefully he'll lose. He's a decent guy just too moderate for this district. The thing is it should be the choice of the voters of this district, not the choice of you or Al Sharpton that he loses. Don't tell the voters of this district that they can't or shouldn't vote for a candidate running in CD 11 because of that candidate's skin color!

...and so on.

I probably should be offended at being called a racist, but here's the deal: you go ahead and call me that. Nothing I've heard from you, really on any subject, gives me cause to accord your opinions much relevance. Just off the top of my head, you have argued that the legislative intent of the VRA is to elect Progressives, without grasping that this would be unconstitutional on its face; you have said that Suozzi would cheerfully withdraw from the race pleading a lack of petition signatures, which he'd never consider, because it would be unutterably humiliating; you've claimed that the Amsterdam News has no relevance for black New Yorkers, which is completely absurd; and so on. Any of these statements would get you laughed out of any serious political conversation. So yeah, go ahead and call me a racist; I scoff at that, with what has to be called amused disbelief.

In this most recent effort, you claim that I call for black voters to make race their first and foremost consideration; I can't recall having made that statement. You, by contrast, demand that blacks not consider black representation as an issue at all. What you never explain is why it should not be an issue.

You go on to create an equivalency between a black person running in a white district - what is that exactly, a white district? Is that, say, a recognized legal category? - and Yassky's running in a black-majority district, with the express goal of winning with the votes of the white minority. Pay careful attention, because this is important: blacks are under-represented in Congress and in elected office in general. There are 40 black members of Congress; if their number were equivalent merely to their proportion of the population, there would be 53. That's the difference. Take a look at the U.S. Senate or the governorships if you doubt that statement. You're saying this does not matter; I say the decision on whether it matters belongs to the voters, and that it matters to me.

As to "pigmentation", I refer you to your post immediately above. Your choice of words, not mine. Specifically, "The pigmentation of the elected leader's skin simply is not [an issue], or should not be.". QED.

As I have already noted, I view your insistence on denying that race - or pigment - has any relevance whatsoever as an outgrowth of your personal discomfort with the issue. I have suggested to you before that subjective criteria are not the best way to arrive at general conclusions; however, and not just on this subject, this is your way of arriving at vast predictive or diagnostic statements. You confuse what you would like to be true with what is true.

I think people are forgetting who first mentioned race in connection with CD-11: it was Yassky. Every meeting I saw him in, he brought it up to say it didn't matter. That is his right, but it challenges those who DO think it matters to respond. But then those who respond get the blame for making it about race.

Let's not forget this one fact before we judge those who consider Yassky's being white important: Yassky is not in this for the community. He first sounded out other districts to see what his chances were. He SELECTED the 11th district to MOVE INTO and run BECAUSE the black vote was going to be split. He made a RACIAL calculation. Right or wrong, that is what he did. Everyone is jumping on the "it's okay to be white" band wagon and accusing people of reverse discrimination ignoring the fact that the initial racial calculation was made by Yassky.

I never thought Yvette CLarke and Major Owens should have made such an issue of race. People also ignore the fact that Chris OWens' statements have been more moderate than those of Yvette's campaign and Major himself. Everyone wants to blame Chris for this. He had made errors in judgement regarding the race issue but he did not initiate it nor was the most extreme in his rhetoric.

When I see all of these white bloggers criticize Yassky for making the racial calculation when he decided to move in, then I will be more impressed with them. Instead they really just want to feel okay about being white.

Again, for those who don't realize it, I do NOT think race is a primary issue. I support Chris because he is the best candidate on issues and deidication to the community and because he is the most articulate. My take on the race issue is that by making his calculation, Yassky, should he win, will be remembered less for any accomplishments he will or will not have, so much as for being the white guy who spent a million bucks to win a seat by splitting the black vote. That will haunt him.

Listen I never said Yassky DIDN'T make a race calculation when he moved to the CD 11th. Of course he did, he'd have been an idiot if he didn't make every possible calculation including race before deciding to run there. I wish he hadn't decided to run in the 11th, I think he's too moderate for the district and that living where he does, he can't possibly have the same feel for the whole of the district that the other candidates do. All I've been saying is that I accept all such "calculations" as being part of the game of politics, and that it isn't any more wrong that Yassky thinks he has more of a chance to win being the only white candidate in the race, than Chris Owens calculating that his father's name is the strongest thing he can run on.

I petitioned for Chris and Bill Batson over the weekend. Petitioning deadline is this week, did any of you petition for them? Anyway at Chris's headquarters on Washington Ave., the big storefront awning says "Re-Elect Major Owens for Congress" and the signs on the windows say "Vote Owens" and his website is "VoteOwens.org" (which is in fact his dad's old campaign web domain I believe) That is a calculation Chris has made, like he might be hoping that some voters who haven't paid attention simply will see "Owens" on the ballot and that Major is running again and vote for him again. I don't necessarily agree with those tactics, but I respect the calculations being made and that it is simply gamesmanship. You expect candidates to do what they have to in order to win.

I also think that the voters having the widest possible choice of candidates is preferable to community leaders pressuring candidates out and forcing voters to be left with a more limited choice. I don't support David Yassky, I wouldn't vote for David Yassky. He is not the right candidate for this district. But he's making his case, and the voters have the right to hear his case, without Al Sharpton and other community leaders trying to make pre-emptive choices to limit the field.

I am still convinced that somebody is going to drop out before election day. Whoever is running fourth in polls and fundraising and doesn't have enough money to do extensive GOTV, will inevitably conclude that they don't have a realistic chance to win, won't sit by and let Yassky get elected. They will fall on their sword. Right now that candidate appears to be Chris Owens, he needs to raise a lot more money than he has right now and he needs more attention. There is an article on him in the metro section of today's NY Times. Good article mostly but it bluntly says he's under pressure to drop out and Chris admits in it that he's been lagging in fundraising.

I was glad to be out for Chris this weekend with some other DFNYC folks, but I wish I'd seen more people at his hq and more energy. I overheard Chris telling a supporter up at prospect park who was asking about a poster for his window, since it overlooks the street, that they can't afford any yet. Two months before the election, thats not a good sign. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Chris, he's an excellent candidate and I hope I'll be able to do GOTV for him on election day, if he's still in the race.