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Is black politics dead in California?
The steep decline in the number of powerful black officeholders could be a sign of the community's political maturity -- or its demise.
By Anthony York
[06/23/99]

Lauryn Hill: Hoochie or hero?
The black community debates the singer's icon status in light of her unwed motherhood.
By Debra Dickerson
[06/22/99]

The peace dividend
Businesses are waiting to cash in on the rebuilding of Kosovo.
By Mark Boal
[06/21/99]

Ramsey Clark, the war criminal's best friend
The former U.S. attorney general has become the tool of left-wing cultists who defend Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Rwandan torturers as anti-imperialist heroes.
By Ian Williams
[06/21/99]

The rehabilitation of Latrell Sprewell
The Knicks star has gone from villain to hero -- because he challenged authority in a city sick of The Man.
By Julian Rubinstein
[06/21/99]

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"Jerry's white, but he's refreshing. If I were mayor I wouldn't have fired the police chief -- or if I did, I'd have done it a different way," Blakely says. "But you have to admit: That got every bureaucrat's attention. They're on notice that things are going to change."

And opponent Leo Bazile grudgingly agrees. "If you want the mule to change, you've got to get the mule's attention. And he's done that. Let's just see what he does next."

At the time of the noisiest protests against Brown's school maneuvers, I happened to be reading Tamar Jacoby's "Somebody Else's House: America's Unfinished Struggle for Integration," her one-sided, irritating but occasionally irrefutable indictment of the way liberals sold out to black militants to ruin the cities. And even as an Oakland booster, I found it unnerving: Here was Jacoby, writing about the 1960s, when black activists stormed school boards to attack white bureaucracies that were not educating their kids. Now, in Oakland, black leaders were turning out to defend black bureaucracies that were not educating their kids.

To understand that bizarre role reversal, you have to understand that Oakland is sacred ground in black political history. It's the birthplace of the Black Panther Party, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and the nation's War on Poverty. Its first black mayor, Lionel Wilson, rode to power in 1978 in the Panthers' political wake, and though he governed as a centrist, his administration was a time of black ascendancy in City Hall and beyond. Black administrators took the helms of most city agencies, and moved into key posts in the school system, too. The city got a reputation for backwardness and bureaucracy that was part racism, part reality, and its troubles were deepened by the industrial exodus that hurt all blue-collar cities -- and decimated the black working class -- in the 1970s and '80s. Although black control of City Hall and the school district helped enlarge the city's black middle class, it did little for other groups, and in fact poverty climbed throughout the 1970s and '80s.

There were, of course, periodic attempts to reform the city's bureaucracies and revive its economy, but they were often derided as the product of white backlash. Yet nowhere was reform more desperately needed than in Oakland's public schools. Test scores have long been among the lowest of any district in the state -- especially among black students -- and the incidence of corruption was arguably among the highest. The district reached bottom in 1989, when a grand jury indicted a roster of administrators and employees for corruption. Then-Assemblyman (and mayoral candidate) Elihu Harris carried a bill to put the district into state receivership, the superintendent resigned and the School Board couldn't hire anyone to replace him, as promising candidates refused to come to work in Oakland.

But even at its nadir, the district had its black defenders. I worked in Oakland then, for a fledgling school reform initiative, and though the reform effort was black-led, there were longtime black activists who badmouthed it as a tool of the white business community -- though the white business community was, sadly, little involved in any effort to improve Oakland schools, including ours. The discrediting campaign didn't work: Although the school reform effort stalled short of its goals, a groundswell of support from black parents, as well as whites, Asians and Latinos, kept the gossip about its alleged white business ties from destroying the effort. But to this day, attempts at school reform are viewed suspiciously, as though they might be part of a plot by the white elite to take Oakland back from black leadership and make it safe for white business.

And yet, over time, a constituency for reform has developed, among every race in Oakland, and it has spread beyond the schools. You might be reading about change and controversy and painful urban reform in Oakland, at least occasionally, even if Jerry Brown weren't its celebrity mayor, thanks to the City Council's selection of Robert Bobb as the new city manager. The tough-talking reformer moved out from Richmond, Va., promising to shake up City Hall. Bobb is black -- notwithstanding the perception he was brought in "to bust up African-American hegemony" -- and that has probably helped insulate Brown a little from charges of racism.

Next page | Ground zero: Reforming the schools