CARLTON FLETCHER: Still dealing with the politics of race

When you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

— Rush

Sometimes in this job when people call to rant — and you realize right away that they have no interest in conversation, just want someone to listen — you bite the bullet and let them rant.

I had one such call recently, and seeing as how this newspaper has gotten a number of squawks on his subject of interest, I decided to let him have his say.

Here, essentially, is what was on his mind:

“This city is never going to change because the black people here are always going to vote for other black people, no matter how qualified the other candidates might be. One of these so-called black leaders said back in the day, ‘Now it’s our turn’ (a quote typically attributed to former Albany City Commissioner Arthur Kay Williams) when the commission got a black majority, and that’s been the attitude of all the black elected officials since.

“Now we have people like (and here he named some of the current local black elected officials) who do not care about doing what’s best for the city of Albany, they’re only interested in doing what they think is best for the black people of Albany. Meanwhile, the city is crumbling down around us.”

He went on like that for a few minutes, pausing only occasionally to take a breath, and I just listened. Finally, when he’d about talked himself out, I posed a question: Who did you vote for in the recent city election?

His answer was classic, and I’m about 99.99 percent positive that he saw no irony in it. His reply: “The white guy.”

While this caller’s rant served a couple of purposes — it let him get it off his chest and allowed me one of those sadly humorous moments — I bring it back up today because I’ve heard similar remarks from a lot of people in the aftermath of last Tuesday’s municipal election, which saw incumbent Mayor Dorothy Hubbard and Ward IV City Commissioner Roger Marietta retain their seats. And while the validity of such a blanket claim is not supported by fact, it is a topic worth exploring.

I know for a fact that race was not the only issue in the recent municipal election because I talked with voters from all segments of the community who openly supported candidates whose race they did not share. Mayoral candidate Lane Rosen, for instance, had a large contingent of supporters and volunteers from the black community, and Hubbard’s campaign literature included a list of supporters among whose ranks were some of the city’s most prominent white citizens.

And while Marietta and his opponent, Chad Warbington, are both white, the incumbent Darton College professor won the election because of his overwhelming support in the predominantly black Westtown Elementary School voting precinct. Marietta supporter Hamp Smith even got into a shouting match with black Warbington supporters near the Westtown precinct when he accused Warbington of being “Republican.” (That exchange was recorded on cellphone video and posted on Facebook as well as the albanyherald.com website.)

Interestingly, the city’s municipal elections are nonpartisan, so candidates do not declare party affiliation, leading many to speculate that Smith’s concern was one of race as much as it was politics.

I don’t know too many people naive or altruistic enough to believe race isn’t a factor — make that a huge factor — in general politics, and particularly in Albany politics. Some people, and they come in all hues, don’t quite get that it’s 2015, that our country has had a black president for the past eight years and its leading Republican contender in the battle to lose to Hillary Clinton in 2016 is a black man — true, a nut-case black man, but a black man just the same.

Because of that fact, there are people who have already declared they will not vote in 2016. And there are others who will, as they did in 2008 and 2012, cast a vote for “the black guy,” then bury their heads in the sand and ignore what their candidate does in office.

What both groups — and all others — need to do is take their heads out of their collective … ummm, let’s just say out of the sand … quit listening to the bleating of party shepherds and figure out which candidate — black, white, red, brown, blue or green — will do the most to improve their — and this country’s — standard of life.

Call me one of those naive, without-a-clue optimists who believes we can actually get this right, but when we get through all the rich, entitled family dynasties and rich weirdos who get their marching orders from the likes of the Koch brothers and rich harbingers of change — and get rid of the lousy, do-nothing Congress that has failed us so egregiously — maybe we can put aside stupid things like skin color and party affiliation and ridiculous I-approved-this-lie TV ads and start voting with our wallets.

Because the candidate who lowers our taxes, paves the way for new, better-paying jobs that fatten our wallets and improves our infrastructure is who we really need to lead us.

Can’t blame a guy for dreaming.

Email Carlton Fletcher at [email protected]. Follow @ABH_Fletcher on Twitter.