(Updated) Moseley Braun, Davis - Slaves To Racial Politics

January 1, 2011 - Chicago - How very disappointing, but how sadly predictable: Danny Davis has dropped out of the Chicago mayoral race and thrown his support behind Carol Moseley Braun. Why? It's all about racial politics. Yesterday afternoon, I expressed faint hope that maybe - just maybe - Davis and Moseley Braun had put that nonsense behind them (see text of my original post below). Hours after posting that, word came that Davis had caved in to demands by Jesse Jackson, Sr. to drop out in order to form a unified Black front. The Chicago Sun-Times reports today: It was a push from black businessmen who’d wanted a single candidate to back, that had helped convince Davis late Friday to withdraw and back Braun. Braun ribbed Davis about giving her little notice Friday night, of his decision to endorse her, saying, “He gave me all of 25 minutes to get to his office to talk about how we could come come together to make the case for the people.” Full story here... Shame on them all. Can you imagine a scenario in which white businessmen got together to form a united white front? People would be rightly accusing them of racism, and perhaps even crying out for boycotts of their businesses. Alas, Chicago is still a racist city. The irony of it all is that the most racist of them all are Black "leaders" who practice their racism openly and get slapped on the back for their bravado. Shame. Posted December 31, 2010: Are Danny Davis and Carol Moseley Braun new voices of racial rationality and reason for Chicago? Was I was wrong in my post on December 30? In that post, I said this: Perhaps Chicago's Black mayoral candidates .... is willing to "look beyond race," certainly not on an issue as important as who is going to lead the city. Today we still have self-proclaimed "Black leaders" (such as the Reviled Jesse Jackson) constantly whining that race is a dividing issue. Perhaps that's due in no small part to the fact that they just won't shut up about it and because they insist - in a knee jerk, involuntary manner - on basing everything they do, say and think upon racial issues. As to my first question above, the answer is "not by a long shot." The answer to the second question is, "Partially." Both Danny Davis and Carol Moseley Braun deserve reserved kudos for refusing to go along with race baiter Jesse Jackson's latest ploy to play the race card and to perpetuate the artificially maintained, psychological racial divide in Chicago. John Chase wrote a piece for Clout Street, which summed up the deal (my emphasis added): Rev. Jesse Jackson brokered a meeting last night to try to settle on a single major African-American candidate for the Chicago mayor's contest, but neither former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun nor U.S. Rep. Danny Davis have budged. The idea is to unify behind a single black candidate akin to 1983, when Harold Washington became the city's only elected African-American mayor.‬‪"They know it's going to be difficult to get two candidates through the race. There will be two losers and no winner," Jackson said today. "It's difficult to get one camel through the eye of the needle. It's impossible to get two." Imagine a White reverend, priest or minister getting a group of White mayoral hopefuls together for the purpose of trying to "settle on a single major White-American candidate for the Chicago mayor's contest." Imagine the outcries of outrage, the indignant condemnations of such a boldly racist action. Imagine that, and ask yourself how that hypothetical would be any different in principle or offensiveness than what Jackson actually did. I could suggest where Jackson should put that camel, but I won't. Instead, I'll just say that it's somewhat refreshing to see folks such as Carol Moseley Braun and Danny Davis refusing to play Jackson's insidious game of Divide and Conquer. John Chase wrote this for The Chicago Tribune: U.S. Rep. Danny Davis and former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun both insisted Thursday that they would keep running for Chicago mayor, despite renewed calls by black leaders to unite behind a single candidate who could improve the odds of an African-American winning the February election. Good for them. Their decisions required a modicum of courage. They will take heat from some Black voters who will accuse them of putting self-interest ahead of a united racial political front. I stand, then, by my December 30 statements about "Black leaders" such as Jesse Jackson. However, recent statements by Davis and Moseley Braun have forced me to rethink their status as mindless mongers of race-based voter sentiment. Of course, I am still inclined to think of them as mindless adherents to the same old tired Liberal and Progressive policies that have gotten the City of Chicago into the dire financial mess that they both promise to get it out of, albeit without the cracking veneer of racial identity. This is not to say that most Black voters in Chicago will not cast their votes in February's election based on race. We know that Blacks, as a group, tend to vote Democrat about 90 percent of the time. Undoubtedly, most of Chicago's Black voters will vote for one of the Black candidates, such as Davis or Moseley Braun, rather than for that Jewish White guy or that Latino guy. Even so, having two prominent Black politicians tell Jesse Jackson to stuff it because they're running to be mayor of all citizens of Chicago, not just Blacks, is something of a start. Gery Chico, a Latino candidate for mayor, "is steering clear of the notion their has to be a Hispanic candidate," WLS AM reported. WLS quoted Chico as saying, "My priority is to have the concensus [sic], most qualified candidate to be the mayor of our city." Chico, of course, was not part of Jesse Jackson's meeting with Davis and Moseley Braun, but his statement sends the same between-the-lines message to Jackson: Shut up. RELATED: Braun vows to dump Weis Chicago Tribune Braun, Davis reject calls for consensus candidate ABC7Chicago Jackson: Clinton should stay away WGNTV Rev. Jesse Jackson arm-twisting or persuading in the Mayor's race? WLS 890 AM