On Aug. 28, 2008, Indianapolis, America and the world watched history as Barack Obama formally accepted his party’s nomination for the most important office on Earth — president of the United States. Obama accepted the nomination on a day with historic importance in the battle for equality and justice.
On that day, 53 years ago, a young Black boy, Emmett Till, was murdered for whistling at a white woman in a small Mississippi town. Till was murdered by racists Aug. 28, 1955. His murder helped ignite the civil rights revolution in Montgomery, Ala., four months later.
On that day, 45 years ago, hundreds of thousands of Blacks and whites held the March on Washington, the biggest demonstration the capital had seen since the Bonus Marchers in 1932 at the Depression’s height.
Emmett Till’s martyrdom and the March on Washington with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech each provided a catalyst for laws and actions which attempted to level the playing field for African-Americans and other minorities and women in America.
These events created an environment where admissions officers at California’s Occidental College, Columbia University in New York and Harvard University evaluated the grades, life history, aptitude and race, among other factors, to admit a young Barack Obama into their schools. And started him on his life’s path to this moment in time and history.
Without considering race, I doubt Obama would’ve gotten his college education and wouldn’t be where he is today.
So, it’s ironic and incomprehensible that during a week when African-Americans were remembering where we’ve come and where we still have to go, when the pride of 40 million African-Americans, including 262,000 here, was at an all time high because of Barack Obama’s campaign, Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard severely insulted our African-American community by unilaterally forbidding the use of race as a factor in city/county public safety.
Pushed by neocons and Neanderthals who have his ear, Mayor Ballard signed off on a Bush InJustice Department plan forbidding the use of race in hiring and promoting police officers and firefighters.
This unfathomable decision was foisted upon our community last Friday with the sudden announcement that the city had cut a deal with the right wing ideologues running the InJustice Department’s Civil Rights Division to settle a dubious lawsuit by white Indianapolis policemen who charged they’d been denied promotion because they were white.
The Justice Department continues using 2000 Census data showing that African-Americans accounted for 11.9 percent of the Indianapolis metro’s workforce. But the latest data, from the 2006 Census American Community Survey, says African-Americans comprise 13 percent of the metro’s workforce.
In May, this column revealed that 14.2 percent of the overall police force was African-American. But there was a dangerous lack of racial diversity in the department’s command structure, since just 8.9 percent of IMPD’s lieutenants are Black; the rank you must attain to be a potential top leader in the police department.
The fire department’s numbers have been better, as 17.6 percent of the IFD’s command staff are African-American, compared to 11.7 percent of police commanders.
Did Mayor Ballard call a formal press conference or speak to the media about this reversal of a city/county policy that’s been in effect for 30 years?
No, the mayor hid behind Corporation Counsel Chris Cotterill and Public Safety Director Scott Newman. Interviewed last Friday on WTLC-AM (1310’s) “Afternoons with Amos,” Cotterill and Newman said the city will continue to “voluntarily” report, for two years, their racial diversity in hiring and promotions.
Newman also said that he plans an aggressive recruitment strategy to find African-American police recruits. But that requires dollars and Mayor Ballard is too busy giving no-bid contracts to a developer to sell off city properties at a profit for a private company and cutting things like parks in crime ridden neighborhoods, or after school and arts programs serving youth in crime ridden neighborhoods to worry about investing the dollars it’ll take for a real minority recruitment effort for police and firefighters.
However, the real problem isn’t hiring, but promoting Blacks and women to command ranks. And now that President Bush’s rightwing wingnuts flummoxed (confused) Ballard into not using race as a factor in promoting police and firefighters, it may be impossible to achieve leadership diversity.
Passing a written or oral test isn’t a true measure of the skills required of police and fire commanders. The true measure must include other quantitative and qualitative measurements, including the importance of a diverse leadership.
When the Supreme Court considered affirmative action five years ago in the University of Michigan case, scores of top generals and admirals spoke out in favor of using race as one criterion in determining advancement.
Yet former Lt. Colonel Ballard ignored the wisdom of general officers. Instead Mayor Ballard and the neocons and Neanderthals who pull his strings thought otherwise.
While the world’s leaders and even GOP leaders ignore the blandishments of the most unpopular president since Herbert Hoover, Mayor Ballard bowed down to a discredited chief executive. And Ballard’s decision now severely jeopardizes other city diversity efforts.
If Ballard caved this easily on police/fire hiring, how quick will he and the neocons and Neanderthals on his staff cave on using race as a factor in awarding contracts. Ballard’s inexcusable decision could also put his vaunted effort at providing employment opportunities for ex-felons at risk.
In his first eight months in office, Mayor Ballard has allowed a cop to receive virtually no punishment for kicking, on video, a Black youth; disrespected Black institutions and Black media; openly advocated selling off parks in poor and working class neighborhoods; cut youth arts and after school programs and now has become a Ward Connerly wannabe by placing affirmative action on life support in city/county government.
As a result, Mayor Greg Ballard is presiding over the worst deterioration in Indianapolis’ race relations in two generations.
How long will the leadership of Indianapolis’ African-American community sit back and take this open mayoral disrespect?
How long will Indianapolis’ business and civic community sit back and watch this mayor erase the progress in bringing the races together? Progress created by Mayors Barton, Lugar, Hudnut, Goldsmith and Peterson?
See ‘ya next week.
Amos Brown’s opinions are not necessarily those of the Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper. You can contact him at (317) 221-0915 or by e-mail at ACBROWN@AOL.COM.
