The 18th year of Just Tellin’ It begins with a demographic lesson.
Sixteen to 64 is the age group of people employed in everything from part time jobs at fast food joints and movie theaters to full time employment at the thousands of employers in Indianapolis/Marion County.
The age group 35 and over is the consistent voting age group. Yes, I know 18 is the voting age, (like this column’s milestone) but those aged 18 to 34 don’t vote as regularly as those over 35.
It’s been an urban myth that in many cities and counties across the country, the percentage of African-Americans in a given locality tend to be smaller than their percentage in the total population the older that community gets.
But the new data just out from the 2010 Census shows that the thousands of non-Hispanic whites who fled Indianapolis in the first decade of the 21st century tended to be older. That, coupled with an increase in Black population, increased the racial diversity in Indianapolis’ workforce and voting age populations.
First workforce. The 2010 Census documents that 25.9 percent of those aged 16 to 64 in the city/county are African-American. In simple terms – over a quarter of the workforce population in Indiana’s largest city; America’s 11th biggest – are African-American.
That’s a damning statistic the administration of Mayor Greg Ballard faces going into this election’s final weeks.
Remember, it was Mayor Ballard, advised under the table by Steve Goldsmith (the now cashiered deputy mayor of New York City) and others, who caved to pressure from the Bush Justice Department and eliminated the police department’s then coherent promotion and hiring schemes. Schemes that while not perfect, allowed Blacks to be hired and promoted in IMPD.
Under Ballard, virtually no African-Americans (maybe less than 15) have been hired as new police recruits during his administration.
The promotion stats are worse.
In a city where one in four of workforce age are African-American, the Ballard administration’s nearly lily white promotion and hiring practices for police officers borders on criminal.
The Indianapolis Fire Department, which had been making steady improvements in their Black hiring and promotion, has been stymied by the continuing merger of township fire departments into the IFD.
The job guarantees for those virtually all white township departments has meant a freeze on hiring more Black firefighters. It also made promotion of Black firefighters more complicated.
With a police force that can’t achieve 14 percent Black and a fire department trending below that, in a city where Black adults make up a quarter of all adults in the workforce is an untenable, near racist position.
Last week, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) vehemently fought the city’s plan to adopt recommendations from a task force headed by Rev. Richard Willoughby and Urban League President Joe Slash. Their plan would try to restore some sense of balance and fairness to the police and fire hiring process. Giving Black (and other minority and women) officers a better shake than the Ballard administration has offered.
But the FOP’s fighting the plan, even going to court for a restraining order.
The way to battle the FOP’s intransigence and the Ballard administration’s abject disregard for our African-American community is to vote. And that’s the next surprising stat from the new 2010 Census data.
African-American comprise 24.5 percent of the city’s adult 35+ population; the age group that dependably votes. Also significantly, 20.6 percent of Indy’s senior citizens are African-American; the highest percentage ever. One-in-five seniors, the most depending voting bloc are African-American.
That’s far different calculus than when the GOP created UniGov 40 years ago.
And that brings me to another calculus. With the strength of a quarter of the vote, do you now understand why Democrats have been regularly winning in Indianapolis? And why Black voters sitting home four years ago, mad at Bart Peterson’s sins, were the only blemish on that record.
Melina Kennedy can’t win without strong support from that 25 percent of Indy’s voters. Ballard can’t win unless he diverts significant numbers of Black voters from Kennedy to his campaign.
No one can win countywide offices any more without substantial support of Black voters. Without Black support, a candidate must overwhelmingly win white voters. And based on the city’s changing demographics, that’s going to be increasingly difficult.
One final note on demographics. Both the Kennedy and Ballard campaigns have been polling all year. If those campaigns’ polling haven’t included samples that show Marion County’s voters aren’t 25 percent Black; if those campaign pollsters aren’t weighting and balancing the sample to reflect that new reality, then those campaigns should ask for refunds, because they’re being ripped off by incompetent pollsters and polling techniques.
Any polling of city/county voters where the sample isn’t at least 25 percent Black or isn’t weighted is a fraudulent poll. And it is giving your campaign false readings of where voters are.
And to the Indianapolis Star, WISH-TV/Channel 8 and other local and statewide media planning to poll this election, I offer the same admonition.
One final note to the campaigns and media. How many cell phone households are included in your polling? If the figure isn’t at least 20 percent that poll isn’t worth the computer bytes it’s using up.
What I’m hearing
in the streets
Now beginning 18 years, I’ve been part of a cadre of columnists who grace Indianapolis with their wit, wisdom, strong opinions and more than ever a healthy dose of institutional memory.
While I’ve occupied this Indianapolis Recorder space since August 1994, Russ Pulliam, Dan Carpenter and Andrea Neal have been writing for two to three decades with their columns in the Indianapolis Star (and in Pulliam’s case the old Indianapolis News).
The iconoclastic and sometimes profane Steve Hammer at NUVO has been writing weekly for five months longer than I.
The five of us are a rarity in print journalism today. Newspaper columnists with longevity and innate knowledge of the communities we serve.
On my column’s anniversary I thought it was a good time to point out the value of that longevity and lament that we’re the exception today; rather than the rule.
See ‘ya next week.
You can email comments to Amos Brown at acbrown@aol.com.
