Notes From D.R. | Random Thoughts on the Passing Scene

Was Tuesday’s Boston City Council preliminary election a setback for race relations in this city? Maybe not at first glance–Latino progressive Felix Arroyo, an incumbent, finished second in the overall tally, and Asian-American progressive Sam Yoon shocked many observers with a surprisingly strong fifth-place finish. However, the failures of two other candidates who also appealed to progressive voters suggest a curious trend that may not bode well for future ethnic harmony in Beantown.

Matt O’Malley and Patricia White, who both campaigned hard to appeal to liberals of all colors, both fared rather poorly relative to the hype they received in the local media beforehand. Granted, both performed better than Edward Flynn, the pretender/contender who tried to coast on his daddy’s name, but still, both should have had stronger nights.

Why did they perform so poorly? Perhaps O’Malley’s affiliation with scandal-scarred Suffolk County Sheriff Andrea J. Cabral hurt him. Perhaps White, like Flynn, was perceived to be coasting on her father’s coattails. Or perhaps different forces were at work. Could it be that O’Malley and White, despite their solidly liberal credentials, were the victims of political reverse discrimination?

Arroyo is already seen as a important symbol of diversity on the predominately white City Council. And much has been made of Yoon’s "trailblazing" status as the first serious Asian-American contender for a City Council seat; in an August profile of Yoon, the Boston Phoenix noted that "…he could be an attractive choice for white liberals frustrated by the continued white domination of Boston politics…"

Did progressive voters thus embrace Yoon and Arroyo for their ethnicity–and shun O’Malley and White for theirs?

For all the talk of the "new Boston" and the city’s majority-minority status, there has been much grumbling about the fact that the Council isn’t as "diverse" as the city it represents. And last year, the Sheriff’s race between Cabral and Councilor Stephen J. Murphy carried the subtle undercurrent of "new [i.e., diverse] Boston" vs. the "old [i.e., Irish-Catholic] guard", an undercurrent that became blatant when Boston Herald columnist Margery Eagan declared that Murphy should not win because Boston already had more than enough Irish-Catholic elected officials.

Eagan was vociferously denounced for the article, but very few of the critics seriously analyzed how many people shared Eagan’s views–how many people actually bought into the notion that there needs to be some sort of "cap" on the number of Irish-Catholic politicians elected in Boston. Could the philosophy that Eagan espoused have manifested itself in the poor showings of Irish-Catholic candidates O’Malley and White? White did acknowledge that one of the reasons she lost in her 2003 bid for a City Council seat was that "…there was an assumption, because I was Irish-Catholic and the daughter of an older politician from a different generation, that I was somehow a conservative Irish-Catholic politician." And despite O’Malley’s extensive efforts to appeal to communities of color, progressive voters who felt that "diversity" was of paramount concern would obviously not support O’Malley as enthusiastically as they would Yoon or Arroyo. Viewed from this perspective, it can be argued that O’Malley and White were, in essence, "racially profiled" by progressive voters.

If the poor performances of O’Malley and White were really due to liberal voters sharing Eagan’s view that there is an "overabundance" of white Irish-Catholic politicians, then this represents another example of the far left’s embrace of institutionalized race-consciousness. The belief that candidates should be elected principally for purposes of "racial diversity" or "ethnic balance", regardless of their merits (or lack thereof) as candidates, is depressing proof that progressives no longer give a whit about the concept of colorblindness. Yes, there is a long "tradition" in America of people voting for a candidate just because the candidate belongs to a given ethnic group. However, shouldn’t we try to put an end to such a strange "tradition", instead of continuing it for purposes of political correctness? If ethnicity-driven voting was bad in the Louise Day Hicks era, it’s also bad in the Dianne Wilkerson era.

If it is true that O’Malley and White were rejected by progressives simply because they were "persons of pallor" (to use David Brudnoy’s old tongue-in-cheek term), then that suggests an unhealthy racial fixation on the part of the far left. O’Malley and White didn’t choose to be Irish any more than Yoon and Arroyo chose their respective ethnicities. All four candidates should be evaluated based solely on their qualifications and abilities. If any voter used color as a criterion to grant or deny support to any of these candidates, then that voter should be shrouded in shame.   

UPDATE: More from the Globe.