America is experiencing a new age of Reconstruction.
For one of the few times in its history, the economy is tethering on a sharp edge: struggling to find equilibrium. Since the invention of the cotton gin, the nation seeks to understand and redefine its most valuable export. For the second time in its history, the country is divided: rocked by disobedience too impolite to be considered civil. The first disturbance of its kind resulted in war, this time around there is an intellectual divide. The ‘us’ and ‘them’ are vague characterizations shrouded in words, prepositions, adjectives and nuances, all of which lie at the heart of America’s original sin: slavery and race.
But there appears to be an olive branch hidden in the political firestorm that has become the age of Obama. And what better way to label the indescribable, except by assigning the same name as long and convoluted as the river itself: the mighty Mississippi.
In case you did not know, President Barack Obama is not the most historically important African-American running for political office in the near future. The ram in the bush is a man by the name of Johnny DuPree.
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Two weeks ago DuPree became just the second African-American to win a major party’s nomination for governor in the American South since the time of Reconstruction, (Doug Wilder won both the Democratic nomination and the governorship of Virginia in 1986 and served two terms.) After slaves were liberated via the Civil War, during Reconstruction blacks received full benefits of citizenship, and states were forced to offer representation commiserate with their populations.
DuPree is the mayor of Hattiesburg, a city whose population is split evenly between African-Americans and whites, and he enjoys widespread support in many white dominated counties as well. Certainly having an African-American candidate on the ballot may have helped spur black turnout, but DuPree also won in areas like the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where whites are a large majority. It is especially evident, due to the way redistricting has caused starkly black voting districts versus white voting districts, that DuPree could not have done as well as he did without support from both races.
And this speaks to his appeal. DuPree is the quintessential product of the American dream: family man, business owner and public servant, who was raised by a single-mother in the rural South, and has dedicated his life to improving the very community that nurtured him. He is the strong, successful, black father figure so many people respect, and as an effective politician, has organized his campaign with decisive precision. Be that as it may, the road to the governor’s mansion is anything but secure.
DuPree is the financial underdog in the race by a long-shot. His opponent is Republican Phil Bryant, who has served as Haley Barbour’s lieutenant governor since 2007, and who brings with him major connections, and the full force of the ‘good ole boy’ network. In the primary alone, Bryant spent more than his opponents combined.
Though Mississippi is one of only four states holding legislative elections this year, it is fair to say, this will be the most historic, and perhaps the best indicator of what Obama can expect to experience across the American South in 2012. Given the near religious fever of the conservative Tea Party movement and the political momentum being driven by a renewed Republican activism, the fate of candidates like DuPree is dubious.
His ability to clinch the nomination is a feat on its own, and would normally be seen as a positive breakthrough in the heart of the Old Confederacy. But Mississippi is unique in more ways than one, none of which are particularly positive. The state’s record on race relations is abysmal, and the statistics are shocking.
According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Mississippi has the largest number of African-Americans of all 50 states with a 37 percent population. And though the state boasts the largest number of black elected officials, that is mostly at the local level. African-Americans have yet to achieve statewide success.
Mississippi is also the poorest state in the Union, ranking first in the number of people living below the poverty line. Racial inequalities are present at every level across the state, with data showing blacks are twice as likely to be arrested than whites; and recent median household data revealed that black families earned half the salary of white households. The inequity isn’t just social and economic but political as well.
As my fellow Grio contributor David Love pointed out in his piece demonstrating the persistent racial political divides at play in Mississippi, “Racial districting, brought on by the Voting Rights Act, has guaranteed minority representation in the form of majority-black districts in Mississippi and elsewhere in the South. However, the unintended result has been racial polarization, with increasingly white conservative districts surrounding these black districts, and the marginalization of white moderate candidates in either party.”
The result, over the past three decades, following the shift of the South from a blue Democratic stronghold to a Red State base, has been that those white conservative districts have voted consistently to maintain Republican power, reinforcing pervasive inequities. It is difficult, therefore, to overlook race and racism in a state which has such a brutal history on the subject. Mississippi led the way in the Klu Klux Klan’s efforts to use lynching, violence and assassinations to prevent blacks from voting and intimidate them at the ballot box. But Johnny DuPree’s campaign is attempting to embrace the very post-racial politics that Obama embodied in his 2008 campaign.
Although DuPree is the first black mayor of Hattiesburg, he has insisted on running a race-neutral campaign for governor. The strategy is progressive, but not naive. His latest campaign ad demonstrates he has the political intuition to recognize race still remains the subtext in Mississippi. In a commercial recently released, DuPree looks directly into the camera and says: “I’m here to talk to you about color… green.” DuPree then holds up a $1 bill and continues: “Better jobs mean more money for Mississippians. And we do that with better schools and safer streets. More green means a better tomorrow.”
This is a message that naturally resonates with all voters, regardless of race, at a time of economic malaise and widespread unemployment, but it is also a clever way of addressing the elephant in the room, without being accused of playing the race card.
But reality is far more complicated.
The 2010 midterm elections saw Republicans claim a majority of Southern state legislative chambers for the first time since Reconstruction. Mississippi may be the most dramatic illustration of this shift in the political infrastructure. For example, in the 2008 election John McCain carried the state by a 55 percent to 44 percent margin against then-Senator Barack Obama. And the racial data that produced that result is even more staggering: with McCain winning 88 percent of the total white vote, and Obama winning 98 percent of the black vote.
With such staggering racial polarization, DuPree’s challenge is clear. But the silver lining could be that this historic election may result in a historic turnout of African-Americans, the growing Latino population in Mississippi and liberals. DuPree’s message is colorblind. And though the state has a muddled history, there is no reason to believe what Obama did in 2008 can’t be replicated at the state-level for a man like Johnny Dupree, who has a message worth listening to.
Edward Wyckoff Williams is an author, columnist, political and economic analyst, and a former investment banker. Follow him on Twitter and on Facebook.