by Adam Harris published in The Atlantic
Read original on The Atlantic's website
A wave of Black mayor's in Southern cities are tak...Show description
Posted 1498 days ago
Imagine that only in 2019, Steven L. Reed became the first Black mayor of Birmingham, Alabama - a city that is roughly 60% Black. If this doesn't make us realize how fragile advances in civil rights and justice have been, I'm not sure what else will.
But even now that there is an increasing number of Black mayors across the South, they are often up against racial injustice at the State level. They are limited in what they can achieve, and Harris makes it clear that their jobs are balancing on a tight rope of making strides to justice and improving the lives of the entire city all at once. Any slip could cause a drop in voting participation and the same sort of politics that had occured for the past 200 years.
This is only more aparent where Harris shows that requiring of masks was essentially a vote on racial lines in Montgomery's city council. When 90% of patients hospitalized with the virus were Black, the council voted against making masks mandatory, even when Reed for lobbying hard for them. Only when it started to affect everybody did they reverse their stance. This is a frightening thing to read.
Going into the November elections, I think that we should hard pay hard attention to what we choose on the ballot. This is a pivotal time in American history and with enough support, we could make some sweeping legislative changes. Fingers crossed.