In the January 2007 election to change the Miami Dade county charter, the mayor of Florida’s largest county was given new executive authority. The Miami Herald top of the fold story today, “Mayor uses new clout to strike again” states that the removal of two department directors “stunned (sic) political and community leaders”.
We are not stunned.
We are disappointed by inflammatory comments by African American leaders to the Herald. The grievances of African Americans in Miami are historically founded, but there is a lot more to the statements and we hope the mainstream media will join our blog in explaining why.
We have often made the case that failures in leadership —demonstrably at the Miami Dade Housing Agency—had robbed a largely poor minority from promised services by government. As the Housing Agency scandal unraveled, African American leaders like Victory Curry, Kendrick Meek, Dorrin Rolle, Barbara Jordan and Audrey Edmunson were silent on incompetent management and likely fraud against their own community by their own.
We urged caution in fanning the flames during the strong mayor referendum when, as the Miami Herald points out, the African American community was the only demographic that universally opposed the measure, motivated by threats of marginalization from its own leadership.
The bright truth is something altogether worth note by the mainstream media: Mayor Alvarez has waded into the de facto standard of horse-trading between Cuban American and African American power elites for money and influence in county government contracts.
When Victor Curry, head of the local branch of the NAACP, said to the Miami Herald, “It’s the same old song—once money is allocated to a certain department, we have to make sure that that African-Americans do not service in leadership roles to oversee it”, he was whistling past the truth.
It is true that the rules of the game—that is to say the balance of power and allocation of contracts by the county commission—were set in stone by a Cuban American political and lobbying class, who do not hesitate to play the race and ethnic card.
But the rules of the game also provided for an African American political elite to get “their cut of the action”. This blog recently highlighted the case of land development opportunities near Opa-locka Airport in Northwest Miami-Dade, where Florida legislator Willie Logan secured a no-bid contract in 1998 that is now in process of being re-assigned to allies of former Congresswoman Carrie Meek and county commissioner Barbara Jordan.
That is the game, in action. And we’ve seen it before, at Miami International Airport, where Barbara Carey Shuler had her own “sphere of influence” although the Cuban Americans had a much bigger sphere to be sure. And at Homestead Air Force Base, where a no-bid contract to Cuban American developers included a fair slice to African Americans if it was ever permitted.
And it is the same game in play, in today’s Miami Herald, in a companion article in the B section, which outlined the anger of county manager George Burgess at the addition to a massive ‘superconsultant’ contract by the head of the county transit department, Roosevelt Bradley, who was fired this week.
Given this historically accurate perspective, it is chilling to read Commission Dennis Moss say, “I guess the bloodletting has started.” Commission Moss knows better, and the Miami Herald should know better than to allow these incindiary claims to go on, unchallenged, in its pages.
Changing the status quo in Miami-Dade politics is an enormous challenge and requires a skill set that is not readily available.
Mayor Carlos Alvarez is trying, first and foremost, to do what he learned as a career leader in the police department: going with competence in the ranks of county management, and, discarding incompetence.
And we also note that Mayor Alvarez deserves accolades for resolving the controversy of the Scott Carver Housing project in Overtown with community activists, giving minorities a considerable “win” in their long-standing dispute with local government that their own leaders had been unable to negotiate. He has to be careful, too, that his own house is impeccably in order.
Mayor Carlos Alvarez was elected by and is largely popular with grass roots Hispanics because he pledged to represent a new order measured by competence and performance and not allegiance to a game whose rules should be retired to the dustbin of history.
13 comments:
The black leaders are shameless!Constantly bringing in the race card, so they can keep their community subservient to them and with blinders on, not seeing the real truths. What a pathetic display of nonleadership by the black commissioners. This is not about color, its about performance and accountability!!!! Period!!!
Does that mean Diane O'Quinn was singled out to be fired because she is Irish? Are we being punished on St. Patrick's day? I think this is a clear indictment on we Irish Americans.
Since it is now the mayor's job to hire and fire department heads, why is it so explosive when he does his job? The endless scandals and lack of oversight in county government is reported almost weekly. All groups are part the myriad of problems, and all groups need to work together to find solutions. Playing the race card is getting old fast.
I am wondering if George Burgess is finally free to do a good job instead of kissing the asses of commissioners and treading so lightly that he couldn't do anything right. He must be sitting down with the mayor and discussing the weakest links. Maybe he will be a tough county manager now.
You don't see the white commissioners making statements pandering to their supporters, two white managers were removed and forced to retire.
The commissioners are powerless to stop the clean-up of County Hall and that means their tolerance of the ineffective is their reflection looking back at them.
Burgess and Mayor Alvarez now need to give the toothless tiger known as County Ethics some support and clean out the rest of the crew wasting time, money and personnel.
Let us all not act like clueless white people, as the above comments would suggest. Without a doubt this is a sensitive subject as Genius of Despair has been able to discern in her astute comments. What needs to be done is to support a coalition of African-American and other black individuals who have the same goals as we do and are looking out for their "own" as well as the community as a whole. I think that the grassroots leaders, of LIFT, POWERU, Miami Workers Center and Umoja Village understand this. Some of the rhetoric is divisive and ideologically charged but it is based on CLASS not ethnicity and this is a great improvement from the "Ghetto Mayors/Masters" sitting on the Commission and in the pulpit. Why get sucked into this game of Irish verses Cuban verses "Anglo?" Lets build a coalition together, even if the Mayor is tone-deaf, we must move forward. Most disappointing is the willingness of unions if not to fan, then to provide an audience for the most destructive flames of the racial rhetorical fire spouted by the real enemies of the community and ironically the working class.
It is a good point about the unions and the ironic point about their lost leadership. Within the unions there needs to be a much greater awareness how past practices by the county commission have failed to benefit workers. What is the point of supporting a system (ie. county commission) that harms working families? While jobs disappear to privatized services and workers' paychecks are less and less able to keep up with inflation, it's time that the unions started distancing themselves from the system they support that really works against their best interests and took a much more aggressive role in supporting grass roots level organizing, including candidates for office who are not hand-picked by the political elite.
Anonymous (after Anti Squid)
I made astute comments? You talking to me?
Did you perhaps, mean Gimleteye (a different blogger/person)? If you meant me, I would like to know where you found an astute comment I made. I want to frame it.
The current leaders of the local labor movement are light-years ahead of the old leadership, some of whom oddly went on to work for bottom of the barrow developers. For examples just look at the local laor movement's costly opposition to FTAA and work to organize job-fairs in Little Havana and Liberty City attended by Mayor Alvarez.
What wrong with clueless white people? They put Bush in office didn't they?
Seriously, this has got to stop...the ethnic/racial divisions and the racial/ethnic demand for a piece of the pie from the respective leaders.
Until we can operate language neutral (If you require Spanish for most jobs in Miami Dade county, that precludes a large portion of the population that were not taught a second language, through no fault of their own). -- no one can win the way we are operating now, it creates division. Current language requirements for even the most low level jobs discriminates.
Competition among the 3 groups: That is the biggest problem we face here in Miami and it is what fuels the corruption at the top.
African American History
Cubans and African Americans book by Paul D. Mageli
The tension that arose between African Americans and post-1959 Cuban refugees in the Miami area of Florida (Dade County) represents an illuminating case study of the effects of immigration on urban racial and ethnic relations in the late twentieth century.
In the late twentieth century, the attitude of African Americans and their organizations to immigration was one of ambivalence. As a minority group, African Americans could not consistently oppose immigration as a threat to some imagined American cultural or ethnic purity.
Yet many African Americans, struggling against discrimination and disadvantage, feared immigrants as competitors for scarce jobs and public services.
In Dade County, Florida, unrestricted immigration from Cuba after Fidel Castro took power in 1959 fed the anxieties of black Miami residents about economic displacement and political disempowerment. The black riots that erupted in Miami in 1980, 1982, and 1989, although ostensibly sparked by police brutality, were widely ascribed by contemporary commentators to resentment against Cuban refugees.
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The Federal Government and Cuban Refugees
By the beginning of 1980, many of the Cuban refugees of the 1960's and early 1970's, who had arrived nearly penniless, had grown prosperous. Such success was due to the relatively high proportion of professionals and entrepreneurs among the earliest refugees, the refugees' hard work, and the generous assistance (about $2.6 billion between 1972 and 1976) that the refugees, as defectors from a communist regime, received from the federal government to help defray the costs of vocational training and retraining, transportation, and resettlement. African Americans complained that the refugees received more assistance than either other immigrants or poor native-born Americans did. The Mariel boatlift refugees of May to September, 1980, and refugees who arrived after that year did not, however, receive as much government help as the earlier waves of immigrants.
African Americans also complained about the way refugees benefited from federal programs not specifically targeted at refugees. When affirmative action policies were implemented in the late 1960's to provide set-asides for minority businesses, Hispanics were considered to be a minority and Cubans were Hispanics; hence, refugee-owned businesses were judged to qualify as minority-owned businesses. Local African Americans resented what they saw as poaching by white newcomers on an entitlement originally intended for African Americans.
Immigration Status of Cubans as Bone of Contention
From 1959 to 1980, hardly any Cuban reaching U.S. shores was deported. The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 enabled all Cuban refugees to change their status to that of permanent resident after one year of living in the United States; other immigrants did not enjoy this privilege. After 1972, more and more Haitians, like Cubans, tried to reach the United States. Cubans fleeing by boat were always welcomed. In contrast, Haitians fleeing by boat were unceremoniously sent back to Haiti if intercepted at sea, detained in prison if they reached Florida, and often deported. Although the official justification for the disparity in treatment was ideological (Cuba was communist; Haiti was not), many Miami black activists perceived racism. Many Cuban escapees were white; almost all Haitian escapees were black. In May, 1995, U.S. president Bill Clinton officially ended the privileged status of Cuban refugees. When the first Cuban escapees were sent back to Cuba, on May 10, Miami Cubans staged a four-day action of civil disobedience; Miami's native-born African Americans stayed away from the protest.
Anti-Cuban Animosity and Urban Rioting
Between 1968 and 1989, there were several episodes of rioting by black Miamians, the bloodiest of which took place in 1980. The riots of 1980, 1982, and 1989 were widely attributed by journalists and scholars to the resentment of black Miami residents against Cuban refugees, although this was only one reason. All the riots stemmed from responses to alleged police misuse of force. In 1982 and 1989, the officers who used force were Hispanic, and Cubans did tend to rally around Hispanic police officers accused of brutality. Yet conflict between blacks and police officers had existed even before the mass arrival of Cuban refugees.
Although one victim of black violence in the 1980 riot was a Cuban refugee, other victims were non-Hispanic whites: The mob was as much antiwhite as anti-Cuban. Nor were native-born African Americans the only ones to complain about police brutality. In 1992, an incident of police violence against a Haitian in a Cuban-owned store aroused protest; and in 1990, Miami's Puerto Ricans also rioted against an alleged police abuse of force.
Job Displacement
Whether Cuban refugees gained occupationally at the expense of Miami's African Americans is a controversial issue, although local black leaders lodged complaints about such displacement as early as the early 1960's. Allegations that Cubans ousted African Americans from service jobs in hotels and restaurants were met by counterallegations that African Americans were themselves leaving such jobs voluntarily and that the percentage of Miami African Americans in white-collar jobs had increased by 1980. By founding many new businesses, Cuban refugees created jobs; many such jobs, however, went to fellow refugees rather than to African Americans. As the Hispanic population grew and trade links with Latin America expanded, native-born African Americans were hurt by the job requirement of fluency in Spanish. Although the Miami area economic pie grew during the 1960's and 1970's, the African American slice of that pie, scholars concede, was stagnant; compared with pre-1980 Cuban refugees, they suffered in 1980 from greater poverty and unemployment and had a lower rate of entrepreneurship.
Black-Cuban Conflict in Local Politics
From 1960 to 1990, the Hispanic percentage of Dade County's population (most, but not all of it, Cuban) rose from barely 10 percent to 49 percent; the black percentage of the county's population never rose above 20 percent. By the late 1970's, more and more Cuban refugees were becoming naturalized U.S. citizens, gaining both the right to vote and a decisive weight in local politics. In 1983, the Puerto Rican-born mayor dismissed the black city manager, replacing him with a Cuban. Cuban American candidates defeated African American candidates for the posts of mayor of Miami in 1985, Dade County Schools superintendent in 1990, Dade County district attorney in 1993, and mayor of Dade County in 1996. The Cuban influx into elective politics prevented a black takeover of city hall (as had taken place in Atlanta, Georgia, and Detroit, Michigan), thereby reducing the chances for black businesspeople to benefit from municipal contracts. Yet African Americans' powerlessness was relative: They could vote and affect the outcome of elections.
The Nelson Mandela Affair and the Miami Boycott
In spring of 1990, Mayor Xavier Suar persuaded the Miami city government to withdraw its official welcome to Nelson Mandela, the leader of the black liberation struggle in South Africa, who was then touring the United States. Mandela, in a television interview, had praised Castro. Partly in response to this slap at Mandela, a Miami black civil rights leader, H. T. Smith, called for a nationwide boycott by black organizations of Miami-area hotels; this boycott was remarkably effective. It was ended in 1993 with an agreement promising greater efforts to employ African Americans in Miami's hospitality industry.
Complexities of Miami-area Interethnic Relations
Dade's County's politics were not simply a Cuban-African American struggle. Sometimes African Americans saw non-Hispanic whites as allies against the Cubans: In his losing bid for Congress against a Cuban American in 1989, the non-Hispanic white candidate won most of the black votes. Sometimes African Americans saw both Cubans and non-Hispanic whites as oppressors of African Americans. In a lawsuit that met with success in 1992, African Americans and Cubans cooperated in an effort to make the Dade County Commission more representative of ethnic minorities.
African American did not always form a united front against the Cubans: In a 1980 referendum ending the provision of Spanish-language documents and services by the Dade County government, black voters split, 44 percent for the proposition and 56 percent against. (Bilingualism was restored in 1993.) Haitians and native-born African Americans did not agree on all issues; among non-Hispanic whites, white ethnic migrants from the North did not always agree with white Anglo-Saxon Protestants of southern background; and some of Miami's non-Cuban Hispanics resented Cuban predominance.
Comparison with Overall Black-Hispanic Relations
In other major U.S. cities, Cubans were, if present at all, a smaller part of the larger Hispanic group. Only in Miami did Hispanics build up a powerful political machine; hence, black resentment of Hispanic political power played little role in race relations elsewhere. The police brutality issue also operated differently: in Compton, California, Washington, D.C., and Detroit, Michigan, for example, there were complaints, in the early 1990's, about alleged brutality by black police officers against Hispanics.
BLACK PEOPLE ARE JUST JEALOUS OF PUERTO RICANS AND CUBANS BECAUSE THEY HAVE MORE VOICE IN THE CITY. PUERTO RICANS AND CUBANS COME FROM SPANISH SPEAKING BACKGROUNDS AND STILL TEND TO BECOME SUCCESSFUL IN MIAMI AND OTHER CITIES REGARDLESS OF LEGAL STATUS AND LANGUAGE BARRIERS.
don't agree. It is actually the African American who has the language barrier. It is harder to get a job in Miami Dade NOT speaking Spanish than English. I don't think there is jealously. There is a divide. And Cubans and Puerto Ricans have a divide as well.
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