Andra Gillespie is an associate professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta. She is the author of The New Black Politician: Cory Booker, Newark, and Post-Racial America, and the editor of Whose Black Politics?: Cases in Post-Racial Black Leadership. Her work has been featured in a variety of publications, including Politico, TheRoot.com, and The Washington Post.
Q: How did you come to write The New Black
Politician, and why did you choose to focus on Cory Booker and Newark?
A: It all happened quite organically. I met Cory Booker
in 2001 while I was still in graduate school at Yale. He gave a talk where
he mentioned that he canvassed his entire ward to win election to Newark’s
Municipal Council.
I was writing my dissertation proposal on canvassing at that
time, so after his talk, I struck up a conversation with Cory about
canvassing. He told me he was planning on running for mayor the next year,
and I instantly asked if I could come to Newark to study voter turnout.
He agreed, and I started coming to Newark during the 2002
campaign for research. I intended to study the impact of canvassing on
voter turnout, but while I was in Newark, I couldn’t help but notice the racial
dynamic in the contest between Sharpe James and Cory Booker.
After Booker lost that first election, I wrote a conference
paper on the race, which I hoped to publish after finishing my dissertation.
By early 2006, I was a new professor at Emory. I went
back to Newark to observe the 2006 race in the hopes of writing a second article
about the 2006 election. By the end of that election cycle, I realized
that I had enough field notes to write a book.
Q: Now that Booker is a new member of the U.S. Senate, what impact do you think he'll have there and do you see him on a national ticket in the future?
A: It’s way too early to predict whether Booker will be the
second black president (though I’m sure he’s on such short lists
already). Booker is still learning his new job, but once he gets his
bearings (and assuming he doesn’t quickly seek another office), he has the
potential to make a tremendous, long-term contribution to the Senate.
I remember telling his late father years ago that Booker had
the potential to be the next Ted Kennedy, and I still believe that.
Q: You write, "I contend that the same forces that discouraged black leaders from addressing controversial problems in black communities also created opportunities for deracialized political candidates to gain political currency." How did that dynamic come about, and what do you see happening in the years ahead?
A: A number of structural factors contributed to the failure
of early black mayors in reducing black-white inequality.
When black mayors were elected in northeastern cities like
Newark, they faced declining populations (especially the exit of a home-owning
middle class) and the resultant declining tax base, deindustrialization, and
reduced federal aid to cities, among other things.
This made it incredibly difficult for these mayors to
marshal the resources to address poverty. As a result, they tended to
focus on affirmative action and downtown redevelopment.
The failure to truly transform cities opened up early black
mayors to criticism, upon which younger black politicians have tried to
capitalize to launch their own careers.
Q: How did you pick the topics and authors to include in Whose Black Politics?
A: Two things contributed to the publication of the edited
volume. I made a presentation of preliminary findings for The New Black
Politician to colleagues in my department at Emory. Many of them told me
to expand the study to include additional cases. That suggestion was
untenable for the type of project that The New Black Politician became, but it
stuck with me.
I made the same presentation at a meeting of the National
Conference of Black Political Scientists, and a friend asked me when I would be
publishing the book. At that conference’s awards banquet, I sat with two
friends who eventually became contributors (Tyson King-Meadows and Sekou Franklin). By the end of that dinner, we had decided to do the edited
volume.
In terms of the volume’s content and organization, I wanted
to be sure that Whose Black Politics covered the breadth and diversity of black
politicians in the post-civil rights cohort.
This book would have been incomplete had I focused solely on
politicians who were like Barack Obama (e.g. Cory Booker). I hope readers
walk away from the book with the recognition that the current crop of new black
politicians includes deracialized politicians and those who don’t mind
explicitly advocating for racialized interests.
Moreover, the cohort includes politicians who appear
unassailable and those who have run into serious ethical problems. I
wanted to address comfortable and uncomfortable issues regarding race, as well
as talk about the triumphs and challenges of younger black politicians.
Once I had identified the cases and issues I wanted to
cover, I then picked contributors based on a variety of criteria. Some
people had already published articles on their topics, so we revised those
articles for this volume.
In other instances, I reached out to my professional
networks to recruit authors to write some of the other chapters. I gave
preference to those who I knew had specific interests in or connections to
certain politicians.
In two instances, I worked with a couple of my undergraduate
students to revise papers they had written for my class on black political
leadership for the volume.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I still haven’t learned my lesson about working on
multiple projects at the same time!
Currently, I have three projects. I’m due to complete a
book project on racial representation in the Obama Administration this
summer. Hopefully, it will come out in 2015.
I am also working with a colleague on an African American
politics textbook, which will hopefully be published in 2016.
Finally, I am working with a number of colleagues on a
project about the origins of black Republican identification.
In addition to that, I maintain my research interests in
Newark. I'll be back in Newark this spring collecting data on the 2014
municipal election.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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