The Black Lives Matter movement has been echoed in a new claim being made by some black politicians in St. Louis: “Black wards matter.” It’s a movement to undo the popular vote to downsize the city’s wards from 28 to 14. To this, we say: It’s black power that matters, not black wards – and whether or not black elected officials use their power to serve their constituents.
Those who oppose the voter-mandated reduction in wards – and, consequently, reduction of aldermanic seats and committee posts – claim that fewer black-dominated wards will result in less black political power, but this argument is specious and wrongheaded. As Alderman John Collins-Muhammad argues: “The reduction of black aldermen will essentially take away black influence in the city’s political spectrum – which one can assume is the ultimate plan.”
The whiff of conspiracy clearly is intended to enflame black citizens, but this argument is nonsense. Reducing the number of wards in the city will reduce both white-majority and black-majority wards, provided the redistricting is done equitably. Fortunately for Collins-Muhammad and his black colleagues on the Board of Aldermen, they hold the redistricting pen. If the city’s wards are not redrawn equitably, they will have no one to blame but themselves. We advise black aldermen to stop protesting and start fighting inside for equitable redistricting. We gladly will fight right alongside them.
But we cannot join any fight to preserve the city’s unwieldy status quo in ward districting. Kansas City, where black political power has been more productive and the City Council has been much more progressive than in St. Louis, has only 12 council members – fewer even than St. Louis will have after its 28 wards are downsized by half. Los Angeles, with nearly 4 million residents, has only 15 City Council seats, only one more than St. Louis will have after downsizing. Anyone who would say that St. Louis has more black political power than Kansas City or Los Angeles has not been outside of St. Louis much.
One consequence of our jigsaw puzzle of tiny wards is that ward alderman has not been a powerful elected position from which black politicians have built capacity to directly launch major political careers. St. Louis has never had a black mayor who started out as an alderman. In recent decades, the only black citywide elected official who started as an alderman was Michael McMillan, who moved up to license collector, a relatively powerless patronage office that has never been a stepping stone. The only path to greater power for a black alderman has been board president, and that path will remain after redistricting. Fewer wards will mean a broader base for all aldermen, which also will spark more competition and attract better candidates. The result will be a more, not less, representative and participatory local democracy.
Stronger black political elected officials, ultimately, are what will benefit black citizens and St. Louis as a whole. If you look at who holds elected office in the city today, the problem in black representation is not quantity but quality. Two of the three officeholders on the Board of Estimate & Apportionment, the city’s chief fiscal body, are black. Clearly, if Aldermanic President Lewis Reed and Comptroller Darlene Green wielded their power more effectively and collectively, they could exert much greater influence on the direction of this city, whether the mayor was Francis Slay, Lyda Krewson, Bill Haas or Daffy Duck. Further, this two-thirds black majority continues throughout all of the citywide elected offices, where blacks hold six out of the nine seats. This is far greater than blacks’ percentage of the city’s population, as blacks now form a plurality, not even a majority, of city residents.
Ironically, the one place where blacks are politically underrepresented is the Board of Aldermen, where blacks hold only 11 out of 28 seats. So guess who has the most to gain in political representation by redistricting the city’s wards? Black political hopefuls for alderman and the black people they will be presumably most motivated to serve once elected.
Black power, not black wards, is what matters – black power and good governance. We are not effectively using the political power we now have because we are not being well served by most of the black elected officials we have now. The aldermen who hold the pen to redraw the city’s wards need to stop protesting the redistricting process, sit down, and work together to draw an equitable map where black people can have a more representative presence on the Board of Aldermen. And where, hopefully, more competitive city politics will produce stronger black politicians who will make more effective use of their political power.
The trajectory of our ailing former industrial city must be reversed. There is understandable anger and frustration due to the city’s high level of poverty caused by a stagnant economy and resultant high unemployment. The city and region, whose destinies are inextricably bound, have competitive advantages, like higher education institutions, major corporations, top-tier health care centers, and a central location that can bolster greater economic development. If the African-American community is to participate more equitably in future growth, we will need to elect our most able leaders to assure that we play a consequential role in formulating more effective strategies for economic growth (which must include improving education at every level for everyone). The future success of this city and region requires a more prosperous black community with better informed, more effective public officials.
