Like any serious observer of politics, we place policy first in importance. Though we often promote the interests of African Americans seeking elected office or appointments, we are also dedicated to officials of any background who push effectively for policies that will benefit the black community. U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill and Missouri Treasurer-elect Clint Zweifel are only the latest in a long line of non-black politicians who often have received our enthusiastic support based on their policy stands.
However, it is important to see African Americans themselves included in public life and employed in prominent positions in the public sector. Everyone has recognized the enormous benefit to African Americans in seeing Barack Obama elected as president of the United States. It is logical, then, that less lofty elections and appointments for African Americans also provide benefits for the black community.
We saw two of these benefits this week in the reported appointment of Eric Holder as the first African American U.S. attorney general and, more parochially, Missouri Governor-elect Jay Nixon’s appointment of Kelvin L. Simmons (an African-American businessman from Kansas City) as commissioner of Administration. Holder and Simmons are both experienced, savvy, intelligent men, and we expect them to honor the president and governor and the constituents they serve. We applaud both appointments and consider them promising initial evidence of inclusion by Obama, of whom we expect no less, and Nixon, who has much to prove to his African-American constituents.
Attorney General-elect Chris Koster made significant campaign promises of special interest to the black community. He said he would hire an African American in one of his three executive staff positions, would organize a civil rights division (and staff it in the urban areas to encourage more black attorneys to work in state government), and would see what, if anything, his office could do to reconsider the case of Death Row inmate Reggie Clemons. We expect to hear news from Koster on these important matters once he takes office.
Make no mistake, not every African-American person can be counted on to fairly represent the best interests of the black community. To take one notorious local example, Charles Bryson’s promotion to director of Public Safety for the City was nothing more than a divide-and-rule ploy by Mayor Slay. Bryson was promoted so that a black man would enforce the threat of disciplinary action previously given publicly to Sherman George, the city’s first-ever black fire chief. Bryson is a reminder that black officials can be used against the black community, as well as to benefit it.
Nothing of the sort is at work in the reported appointment of Eric Holder or the appointment of Kelvin L. Simmons. We applaud the president-elect and the governor-elect n and we expect to have more reasons to congratulate the new generation of elected officials in their efforts to employ qualified African Americans, whose talents and energies are so needed to help build a strengthened city, state and nation.