The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama

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In the book The Breakthrough, Gwen Ifill addresses the political background and what part the women and men the author calls “the breakthrough politicians” or what the editor of the New Yorker David Remnick refers to as “the Joshua generation” who happen to be the offsprings of the civil rights pressure groups the role they played in the 2008 US presidential election as well as the prospects of US politics. These breakthrough politicians were born in the 1960s and ’70s, and during their time, they were brought up in a world that was shaped by access rather than denial. As the book reveals, these individuals came from middle-class families, attended best campuses, and are more likely to get into politics via business than activism. (pg 66-69).

Ifill’s book had for long been in the works and surprisingly centers less on Obama than on the group of up-coming Black-American politicians to whom she argues that they were changing the politics in America. This paper looks into the causes that brought about the coming up of the Breakthrough politicians as stated in Ifill’s book. The author rightly discharges the belief that the US has turned out to be a “post-racial” country, but admits the insight of David Axelrod, Obama’s adviser that “the aspect of this race is that it did not take the vital role that some individuals thought it would.” Still, Axelrod shows Obama’s “race-neutral approach as merely “a role of math”: i.e., electing a Black-American in a nation where that particular race make up 13% of the nation’s population needed an aspirant who appealed to the non-black electors.

The other vital issue that was addressed was the long-overdue African-American issues of discrimination, where blacks were not entitled to the same opportunities as their white counterparts. Poverty was another issue that was addressed. Citing his own father’s background, Obama promised to level the playing field so that every American, whether black or white has access to proper medical care, and at the very least should have some form of education for a better future. All these issues are no longer a secret, and every American is well aware of them. As a matter of fact, Obama promised to do something about them during his campaign. Now that he is the president, everyone hopes that he will keep his promise. As stated by Ifill, “As myriad new African-American leaders have realized that the key to breaking through often only lies in such an intersect putting the white people at ease without estranging blacks.” (pg 106-107).

The Breakthrough looks at the generational change, class as well as race which played a major role in the last general elections in the US. The book has perspective as well as depth which to most people thought they understood but not to this extent. The Breakthrough happens to be on the forefront in trying to help people to comprehend democracy in America and its future, especially in the current Obama regime. It looks at the modern politics as well as its basic rules. Without being biased, the author is not only persuasive but provocative as well making the book much bigger than the man of the moment Obama. It helps the reader better understand the American political power, especially in the black community when it concentrates more on politicians with African-American background and how far they have come.

The other great aspect of this book is the way it portrays the American Dream that is so often said but seldom achieved. It’s after the last election of Obama to the highest office of the land that many started to believe again that anything is possible in America. That’s why Obama’s election was such a monumental occasion in the history of American politics. The Breakthrough answered those who still doubted or questioned democracy in America, and because of this, there is no doubt that there is going to be better racial relations in general as a result of this. That said, it’s not going to be easy, nor is the battle over just yet. There is still a lot to be done through the hard part is half won as a result in change of attitude in majority of the electorate.

Ifill’s book is structured slackly around some well-known individuals; Newark’s mayor, Cory Booker, an all-American taut and with degrees from Oxford, Stanford and Yale, has led over an bizarre lessening in his city’s crime rate; the second one is Deval Patrick who is the governor of Massachusetts, he happens to be a Harvard-learned lawyer from South Side Chicago, who turned to be the state’s first Black-American governor. To the author’s credit, she states that past these personalities, drilling downwards to the un-famous Black-American politicians on the local and state levels; we meet the president of Atlanta City Council, Lisa Borders, who fights the allegations that she is not black enough. During a public debate Lisa Agued the following; “I was told to go to school and get my education. Then I was told to timely pay my bills and in full. I was later told to give back to the society.. Precisely where did I lose my African-Americaness?”(pg 155)

In her book she also gives an instance of a South Carolina State official Bakari Sellers who sees more cohesion than disparity among his disadvantaged constituents. Ifill states that “If one is poor and white or poor and black in South Carolina, then they both face essentially the same issues,” which are inequity in education and health care services. Ifill’s argument is clear that while Obama is the most evident member of the breakthrough cohort, he is barely alone and that the bench is deep. (Pg, 225).

The book argues that the new cohort of African-American politicians gives a double challenge to the US politics at large, and also to the African-American political structure in particular. She also writes, “equipped with their University degrees, their background in the private sector and also their own schemes of how to attain and hold on to political power; these young politicians often find that the major hurdles to political leadership exist at home,”.

In the book, it turns out that the Moses age band, what a history professor at the Spelman College, William Jelani Cobb calls “civil rights gerontocracy,” will not relinquish power without a fight. Through the narrative, things get nasty, especially when a novice declines to “wait for his turn” and confronts a black incumbent. The blunder that breakthrough young politicians make, as Sharpton tells Ifill, is that they assume they can “get a shot at the civil rights control and we aren’t going to shoot back.” (Pg, 89).

The implementation of policy of this new political movement is potentially huge. According to the author (Ifill), the breakthrough politicians somehow rely more on practical political alliances than on racial cohesion, mainly when they run for national and state positions. Even as their elders were voted in “highly drawn Congressional districts which make the most of the black vote,” they count Latino and white voters in challenges outside those districts. As noted by Manning Marable, a professor at the Columbia University that the fraction of Black-American state representatives who won election in districts dominated by whites rose from 16% to 30%, and that was between the years 2001 and 2008. (pg, 231)

The fact that the US president Obama received 43% of the white and 67% of the Latino vote (which is 2% points more than what John Kerry had in 2004) makes Ifill doubt whether gerrymandering is still needed. In her book Ifill also states that if white people will vote for African-Americans, then need for ornately designed Congressional districts that exploit the black vote will reduce accordingly,” (Pg, 225).

Also in her book, Ifill uses the example of Axelrod’s “race-neutral” approach which was succeeded in the year 2006, when his client Deval Patrick turn out to be the first black governor of Massachusetts, after winning 56% of the vote in one of the states where Black-Americans hardly make 7% percent of the total population. It clearly worked in the year 2006 race to the Washington mayoral office in which Adrian Fenty happened to be the first mayor to win in every single constituency in a city that was racially polarized.

The Breakthrough politicians pledge to a procedure obsessed as much by demographics as by fate. Whenever population shifts occur, which is brought about by affirmative action, fair housing laws, and landmark school integration rulings, then the political power is challenged as well. However, in this book I feel fails to consider another advance that is likely to hurry their advancement. Mergers that shift in demographics with the savvy political approach of Obama and company; are likely that the Joshua’s age group may become the crucial force in this new age of US politics.

Work Cited

Gwen Ifill. The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. Doubleday Publishing, Washington DC. 2009.

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The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama

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