Here's the quote:
“This is about Black labor versus white wealth. That’s what this battle is about,”
Envelope, please. And this Year's Award for the most racist politician coming from the Chicago Teachers Union, Brandon Johnson. Wooo. Take a bow. Well played.
Accepting for Brandon this evening is last year's winner, Rev Al Sharpton. Al graciously flew to Chicago last week to appear with Brandon at an election rally.
BTW, I'd like to thank both of these great Americans for helping improve race relations.
Chicago politics 2023: the self-preservation mayoral election
by John Kass
April 2, 2023
Chicago is in a tight mayoral election centering on uncontrolled violent street crime and progressive Democratic Party resistance to upholding the law, I half expected raw and ugly race rhetoric from the candidate underperforming and under pressure.
And because this is Chicago, the city of tribes and unforgiven sins, the race rhetoric spewed out. But it didn’t come from some angry pink fellow.
It did not come from his opponent in the race for mayor, Paul Vallas.
Instead it came from one of the historical victims of ugly talk and ugly deeds. It came out in a torrent from the black leftist candidate for mayor Brandon Johnson, on the final days of the campaign, at a campaign debate.
“This is about Black labor versus white wealth. That’s what this battle is about,” Johnson said, explaining the mayoral campaign in the starkest and most limited terms.
It was a clear appeal to race, but the Chicago media hardly mentioned it.
Few if any of the political reporters bothered to note that the slogan Black Labor White Wealth, came from a Marxist book. It was to be studiously avoided. Why? Because there is nothing more malleable, more easily biddable than a fragile white reporter desperate to avoid the charge of racism.
So, the Chicago news media did not make a big issue of Johnson’s racial remarks taken from the title of a Marxist book. But then for weeks now during this campaign for mayor, the media in large part has been protecting Johnson from his own mouth.
It was all race and distilled Marxist-Leninism. And all that was needed to flavor the official silence were a pile of broken Menshevik skulls. The thing to know now is that naked appeals to race have been publicly made in a campaign centering on uncontrolled violent street crime and progressive Democratic Party resistance to upholding the law.
I half expected raw and ugly race rhetoric from the candidate underperforming and under pressure.
And because this is Chicago city of politics, the city of tribes, the city of unforgiven sins, the race rhetoric spewed out but not from the pink fellow with the freckles and white skin , but from a person of color, one of the historical victims of the ugly talk and uglier deeds on these final days of this campaign.
“Black Labor White Wealth” may have applied once back when the Irish were treated as dogs in this town, back when the Army was used to put down the race riot of 1919 when a black man was murdered for swimming on a so-called “white beach.” And it may be just the slogan to prompt treats for political hacks from Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle,
Bur where’s all that wealth of legend? It’d gone? It has fled.
It has gone to Naples Florida, Nashville Tennessee, Beverly Hills California, the Greek Islands, Belize, Nantucket, and elsewhere.
That’s the thing about having real money. You don’t have to hang around in suburban Cook County or Chicago and be abused by angry leftist Democrats. You can leave whenever you want to leave and don’t have to have a news conference to explain yourself. And that’s been happening for years now, hasn’t it?
After a warning, Ken Griffin took his billions out of Illinois and headed for Florida. Some of the great heart surgeons have fled for Marco Island. All you need for a golf club membership and a spiffy flats boat to get you over the oyster beds is money. You don’t need boss Preckwinkle’s approval to leave or Pritzker’s either.
If Brandon Johnson wins this election for mayor, then he will by definition protect boss Preckwinkle’s people including Chief Cook County judge Timothy C. Evans, Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxx, and Preckwinkle herself. From the mayor’s office Johnson would have the megaphone to protect them, and if racial politics is shown to have played a big role in the mayoral election you can count on it
Raw racial politics will have a champion on the 5th floor of City Hall.
But if Vallas wins the election, then he and more than 20 aldermen , black , Latino, and white will begin to focus on county elected officials as the leaders of criminal justice locally. Boss Preckwinkle will not like that, but that’s politics. The other day, I interviewed Robert Milan, the former first deputy Cook County States Attorney, for a segment of The Chicago Way Podcast.
Jeff Carlin and I wanted to know from Milan, if uncontrolled violent crime was indeed the issue in the Chicago mayoral race, what can we expect after the election?
Milan said the next mayor should hold public meetings, with elected officials on C-Span to discuss public safety. He should call out publicly those who refuse to help him. “Look I have this problem with people dying in the streets and children getting killed, and these people aren’t meeting with me and helping me. It would be wise for the next mayor of Chicago to hold weekly news conferences with elected officials around them talking about what’s going on with crime. What happened this week, the same way they did with the COVID crisis.”
They had the media’s help on COVID. Could they be expected to get some of that media help in preventing the slaughter of low income minority children?
If it is true that violent crime is the animating factor in this election, and it is true that Brandon Johnson has advocated for defunding-the-police, and Vallas has pushed law and order themes, then how could this election be close?
Is it simply a question of people voting their skin pigments above rational policy? I want to think better of us. But I can’t say. I suppose we’ll all find out eventually perhaps soon.
And then we’ll know the answer to the question: Is self-preservation the greatest instinct or is it our tribal politics?
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