Published Work
Michael Bloomberg Is No Mayor Of Mine
Originally published for Uptown.
I am a New York City resident. With the exception of a brief stint living in the suburbs from 1997-2000, I have always lived in NYC. The cracked concrete of these streets are like the veins running across my skin. Wailing sirens and the chit-chatter of late night stoop conversations are my lullaby. This is home.
Michael Bloomberg was first elected mayor in 2001, shortly after my homecoming at the age of 12. Since he has been the mayor ever since, it’s safe to say that I grew up in the era of Bloomberg.
I used to like Bloomberg. He was a progressive thinker and brought much needed stability to New York City after that unspeakable horror of ’01. As the years have past however, his progression has been mired by his arrogance. He placed himself in direct control of public education and brought us the most laughable candidate for school chancellor in the history of education (in my humble opinion). He finagled his way into a third-term election, even after the city voted that they did not want him to. The list can go on and on, but it all seems to boil down to Bloomberg having a problem with hearing the word “no.” Now, on the issue of stop and frisk, Baby Bloomberg is upset that someone has reprimanded him for his faulty policies, and he’s vowing to appeal the ruling that says the practice violates civil rights.
A little over a month ago, when the City Council passed two bills aimed at relieving some of the damage done by his stop and frisk policies, Bloomberg said, “I think, we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little. It’s actually the reverse of what they’re [media outlets who stated that there was a disproportionate percentage of particular ethnic groups who were stopped] saying. I don’t know where they went to school, but they certainly didn’t take a math course, or a logic course.”
Is that so, sir?
“The NYPD made 533,042 stops last year, 87 percent of which were of blacks and Latinos.
The city’s highest officials have turned a blind eye to the evidence that officers are conducting stops in a racially discriminatory manner,” U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin wrote in her ruling in the historic class-action lawsuit, Floyd v. City of New York. “In their zeal to defend a policy that they believe to be effective, they have willfully ignored overwhelming proof that the policy of targeting ‘the right people’ is racially discriminatory.”
In response to the ruling, Bloomberg said, “It’s a dangerous decision made by a judge who doesn’t understand how policing works.” Funny, I don’t recall seeing a law degree or certificate from the police academy on the list of Bloomie’s credentials. His arrogance is truly astounding.
This man may be the mayor of New York City, but he is not my mayor. He does not speak to or for me as a Black woman. He does not speak to or for me as a sister with young Black brothers, who are likely to fall victim to his policies if he has his way. He does not speak to or for me as the daughter of a proud Black man who volunteers his time to educate young brown men about the importance of education and fatherhood. He does not speak to or for me as a future Black mother who will have to prepare her children for the undue scrutiny of police officers trained to believe that they are the roots of criminality and therefore need to be frisked to prevent some inevitable crime.
I can only hope that the ruling for monitoring of the NYPD is upheld and this racially biased system of stop and frisk is overturned. In the meantime, I’m anxiously awaiting November when that man that some of y’all call mayor is out of that office for good.