PHILLY POLITICS, AS USUAL

A lengthy article in today’s Philadelphia Daily News described the political battle shaping up over the redistricting of Philly’s city council that will follow the 2010 federal census. For some years, apparently, there has been a movement to carve out a “Latino district” in order to ensure a permanent Hispanic fiefdom in the city.

What follows is the letter I sent to the Daily News.

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To the editor:

Your article about the prospect of political redistricting in Philly from the coming census was an eye-opener.

It is a measure of how far we have gone down the road of politicizing group identity that no one in Philadelphia politics objects to racial and ethnic gerrymandering on the grounds it is fundamentally anti-democratic and un-American. It is simply an accepted practice. The only battles are among politicians on how best to ghettoize their constituents into convenient demographic enclaves.

The argument, I suppose, is that creating a "Latino district" or an "African-American district" or an "Italian district" somehow empowers these groups. In fact, the opposite is true. It merely relieves entrenched politicians of the need to treat us as individual adults with differing hopes, beliefs and values, regardless of who our ancestors were. Instead, once we are divided into neat little groups, politicians can assure themselves of long careers merely by pandering to the lowest common denominator of racial and ethnic differences. Real political debate on what is best for Philadelphia goes out the window. Instead, politics is a backroom process of dividing up the cookies among "MY Latinos," "MY African-Americans," "MY white river-ward residents," etc.

There is nothing new in politics, and this method of controlling the unruly masses was described in detail by Machiavelli five centuries ago. The division of people into groups allows the prince to rule them by doling out benefits, and withdrawing them, from this group or that. The groups then fight each other for crumbs rather than demand good and fair governance from the ruler.

We are people. We are Americans. We are Philadelphians. We are much more than our skin color or our last name. We are NOT primarily Latinos or Irish or African-American or Italian or Polish, and in 2010, it is insulting that Philadelphia politicians refuse, for their own convenience, to treat us as individuals who must be persuaded to vote for them rather than be manipulated to embrace our basest instincts.