Bloomberg Avoids Racially Integrated Administration

Mayor Bloomberg continues to establish new lows in his racial record as Mayor if our great city. He has eclipsed the noisome racial record of Rudy Giuliani, and there seems to be no end to his racial missteps.

Worse Diversity Record Than Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani is generally viewed as the classic anti-Black elected official. He refused to meet with any Black elected officials while he was Mayor, even when those Black elected officials were state-wide officials. He regularly engaged in racially incendiary rhetoric, and he participated in a racist protest against Mayor Dinkins during Dinkins' term as Mayor.

However, Mayor Bloomberg, who succeeded Giuliani, has a racial record that is worse than Giuliani's.

We have repeatedly highlighted the record level of stop-and-frisk incidents in New York City under Mayor Bloomberg and the ugly racial dynamics of the stop-and-frisk incidents and the resulting database of innocent-yet-abused people of color.

We have also highlighted Bloomberg's focus on maintaining racially discriminatory practices in New York City's Fire Department.

Last week, we saw the New York Times lay out the statistics to demonstrate that Bloomberg has been worse than Giuliani in terms of the hiring of persons of color to senior positions in New York City government.

Lack of Diversity

As the New York Times has pointed out that while Chicago and Los Angeles have senior staffs that are 52% and 61% white, respectively, New York City has a senior staff that is more than 70% white. In fact, in most key categories, the figure is far closer to 80% white than 70% white.

New York City's white population is 35% of the city's overall population, but Bloomberg has carefully avoided having the City's leadership reflect the City's population.

In fact, in every category investigated by the New York Times, Bloomberg's diversity record was worse than Giuliani's, and both Giuliani and Bloomberg has records far worse than Mayor Dinkins. The Mayor has refused to acknowledge that he needs to reverse course with regard to his anti-Black and anti-Hispanic governance philosophy.

We continue to hope that the Mayor will change his approach on race in his third term as Mayor, and begin both to value diversity and to oppose racism. Thus far, he has promoted racism and opposed diversity. Time is running out.