NYC Mayor Has Trouble Fulfilling Campaign Promises

NYC Mayor Bloomberg got himself elected on his promises to make the city government a meritocracy, that he would lead a government that looked like the city. Instead:

Sure enough, a Freedom of Information Act request showed that tucked among hundreds of summer interns picked through a competitive process were dozens of the children of City Hall insiders or of Mr. Bloomberg’s friends. They reflected the mayor’s social and political circles: mostly white, many quite wealthy, coming from private high schools and Ivy League colleges.

In short, these are not residents of Stop and Frisk New York.

Mayor Bloomberg promised to lead a government that looked like the city; in reality, he leads one that looks like his mirror, an administration in which key managers are overwhelmingly white and male. It is one thing if this means the annual crop of interns is heavily salted with young Bloombergians.

It is quite another when those managers are shaping policies that wind up leading to the deprivation of liberty of people who do not look like them.

And the effects thereof? Well, among others:

On the Upper East Side of Manhattan where the mayor lives, an average of 20 people for every 100,000 residents were arrested on the lowest-level misdemeanor pot charge in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

During those same years, the marijuana arrest rate in Brownsville, Brooklyn, was 3,109 for every 100,000 residents.

I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you, to discover that there's been a racist stop-and-frisk spree that's leading to higher rates of incarcertation for people who aren't white, and that there's an emphasis on attacking drug use that just happens to favour the unconstitutional search of people for the made-up crime of "Living in NYC while brown".

Totes post-racial, baby.

Tip of the CaitieCap to MzR.