Minority majority

I sort of mentioned it yesterday, but wanted to clarify even more an interesting tidbit about the new face of the Alameda City Council.   I think the changes that happened on November 6th nationally is reflected in our own local City Council.   One big thing that came out of Tuesday’s election was: don’t bet against Nate Silver, he will own you almost every single time.   The second thing is, people of color are going to continue to grow in prominence in elections as the complexion of the nation changes.  And while some people are freaking out over the purported demise of “traditional America” (read: white America) in Alameda, the change happened so gradually and organically that it didn’t even dawn on me until someone pointed it out.

As I noted yesterday, come December, there will not be one white male sitting on the City Council dais, with the exception of John Russo, but he’s not an elected officer.  This is notable given that only in recent memory were we able to note that Alameda had its first non-white City Council person in Hadi Monsef (1985).   It’s first Black vice mayor and acting mayor in Al DeWitt.  And in 1996, its first Asian Pacific Islander American Council person in Tony Daysog .   Shortly after that came Alameda’s first female Asian American city council member in Lena Tam, then Alameda’s first Black female mayor in Marie Gilmore.

So, when I wrote the whole “white male” thing, I was under the false assumption, like I think most people are/were that Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft was white.   And by “white” I mean the whole anglo-saxon white, trace your lineage back to the Mayflower kind of white.   Turns out, I was mistaken.   Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft is in fact 100% Arab-American.    Her background is an even mixture of Syrian and Lebanese.

I will caveat this all by saying, technically, if we’re to go on the whole census classification thing, people of Middle Eastern backgrounds are classified as “white” for census purposes, but I think we all know that in the wake of September 11, folks with Middle Eastern heritages don’t necessarily have the same type of American experiences as say someone with a European lineage.

On the Council now, with the addition of Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft, Tony Daysog and perhaps Stewart Chen if the vote holds for Rob Bonta, we will have a Council with three Asian Pacific Island Americans,  one African American, and one Arab-America.  I can say that Alameda has come a long way from the days when it was perceived as a town hostile to people of color.